Program gives Norwich students lesson in grass-roots democracy

Norwich - Many of the people who followed this year's municipal election in Norwich couldn't even vote in it.

About 100 youth members of the Norwich NAACP branch and the Greater Norwich Anti-Bullying Coalition participated in the fourth annual Youth in Democracy Challenge.

The participants are mostly high school students from Norwich Free Academy, Norwich Technical High School and Thames River Academy and recent high school graduates.

Francesco Stranges-Curcio, 19, of Norwich, who plans to attend Three Rivers Community College in January, gave a PowerPoint presentation at a reception Monday to celebrate the effort.

Participants had interviewed three of the four mayoral candidates for the video "Candid with the Candidates," hosted two forums, shadowed candidates on their rounds and registered 125 new voters.

Jennifer Grillo, 17, of Montville, a senior at Norwich Tech, spent one Saturday morning at a table outside Otis Library on Main Street urging people to register to vote. She got 25 new voters to sign up.

"I love doing it," Grillo said Monday at the reception. "I felt like a salesperson, because you have to spit it out fast."

Grillo said she looks forward to voting in next year's gubernatorial election in Connecticut, although she plans to be a college student in Boston.

"I'll have to vote by absentee ballot," she said of her first election.

Grillo also posed one of the questions at the City Council candidate forum, asking candidates what they would do to encourage high school students to attain post-secondary education.

Debbie Kievits, coordinator of the Anti-Bullying Coalition - dubbed "Bully Busters" - said the youths worked hard to write questions that pertained to the local race and what mattered to them as teenage members of the community. She said the election is over, but the youths won't stop their work. In the spring, they will visit the state legislature and become involved in the bill-writing process.

Stranges-Curcio and his sister, Luisa Stranges-Curcio, 17, a senior at NFA, have participated in the Youth in Democracy Challenge for the past two years. Natives of Italy, the two teens have become engrossed in local politics. Frankie spent the 2008 campaign season following Norwich state Rep. Melissa Olson, D-Norwich.

But "Frankie" said don't expect him to become a candidate anytime soon.

"I found I'm very passionate about being involved in the community," Frankie Stranges-Curcio said. "I love community involvement, but not running for city council."