Your Voice in Action: Civics for the Future

Civics has faced a slow decline in American K-12 education since the 1980s, leaving several generations of Americans with gaps in their knowledge, thus disenfranchised in exercising their rights, and apathetic about voting. The deeply civic-minded generations are ageing out, leaving few to inspire discourse, understanding and action around historic milestones. Much of our youth is insufficiently future facing, and increasingly confused within historical contexts. So far, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is frequently used to curate information according to singular perspectives, as opposed to inviting individuals to make up their own minds. Many calls to action are being presented without the full, actual legislative context – for example, the disconnect between forbidding abortion, and the right to privacy. Youth could leverage AI and big data to evaluate multiple perspectives, through direct analysis and engagement with competing information resources.

Less than half of eligible BIPOC youth voted in the 2020 election. Our blended, Your Voice in Action enrichment curriculum will educate and inspire young adults and others to engage in and be passionate about their future, their government, voting, and understanding the use and impact of big data, such as the census.

Voicelessness is a consequence of the loss of civic-mindedness, and with several generations who lack civic context, many have never learned about the opportunities our Constitution affords to all Americans, new or multi-generational. So many do not vote or feel part of the political life of the U.S., and it is hard for them to teach their children why or how to fight for their beliefs, take civic duty seriously, bridge divides, and proudly represent technical and civic innovation for their country. This bodes ill for the future where we need to have engaged, informed citizens who participate in governance.

Civic duty requires engagement, which comes from being vested in the future. By the time today’s approximately 25 million 14-18 year olds are ready to vote, the importance and power of their voice through their votes needs to be clear and evident to them. We want them to be part of the future, enthusiastic about shaping it rather than being owned by it – the youth who demonstrated after the Parklands, Florida and Nashville, Tennessee shootings stood in their power.   

Globalization has changed how we should perceive civic duty. We are a divided country at a time when we need to unite to solve environmental, social, financial, equity and many other issues and questions, with a view to the future, rather than by serving the past. One of the goals of Your Voice in Action is to provide a concrete platform through which discourse allows us to pull the nation together. This is achieved within the curriculum where space is given to different perspectives and voices by actively pulling them together in discussions. We seek to create an understanding of the impact of different voices when they harmonize to build unity across the country.

Your Voice in Action is a future-ready, fresh, civics enrichment curriculum, in a blended model that allows us to maximize outreach and establish interactions within specific communities as well as across differing communities and perspectives. It is accessed through a platform that is action oriented, hands on, and enables debate among peers across the country.

• It takes established and proposed national and local laws that are directly relevant to youth, summarizes the key points, and the major pros and cons by source.
• It uses these summaries to inspire discussion, with two questions – how do YOU benefit, and WHO does benefit - to motivate and whittle away apathy which predominates among BIPOC students.
• It enhances critical thinking around how the government is structured and establish how and where their voices can be most impactful in action.
• It increases exposure to peers in different parts of the country (urban, rural, suburban) in order to debate the merit of laws and legislative actions and provide rules for diplomatic discussion and compromise.
• Your Voice in Action provides students with the tools needed to use Artificial Intelligence wisely to build their own perspectives, trace the origins of legislation and better understand historical and future contexts.

Your Voice in Action combines one or more of the six blended learning models (blendedlearning.org) that can be used in standard classrooms or in optional enrichment courses. Instructors will facilitate both in person and online instruction, curating the experiences according to our curriculum prompts. Online platforms would include services such as zoom, google meets, etc., as well as closed social media platforms (such as Ning.com). We can introduce existing platforms such as One-Click Politics, and other action-oriented programs that allow individual voices to reach legislators.

Classroom and online learning are reinforced through partnerships with law school clinics around the country. This brings the program to life, as lawyers in training and students benefit from deeper discussions. Students also participate in advocacy days with local and visiting politicians and legislators.

 The solution serves 14-18 year old youth by facilitating all-inclusive conversations about complex or often divisive subjects. Our pilot will be in NYC, an urban area, to introduce youth to our legislative curriculum. Once a cohort achieves the ability to debate the issues, we introduce them to cohorts of youth from other backgrounds, other parts of the state, and other states. These are peers with quite different living experiences and diverse opinions so that youth can begin to understand what motivates other people’s needs and understandings as shaped by their own day-to-day lives and find a way to share opinions without fear.

