By Jon Collins

MPR.org/90.1 FM

ST. PAUL — Student volunteers from across the state are coming to St. Paul on Tuesday to attend a rally that will include celebrities and musicians from Chelsea Clinton to Henry Winkler.

We Day Minnesota is a celebration of volunteering and positive social change. About 18,000 students from more than 500 schools in the state are expected to attend the event at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.

Students from Austin’s Ellis Middle School National Junior Honor Society were scheduled to attend We Day at the Excel Energy Center in St. Paul.

The rally is a reward for students who participated in volunteer activities during the previous year. It will include almost two dozen speakers, musicians and activists. The program this year includes astronaut Mae Jemison, singer Ciara and Lily Collins, who is an actress and the daughter of musician Phil Collins.

We Day Minnesota, which is organized by international charity Free the Children, partners with schools in the state to get students interested and active on local and international issues. Last school year, Minnesota students helped raise more than 180,000 pounds of food for local food banks and fundraised for other organizations like the American Cancer Society.

We Day Minnesota is one of 14 similar We Day events held in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. This will be the third time the event has been held in Minnesota.

Event organizers say that about 200,000 students internationally participate in the program. Since it started in 2007, they’ve raised $62 million for charities, spent almost 20 million hours volunteering and collected 7.6 million pounds of food.

—The Austin Daily Herald contributed to this report.