Letters to Our Next President, From America's Youth

In the runup to the election, high school students from across the country wrote letters and poems and made videos to express their opinions on the issues that matter to them the most.

The messages were collected by an initiative called Letters to the Next President 2.0 -- or L2P 2.0 -- a collaboration between KQED and the National Writing Project.

California youth were among the thousands of contributors, raising concerns on everything from immigration policy and civil rights to gun control, abortion, climate change and the cost of college.

"In this day and age, student debt has snowballed into an unavoidable issue," one student wrote in a letter. "Hundreds of thousands of qualified students are unable to attend college due to insufficient finances ... With your will and power, throw open the gates to a higher education for all deserving."

The messages are published online for reading and sharing between now and the inauguration on Jan. 20, and the California Report Magazine will be airing some of the letters written by California youth until then.

Letters to the Next President was created during the 2008 presidential campaign by the National Writing Project in collaboration with Google.