16-year-old from Richmond receives award for youth activism and national advocacy

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — A 16-year-old from Richmond has received an award for his activism for youth in the 2024 National Crime Victims’ Service Awards.

Sixteen-year-old Elijah Lee of Richmond has received the ‘Tomorrow’s Leader Award’ by the Office for Victims of Crime for his activism for youth.

According to the office, Lee’s activism started at the age of 10 and he led his first child abuse awareness March 2020, with a record number of over 450 people in attendance. The marches have since remained an annual event since.

Lee then went on to convert hospital rooms into child-friendly safe rooms to serve victims of child abuse and neglect, with the first at Vidant North Hospital in North Carolina. After he moved to Virginia, he partnered with the Children’s Hospital of Richmond to do similar work, raising over $12,500 to renovate hospital rooms for children, according to the office.

For these efforts, Lee was nominated by the Children’s Hospital Foundation and selected as the recipient of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Central Virginia Chapter’s Emerging Philanthropic Leader Award in 2022.

In 2021, Lee founded a nonprofit organization called Hear Our Voices, which is dedicated to empowering young people with an emphasis on assisting youth to find their voices and become agents of change, according to the office.

In addition to leading annual marches for the past five years, Lee has served as a national public speaker on issues of abuse, adverse childhood experiences and youth rights at conferences in Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana.

Lee has also worked directly with members of the Virginia General Assembly, drafting over six pieces of legislation supporting the needs of child abuse survivors in the area of trauma-informed care, mental health and education last year.

According to the office, many of these bills have received bi-partisan support in both the House and Senate, with three to have been signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin.

For more information, visit the office’s website .

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