“This fall, students at the University of Virginia started a Chapter of the Virginia Organizing Project on campus, and the response has already been tremendous,” said VOP Intern Kevin Simowitz. “The first collegiate VOP Chapter in the state is up and running in Charlottesville, and people who hadn’t heard of VOP before September are playing big roles in helping us work toward achieving our goals in the General Assembly and in building our grassroots base.”

Moving beyond organizations that focus solely on the University, Chapter members are getting a much broader experience. Second-year student Veronica Gutierrez says that “VOP has made me feel like I’m part of a larger cause that will positively affect the Charlottesville area and Virginia as a whole.”

In an effort to educate students about the exploitative practices of payday loan companies, UVA VOP Chapter members designed an advertisement (to be placed on University buses) giving information regarding the outrageous interest rates charged by lenders.

Additionally, Chapter members also attended a meeting of Charlottesville City Council to show support for a local resolution urging the General Assembly to cap these unfair interest rates, and one member, Sarah Sievert, was interviewed by a local television news crew after the meeting.

The UVA VOP Chapter has also been active on the door-to-door canvass campaign, collecting used cell phones and printer cartridges to recycle while encouraging local residents to contact their legislators and urge them to support efforts to hold payday loan companies to more reasonable interest rates. Tommy Roberts, a VOP intern over the summer and one of the organizers of the UVA VOP Chapter, says that “VOP has given [UVA students] an opportunity to immediately take action that helps important campaigns already underway.”

“When Chapter members are not focusing on predatory lending, they’re also helping to raise money from UVA professors by learning how to make one-to-one invitations to donate to VOP, as well as selling advertising space to local businesses in the fabulous program being assembled for the upcoming Social Justice Bowl,” Simowitz said.

Lots of these important skills, including the lessons learned from an informative question-and-answer session with VOP’s Legislative Director Ben Greenberg, are proving helpful to Chapter members involved in a variety of other social justice initiatives on UVA’s campus.

In the coming weeks, the Chapter will be calling Virginians and asking them to help ensure that uninsured children have access to health care in our state, as well as continuing to learn new organizing skills and recruit more members.

If you’d like more information about the UVA VOP Chapter, or if you’d like to get involved, please contact VOP Intern Kevin Simowitz at kevin@virginia.edu.