By Julie Gaebe
Co-president Julie Gaebe writes that Co-chairs Nadine Ball and Gretchen Moser of the Youth Civics Committee have spent the past two years exploring civic education offered in area schools and talking to community groups and organization to find a way to combine our volunteers with students to encourage civics participation and lifetime voters. The project was successful last year when we sent area students from a variety of high schools to our Candidate Forums group where they helped collect questions from students and volunteered at school board candidate forums.
We are aware that there are many schools, clubs, religious organizations and home schooled youth who are eager to do civics projects. Either part of their school curriculum or in response to their school curriculum (May projects), some students are inspired to “do something” to save and strengthen democracy.
At LWV we are ready and eager to mentor students who want guidance implementing a civics project. We can include students in our existing committees like voter registration, voter’s guide, social media, editing and writing, and most especially candidate and issues forums. And we are excited to inspire students to create Get Out the Vote projects in their own school/school district communities.
The capstone we hope is a Civic Project Showcase. This is the opportunity for students to stand next to a poster or model describing their project and speak to a broader audience about what they hoped to achieve, what they learned, and what they hope their project can do. In this first year the showcase could be at students’ schools, in their classroom, at an assembly, before a school board candidate forum, at a lwv board meeting or general meeting. As the number of schools and students participating grows, the showcase can grow to bigger community events with inter-school participation.
This summer we hope to grow with the help of a Washington University Gephardt Institute Fellow, who will work with our Youth Civic Education team to create a marketing plan for the Civic Showcase and reach out to organizations like this one, to school districts, YMCA, NAACP, Delta and Alpha Panhellenic groups, and other organizations to broaden the reach.
We realize that the hypothesis that youth civic education does not exist is not necessarily true, but the awareness of good projects and student involvement can grow, and with that growth, those schools and youth programs that do not have robust programs may be inspired to create their own youth civic projects.
Our mission is to educate voters and defend democracy. With democracy threatened, the most important voting block is young voters, as the ramifications of government will affect them most. We are excited to pair our conviction and passion with young people in the metro region. We hope to involve many League volunteers as this program grows.
