Meet Ella: The fearless student advocate spearheading initiatives for foster youth on the state level. Last year, she wrote and lobbied for a bill called the Foster Youth Bill of Rights. But her work isn’t over. Despite her rigorous course load as an honors student in college and an internship with the Public Defender’s office, Ella still somehow finds the time to help out with Belmont University’s new initiative to make college more accessible to former foster youth.
The Foster Youth Bill of Rights codifies a set of human rights for all children in the foster system, from education to access to necessary health services. It also requires the Department of Children’s Services (DCS) to train all its employees adequately and adjust its policies accordingly.
Ella says she came up with the idea to bring the bill to the legislature after her participation in Youth in Government (YIG). She said that YIG was immensely helpful to understand how a bill moves through the legislature, and she even wrote her first draft of the bill for the program. She used the advocacy skills she learned from her internship with the Public Defender’s office to reach out to a potential sponsor, Senator Haile. Many drafts and late nights later, her bill was passed unanimously in the Tennessee House and Senate.
Ella decided to advocate for her bill, the Foster Youth Bill of Rights, because of her siblings. “My siblings are still in the system. I have the tools and the voice and the ability to change that system. I want to make it better for other kids so they don’t experience what I did,” Ella said. Though Ella grew up in the foster care system, she’s not just fighting for the life she wishes she had.
“I care a lot about the state of the world,” Ella said. “My experience in foster care really fueled me to make a change because I understood that when I aged out, I was able to leave it behind. Many people are still stuck.” The statistics are clear — over 30% of foster youth who age out of the system experience homelessness, and another 70% are arrested at least once before they turn 26. “We’re not bad kids,” Ella explains. “We’re just groomed into failure.”
Ella’s main focus, though, is on education. “The only way we can lift ourselves up and get ourselves out is an education,” Ella said. But right now, the number of former foster youth to graduate with a four-year degree rests between 3%-4%, compared to the national average of around 40%. Ella’s determined to help create a new reality for herself and all the foster kids around her.
At Belmont, she works with the administration on their foster care initiative, which seeks to enroll former foster youth at the university. Ella says that the goal is for “foster youth to have the same opportunities and privileges to dream like their peers who aren’t in the system.” The numbers show that those opportunities don’t come easily to foster children as the system currently stands, but programs like the one Ella is helping create at Belmont seek to change that.
Outside of her advocacy work, Ella is a “full-time student and a full-time sister.” She spends time with her siblings and friends as often as she can. She’s also a dedicated student, a hiker, a friend, and is continuing her internship at the Public Defender’s office.
At 19, Ella is creating a world she wants to live in. But she knows the work isn’t done. Once she graduates from Belmont, she hopes to attend law school and continue with a career in the legal field. She hopes to make lasting change as a public defender. After that? “We’ll see,” she says.
The Nashville SUNN editorial team is excited to spotlight an extraordinary second student featured in this spotlight column, which will explore youth civic leadership in politics and far beyond. It takes courage to knit communities together and cross political divides, but if any generation can do it, it’s Gen Z. Stay tuned for more.