As a non-partisan curriculum, we are accessible and inclusive to all youth. We engage with rural and urban communities, all political ideologies, all types of humans, and a range of school systems, including home schooling.

For example, in New York City a group of youth from the majority Democrat-voting Manhattan can be brought into direct discussion with peers from the predominantly Republican-voting Staten Island or upstate New York. Likewise, youth from ethnically diverse Harlem, N.Y.C. can interact directly with students in ethnically homogenous Orchard Park, N.Y.

As the program expands, youth from around the country can be drawn into direct and more general discussions with their peers. This will be achieved by networking, initially through specific school types and programs – Charter, International Baccalaureate, Model UN Programs, debating societies and more. As momentum grows, we will bring the concept to educator networks to reach various public-school systems. While geared to issues in the United States today, the curriculum structure is replicable and can be made relevant to any social, ethnic, national, or other groupings. Your Voice in Action is inclusive of first-generation youth and provides them and all youth with tools and knowledge to engage their voting age siblings and parents.

The Lead Team Members have strong ties to their local communities, are engaged at state and national levels in the United States and have a lived global perspective. We have seen the impact of civic engagement, the power of the vote, and the disconnects between what is and what could be. We have directly engaged with voters to understand their apathy.

Both team members have collaborated on developing schools, setting up online platforms for online engagement, hosting school platform discussions on what parents seek. We have directly engaged with politicians on education issues, the wider impact of women’s rights, and on the successful resettlement and integration of educated Afghan refugees.

When developing schools in NYC and in Connecticut, we engaged directly with parents who asked us to include strong life skills in our curriculum, from personal finance, through innovation to civics education. This last is a huge concern: youth may be issue-oriented but lack context about the value and benefit of being American. They focus on an issue, often in groups, allowing emotion to cloud critical thinking. We want to harness this passion to inform a considered approach to legislative analysis supported by actions relevant to their own futures.

The core team has an educator, Ms. Voyka Soto, who has developed schools nationally and internationally, and curricula that meets each person where s/he is, prepares them for life-long learning, and engages them in their own future facing civics adventure. She has developed programs for a wide array of subjects, including for students from diverse backgrounds. Her curriculum has always brought a level of exposure that goes well beyond the standards of the time. For example, her vision brought rocket sciences and aviation to schools in disenfranchised neighborhoods and found ways to assist children considered to have developmental handicaps learn complex subject matter. As an IB educator, Ms. Soto has experience with fostering diplomacy, discourse, debate, compromise, team building, and an intrinsic individual passion for engagement.

The stakeholder engagement specialist, Ms. Nermin Ahmad, witnessed how little actual, pertinent, actionable information is taught to American citizens about their right to good health, a safe environment, and their ability to influence, change and impact decisions made by elected officials on their behalf. Federally funded programs attempting to bridge community knowledge gaps benefited the few. Environmental Justice initiatives provided a platform for a subset of concerned citizens but did not reach much further. Most Americans still do not understand their rights or know how and when to press for decisions that have significantly better outcomes for themselves, their communities, their country. She has collaborated closely with legislators and regulators to influence legislation, turn legislative agreements into policies, and break these down into guidelines that can be understood and deployed locally. She has bridged the knowledge gap between community members and their governments, so that true discussion can occur, with a common understanding of issues. She ideated a global platform (Project Earth) for classrooms around the world to share and discuss environmental issues and projects.

We have developed Your Voice In Action over the past six years as part of our school design as we write applications for new schools, when we influence (as Board members) the selection of enrichment programs for existing schools in disenfranchised neighborhoods, and when we conduct enrichment and after school programs for community members, especially youth. This deployment has been successful and used as a test case to form the basis of our prototype, as we see the impact it has not just on youth but their extended families. 

