Miss Idaho Falls, Katelyn Strobel, has been busy with her platform. On March 20th she hosted a huge event at her University. “I am the director of a program called Project Youth. I brought 1000 5th and 6th graders from low-income schools to my college campus at Brigham Young University. The elementary students are lead by a student group leader and are taken on a campus tour and STEM presentations given by faculty and clubs. The goal of my program is to encourage these elementary students to reach their full academic potential and to excite them about all the possibilities at the university level. At the end of the day all the kids and volunteers attend a Power Rally with performance groups, keynote speakers, music and slideshows.

With an event this large, it is easy to be distracted by the sheer number of students in front of you. However, my favorite part of my Project Youth events are the small and quiet moments I have with individual children. During this event, I was eating lunch with a boy named Ethan. He told me that this was “the coolest fieldtrip he had ever been on” and that he was excited to “go back to school and work harder in science class” so that he could graduate from college with a “degree in Chemistry and save the world.”

Conversations like that, while simple, are the reasons why I chose to promote higher education as my platform. I believe that everyone is capable of accomplishing great things, sometimes we just need vision and an encouraging voice.

My platform “Go On: Promoting Higher Education”’s purpose is to hold these Project Youth events on college campuses. After my event at BYU, the number of students that have participated in my program REACHED 5000!

My goal before Miss Idaho is to present to 10,000 students! This upcoming month I am putting on “Go On” assemblies at nearly every elementary school in Idaho Falls. Look for me at your local elementary school!!!”