High school girls from all over the state filled Kansas University’s Lied Center on Sunday night for the opening ceremony of this year’s Sunflower Girls State.

The annual event is designed to instill “a sense of responsibility to community, state and nation,” according to the program’s website.

The first Girls State event was held at Washburn University in Topeka in 1939. It has since become a longtime fixture at KU.

Participants, known in the program as “delegates,” learn the ins and outs of state government, by electing officials within their own fictional Kansas cities and at the state level.

Publicity director Bonnie Boyer says the girls have unique opportunities in 2010 that earlier generations of young women didn’t have. She says she hopes the girls learn the importance of voting and participating in their government, adding “if they set their mind to it, they can do it.”

While on campus, the girls stay at Ellsworth Hall and attend meetings in several other buildings at KU.

Sunflower Girls State is sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary and runs through June 11.