Back in June, Henry Ehrnman received the Sophie Theriault Empower Youth Voice Scholarship at Rise and Shine, an annual volunteer celebration EYN hosts each June. He was a Snoqualmie Valley School District (SVSD) student K-12 and a 2025 Mount Si High School (MSHS) graduate. Over the years, his dedication to serving his community is nothing short of inspiring.
With over 74 activities logged for community service hours, and plenty of others off record, he has made a significant number of impressive contributions for his age to help out in the valley. This past summer, he worked at Eddie Bauer and got ready to head off to school at the University of Washington. This fall, he will be studying at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Looking back on the path that led Henry here, this story starts off in April of his junior year with a call to Assistant Principal Krista Lallemand’s office.
Henry was pretty confused about what might have prompted the request for his immediate appearance. Little did he know that he was being asked to interview for the opening of the Student Representative position on the SVSD Board. He showed up to his first Board meeting not long after that, met all the other members, and dove right into the work.
As a Student Rep, Henry strove to get students across SVSD as connected as possible. One school at a time, Henry talked with elementary school students, middle school students, students at Two Rivers Big Picture School and of course MSHS students. He thought of these conversations as circling the connection, keeping everyone in SVSD in a loop of advocacy, support, and solutions.
Henry was passionate about volunteering in this role because he believes it is crucial for students to have a seat at the table where decisions concerning them are being made. “Students need a voice, and there’s no better way than to be on those same frontlines making those decisions. Who better knows how to help students than students? They’re living it,” he said. He firmly believes the best way to advocate for students is to simply give them the platform to do so themselves.
But giving back to community did not stop on the School Board for Henry. In fact, that was far from the first opportunity he had to volunteer. Prior to Henry becoming a Student Rep, he was doing his part to look out for seniors at Mt. Si Senior Center. With the collaboration of a few friends, Henry was able to co-found Valley Digital Age with Sasha Ritta, a helpfully cutting-edge organization addressing the digital divide since February 2024.
The growing digital divide unfortunately is not anything Snoqualmie Valley is a stranger too. But thanks to Valley Digital Age, Henry and his team are working to address that. He said, “We figured we all are going into tech, why not do some tech-fluencing here at home?”
The students at Valley Digital Age created a curriculum that could easily be shared to empower seniors and make their independent learning as feasible as possible. Seniors were encouraged to take learning into their own hands, and materials were created to be easily shared among themselves, with optional in-person sessions available.
While they set the curriculum in place to allow for greater independence and flexibility first and foremost, Henry also understood the importance of face-to-face opportunities to learn in real-time alongside the student educators. The first couple months, Henry and his friends would show up to an empty room. Nevertheless, they persisted.
Eventually Tom was the first person to show up, and once he did, he was there all the way through May. They were able to move him from cable to streaming, helped him save some money on his internet bill, and assisted him with getting new routers. Throughout the year, they were able to help more seniors. Attendance grew, and Valley Digital Age went from a few weeks of empty rooms to six seniors attending one of their final sessions this year.
Henry is determined to do all he can to continue this work and has actively been looking for people to pick up Valley Digital Age. He has a lot of hope for this organization, including expansion plans, filing for 501C3 status, and expanding the curriculum. At Valley Digital Age, Henry and his peers are doing all they can to shrink the digital divide. But they need community members to step in while the founders are away at college. Stressing the importance of this project, Henry said, “Technology is rapidly expanding, if we can build a support system now it will be even more important to have later. This is the time to grow it.”
Henry’s volunteer experience between the School Board and Valley Digital Age is already plenty uplifting. But there was also a simpler time, or several, when he was giving back before maybe even fully realizing it. Coaching his little sister’s soccer team his sophomore year is what came to mind first for Henry. In coaching, he realized, “It’s rewarding for them, but it’s more rewarding for you. You have an impact on other people’s lives.” Henry’s impact also just so happened to help that team win their season overall.
In addition to coaching soccer, there was also his coaching in lacrosse, which Henry began to get perspective on as early as in 6th grade. His dad would show up as much as he could to lend a helping hand to the coaches, and a network of support enveloped Henry in one of the earlier instances he remembers seeing community come together. “There’s a saying that if you don’t know someone, someone you know knows them,” he explained on how this close-knit group has looked out for each other.
While Henry was contributing his part to the sport, playing lacrosse with the goal to continue in college was his main priority until he got a collar bone injury. From there, priorities shifted. With rest and recovery, his mindset pivoted from showing up to play, to showing up for his team and channeling his love of the game into service.
As he healed, the whole situation really opened his eyes to what new opportunities he had to volunteer, in what ways, and to what capacity. Henry’s story is not just one of valiant volunteer efforts, but one of resilience too. He realized he was more than a player, and that a team could take on many forms.
Henry thinks it’s important for people to start engaging in volunteer work at a young age. “If people can find a cause worth volunteering for, it can shift the whole trajectory of their life.” He feels like the more exposure youth can get, the better sense they can gain of where they would ultimately like to end up. Regarding volunteering, he said, “Try a bunch of things when you’re young. Figure out what you like, what you want to do, and spend your life chasing that feeling”.
Senior year is a time when students are especially searching for their purpose. Henry’s message to them was, “It’s never too late to volunteer, and there’s plenty of ways to do it, in whatever capacity you have”.
In terms of Henry continuing to find his own pathway, he aspires to go into banking, then potentially starting his own business. He hopes to be ‘running his own ship one day’–steering it to give back, supporting more nonprofits, all the while continuing to sit on more boards. He’s also ready to live in the moment as well, “I’m excited to go into this next chapter, seeing what else I might enjoy, finding what sticks, and figuring out how to make it all work out,” Henry said.
Empower Youth Network (EYN) thanks Henry Erhnman for all his service over the years to empower and inspire youth in Snoqualmie Valley. EYN wishes him all the best in his studies at the University of Washington.