The young adult participants will be working on this project during the course of their involvement in the Leadership Connection. This will give them an opportunity to apply the learning and deepen their involvement in their community.
Civic Engagement or an awareness and active
involvement in local, state, federal, and international processes and issues
often empowers youth to become leaders.
Building self-confidence and
awareness, civic engagement empowers youth to volunteer, get involved, and take
responsibility of their communities/society – to affect change.
Civic engagement is a powerful
tool that combines education with inspiration.
It offers a way to combat the negative impacts poverty, unemployment,
and lack of educational opportunities have on youth today.
The
Civic Engagement Project
Interactive presentation tools
will be used with youth participants, in addition to visual and hands-on
exploration with video clips and web-based learning; building computer and
internet skills into the project.
Divided into topic areas, the
Civic Engagement Project will focus on:
Political
systems
Youth
will be given an overview of local, county, state, and federal government
processes. In using interactive tools
provided by government and educational websites, as well as pictures and
videos, youth can take virtual tours of government at work. Meeting with a local assembly or
congressional representative would be the closing highlight of this section.
Voting rights
and elections
This
would include a presentation in which youth will be introduced to the electoral
process, elections, voting rights, and voter registration. Youth will be led through websites of
electoral commissions, searching for election information and voter
registration information. Youth will be
encouraged to register to vote.
Volunteerism
Volunteer
opportunities local, state, national, and international will be presented. A discussion on "Why Volunteer?"
will be integrated into how youth can volunteer locally and what resources are
available to find volunteer opportunities.
National service opportunities will be introduced that will highlight
AmeriCorps, Military, and Peace Corps.
Past and current volunteers of these or other entities will be invited
to briefly share their experiences with youth.
Social Change
This section
will take a look at people and movements that have created change at a national
and local level. This section will also
explore youth leaders. From the Civil
Rights Movement to recent political and social movements, youth played an
important role in creating change. The
ability of youth to get involved and become leaders will be emphasized. A leader of a local social change
organization will be invited to speak with the youth participants.
Final Project
Youth will be
asked to choose an issue that they care about.
They will be asked to find an organization or volunteer opportunity
connected to that issue and volunteer.
Youth will then write and make a public presentation about what issue they chose, why and and what their
experience was like.