When we began working with arriving Afghan women and children, we developed an adaptation guidebook, conducted zoom classes, and held meetings to help especially the women and youth gain their American voices. In deploying our program, we found we helped reduce feelings of apathy, listlessness, depression, and failure and increased the ability of those we reached to respond actively to their new lives and seek better outcomes for themselves and their families. The biggest issue we faced: most of the people we worked with did not know what questions to ask, because they did not understand civil society in America, the opportunities provided, or their rights as immigrants and eventually as new citizens. Surprisingly, the officials helping them were also, for the most part, unable to provide them with the civics education they needed.

In creating Project Earth, Ms. Ahmad successfully ideated and rolled out a platform that allowed classrooms around the world to engage and partner with other classes to exchange environmental hacks, undertake environmental projects together, and compete in creating effective environmental programs. This program was successfully presented at the Earth Summit 2012 and became national programs in countries as diverse as Chile and Russia.

We seek partners who can assist us in fully fleshing out our curriculum and resources, as well as ensure that we maintain an even-handed approach in building out our material to be fully inclusive. This would include benefiting from strategic advice from experts in positioning our enrichment curriculum. Being part of a knowledge network can only enhance our product by bringing in multiple perspectives. We also seek support in developing key performance indicators for use in review of our program and adjusting curriculum material to be fully effective.

Access to grant funding will allow us to grow our platform, using off-the-shelf software and software integration specialists to make it safe for youth and available at a national level. In-kind resources for software licensing would be helpful in our project scaling, and we do seek legal services to ensure we navigate the divisive shoals of opinion pervading the US today. Finally, we are looking for expert instructors sourced through the SOLVE network to train us in emerging technologies, and to introduce innovative artificial intelligence tools into the curriculum – to serve the program, to better inform youth about the ubiquitous nature of such tools, and to harness the potential power they provide.

The lack of courtesy in discourse is having a negative impact on the U.S. in the global space. Already too many believe the US is headed for a new civil war. Increasingly citizens feel disenfranchised and turn to violence rather than debate. As a country we need to learn how to have an opinion, listen to others, debate thoughtfully, and exercise our right to shape legislation through our votes. We need to feel safe in asking questions and seeking clarity regarding government decisions. Sadly, this is now seen as innovative in a United States where civics is no longer taught. Our take on civics is not post-WWII, but relevant to young Americans today and tomorrow, in the context of emerging technology.

As an example, can the average young American research and evaluate the accuracy of the following news summary, and if it is accurate, can they understand how it has a potential impact on them?

 The 2020 Census may not have counted nearly one in five noncitizen residents and one in 20 citizens, according to the Census Bureau's comparison of its official head count with a new, unofficial estimate. Then-President Donald Trump was accused of trying to depress the number of noncitizens counted in 2020 so that their localities, which often vote Democratic, would lose congressional seats and federal funding. If the new estimate is correct, 8.3 million Hispanic and 2.8 million Black residents were left out of the official count.

We are approaching our civics program from what we as Americans have in common, rather than from what separates us. We are leveraging the most current AI technologies and the platforms normalized through COVID to reach a broader audience and are creating a knowledge network that encourages youth to be informed, have educated opinions, and vote their preferences. By bringing an educator and a stakeholder engagement person together, we are creating curriculum and delivery methods that prepare children from the age of fourteen to become knowledgeable, impassioned voters by age 18.

Bottom line: No one is focused on pre-voting or bringing under-18s together to develop their own opinions, or even on creating informed discourse cutting across the many divisions we see splintering our more perfect union. 

Our overall impact goals are to:

• Develop more knowledgeable, critical-thinking and independently thoughtful youth, ready to vote across race, regional, economic, and other demographics after learning to question the impact of proposed legislation and to ask who benefits from it.
• Teach 18 – 24 year olds to own their civic duty, question what they read, and consistently use their vote in all elections by using blended learning – live and virtual discussions and AI tools to help understand the context of what they may be reading.
• Build a sense of national unity by promoting better communication among youth and exposing them to uncomfortable conversations, to break the fear many Americans have when faced with other lived experiences.

In the first year, we expect to finalize the curriculum and identify and establish all resources and personnel for the first pilot, in NYC. We expect to deploy this pilot within the first year.

By the fifth year, the curriculum will be active in schools and school districts in four more states for a total of five. We are re-introducing civics education, as an enrichment curriculum. FOSI would retain the overall management of the program, and inform enrichment through a youth civics center, established in the fourth year of the program.

