Kids First Project. MEChA. MUN. Teen Council. These are just some of the ways senior Pilar Agudelo contributes to Lincoln and the community.

Agudelo is not only the Director of Communications and President of the Lincoln chapter for Kids First Project– a nonprofit that works with homeless youth in Portland– but is also the co-president of MEChA, has been a delegate and chair for Model United Nations, and is a Teen Member of Teen Council (a peer-led program with Planned Parenthood teaching sex education around the Portland area).

She also recently took the initiative to organize the multicultural assembly in April.

“I realized things weren’t really moving along and things weren’t really coming together… so I kind of just started sending out emails, and it just happened that I started organizing the entire thing,” she said.

Agudelo said that for the multicultural assembly, she wanted “people [to] come up and speak that [weren’t her].” She explained humbly that “I didn’t need to speak. I wanted to get the voices that haven’t been heard to come up and speak.”

Agudelo quickly found her place at Lincoln by becoming more involved and trying to initiate discussions. “At first, it wasn’t really about making a difference,” she said. “It was more about…finding what I wanted to do, but when I started doing the multicultural assembly, especially my senior year, just getting more involved, I found that what I wanted to do was open up conversations a lot more, and really focus on what people needed to hear to understand rather than… trying to lecture people and tell them what they should do.”

Agudelo acknowledged that it can be tough to find the right thing for individuals to get involved in, but offered some advice.

“It’s about finding something you like, and not forcing yourself to go to 20 different clubs when you can choose one that you’re really passionate about and that you can really spend your time on doing,” she said.