By Maria Veríssimo

West Portal high schooler Katelyn Lee is working on making local politics, news and events accessible to San Francisco’s youth via a new website. The District 7 resident is the founder of PoliLink, a website dedicated to gathering important news related to San Francisco politics.

PoliLink provides visitors with information regarding leaders of San Francisco’s government, such as who is on the Board of Supervisors, explanations of local laws and regulations and a “Town Hall” events calendar.

“A lot of the time, especially for the people around me, they don’t really know exactly what’s going on (with politics),” the 17-year-old said. “My main goal with PoliLink is to really make it plain English, so it’s very easy to understand, and people are knowledgeable on what’s going on.”

PoliLink’s layout allows users to navigate through available resources. It offers a list of names and contacts of many of San Francisco’s leaders, policy overviews, the status of legislative documents and a calendar with community events. Users have the option to RSVP to events directly on the site.

Community discussion is available on PoliLink’s “Community Forum” and “Youth Voice Hub,” where users can browse and contribute to conversations about topics such as student rights, education and public safety – in addition to learning more about youth resources.

Lee’s inspiration to translate formal political language to an accessible, digital platform was motivated by her internship at City Hall.

“It was such a great experience,” Lee said. “I got to intern for the Board of Supervisors for about one semester of a school year. I was able to email and directly answer calls from constituents and get to know the different issues within District 7.”

During Lee’s time at Supervisor Myrna Melgar’s office, she noticed a lack of youth participation in politics.

“Not a lot of supervisors actually let youth or students come into their office and have that kind of internship,” Lee said. “So, it was me and maybe two or three other youths that were there at a time.”

Lee is part of a group called the District 7 Youth Council.

“(We) help advise the District 7 Board of Supervisors,” Lee said. “It is a youth council body led by youth and for youth.”

In her work, Lee highlights different youth issues within District 7, such as transportation, mental health and education.

Being that the district is home to City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University, education is an important issue for Lee and her work on the council.

“For me, it’s really about education and having the resources to have a sufficient education, especially for English-learners or students who might not have English as a fluent or native language,” Lee said. “As an English-learner myself who spoke Korean before English, I think I resonate with that a lot. I think education is the basis of all of the other passions that I have.”

PoliLink is a result of Lee’s passion for education, civic engagement and data collection.

“I created (PoliLink) over this summer, and it was mainly inspired by my growing interests in data science and statistics. I took an AP statistics course last year, and I really, really enjoyed it, (especially) data collection and going out into my community,” Lee said. “Collecting data, asking community members what they think about different things.”

PoliLink’s data is sourced directly from official government websites, such as sf.gov.

“I scoured the internet to see what was happening, and then I input the data into a website that creates the app and the interface for you,” Lee said. “And then through that app or the interface, I programmed it to automatically update every time there’s a new event going on or if there’s a new policy enacted.

“With PoliLink, I really wanted to make information more readily available and more accessible,” Lee said.

To access PoliLink, visit https://www.polilink.org/.