Homestead High School Senior Named Indiana Senate Youth Delegate

(INDIANAPOLIS) – The Indiana Bar Foundation and the United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP) announces that Homestead High School senior Layla Kelly will join Senator Todd Young and Senator Mike Braun in representing Indiana during the 62nd annual USSYP Washington Week, to be held March 2-9. Layla will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship for undergraduate study. Two students are selected to represent Indiana. Kyle Davis of Bloomington is the other Indiana delegate.

Layla Kelly serves as an officer on the Fort Wayne Mayor’s Youth Engagement Council. She is a member of the Indiana Legislative Youth Advisory Council where she advocates for policies important to youth as the chairwoman of the Substance Abuse and Physical/Mental Health Committee. A passionate activist for women’s issues, Layla is the president of the only high school chapter of the National Organization for Women in Indiana. As a research intern at the Women’s Fund of Fort Wayne, she produced a paper on legislative solutions to the sexual assault kit backlog, which she uses as she collaborates with state legislators to advance a bill to remedy this problem. As vice president of Key Club, Layla has volunteered nearly 200 hours in service to her community. She is captain of the tennis team, an officer of Student Ambassadors, a member of the Student Athletic Leadership Team, and a mentor in the middle school “We the People” program. She intends to use her service-oriented leadership experience in her career to advocate for gender equity and to help bridge the partisan divide in the United States.

The USSYP was created by Senate Resolution 324 in 1962 and has been sponsored by the Senate and fully funded by The Hearst Foundations since inception. In Indiana, the USSYP is administered by the Indiana Bar Foundation. The Foundation reviews applicants, conducts interviews, and selects Indiana’s representatives. The selected delegates are endorsed by Indiana’s Secretary of Education, Dr. Katie Jenner.

Each year this extremely competitive merit-based program provides the most outstanding high school students – two from each state, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense Education Activity – with an intensive week-long study of the federal government and the people who lead it. The overall mission of the program is to help instill within each class of USSYP student delegates more profound knowledge of the American political process and a lifelong commitment to public service.