Welcome to Week 1 of the Headway Election Challenge! We’re thrilled you’re here.

We’ve spoken to a lot of teenagers since the beginning of the year and we know that elections can seem complicated, overwhelming or even distant, making it easy to feel as if your voice doesn’t really matter.

But here’s the truth: You can help shape the future of your community, city, state and country. Every voice adds to the larger conversation about where we’re headed next, and yours can be as big as you make it.

Take Aakrisht Mehra, a 16-year-old senior from Dublin, Calif. Mehra loves to read — right now, he’s on an Aristotle kick — and drink iced caramel macchiatos with two shots of espresso. As a public policy advocate and former congressional intern, he considers himself “really” politically engaged. But he admits it’s not easy for teens like him to get involved.

“We internalized and almost embraced this idea that our voices don’t matter regardless of what we want to do. Regardless of what we actually believe in, our voices won’t make an impact,” Mehra said. “I think that prevents people from going to a lot of polls, because if everyone around you is telling you, and everyone around you believes in the idea that your voice doesn’t really matter, you’re not necessarily motivated to go out and actually vote and engage with these elections.”

Elyse Reznik, a self-described “political nerd” from Los Angeles, turned 18 in February and by March, she was already voting in her city’s primary election, filling in the bubbles of her mail-in ballot at her kitchen table.