As part of the Key Performance Indicators for the second through fifth years, we will find out if our cohorts are voting, in which elections, and whether they are continuing conversations with youth holding other perspectives. This will be achieved in part through an established alumni program, which supports not only programmatic evaluation, but allows returning alumni to teach new generations of youth.

After five years, we would like to globalize the program, so that it can be replicated in various parts of the world, according to local civics education realities and requirements. This would allow our youth civics center to provide global access to a platform for discussion and perspective sharing. We strongly believe that open discussion and understanding can lead to a cultural shift away from fear and entrenched positions.

The enriched curriculum we have tested intrinsically reduces inequalities and engages students more fully in participatory education, improving the quality of how they learn. When we present to a mixed group of youth, visible differences disappear as intellectual curiosity and animated, often passionate discourse takes over. 

Stronger institutions are a future outcome, as engaged youth become elected officials and work in critical community roles. While we identified the immediate SDG goals above, we believe that stronger civic engagement and participation ultimately will have a positive impact on all of the SDG goals as citizens become more engaged in decision making about their own and their community’s lives.

 We will measure success by maintaining metrics on and evaluating the:

•  Prevalence of continuing civil discourse among cohorts we have reached.
• Voting records (have they been engaged and voted) of our Alumni.
  • Has there been an increase in voter engagement among BIPOC voters.
  • Are new immigrant families becoming more engaged (through their children?)
• Alumni engagement:
  • Are they showing up to advocate?
  • Have they started/joined college or workplace clubs/organizations?
  • Are they willing to return as alumni who share their experience?
  • Are they maintaining relationships with PEER cohorts outside their immediate networks?
  • Is there a difference in the level of frustrated violence when compared to similar demographics?
  • Is there an increase in diplomacy and compromise?

1. Civics education has been missing in school curriculum at a time when so many people want their voices heard but are frustrated because they do not know how to be impactful and leverage our system of government. This frustrated need provides an opportunity to build a passionate, informed electorate.

• Florida and Tennessee are perfect examples of youth seeking to be engaged, with a voice, despite being under 18 – they lack experience and access to the tools they need to bring the full impact of their voices to change regulations and the legislation behind them.
• Disconnects in legislation are confusing, such as with the abortion question and an individual’s right to privacy. Discourse helps youth formulate better, more accurate questions.
• The importance of big data is not well understood – for example, the direct impact of participation in the Census: we recently saw New York State lose two congressional seats because 89 residents failed to fill in census data in 2020.

2. The goal for change over time:

• Immediate term: reduce frustration as youth builds power and learns how to use the tools that are increasingly available to them in terms of AI, diplomatic discourse, and more. Direct engagement in the community, social engagement, ownership of opinion.
• Long term: A more united U.S., with a stronger, better-informed electorate and sound institutions. A set of young voters skilled enough to organize other voters and educate subsequent generations of voters. Creating a lasting spirit of civic-mindedness and an understanding of what is means to be a citizen of the United States, with all the implied cultural norms.

There is clearly a disconnect between the passion young people show for national and local events and their ability to deploy their votes meaningfully. This is a direct result of the lack of civics education in schools, and a pervasive lack of understanding of how to critically evaluate proposed legislation, and influence how it is shaped. A tremendous amount of research exists, all confirming the need for meaningful change. We cannot provide a quick fix, but we can change the dynamic through education going forward.

Sample Bibliography:

Vox: The often-overlooked reasons why young people don’t vote:    https://www.vox.com/21497637/election-2020-youth-vote-young-people-voting

PBS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/spc/extra/features/july-dec00/brokensystem.html

NY Times. Why Don’t Young People Vote, and What Can Be Done About It?: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/upshot/youth-voting-2020-election.html

University of Virginia: https://batten.virginia.edu/about/news/why-so-many-young-people-dont-vote-and-how-change

Tufts University: https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/young-voters-2022-black-and-non-college-youth-were-underrepresented

AI will be used as our main tool to foster critical thinking, conduct research, and analyze legislation.

• AI can be used in many ways, and it is important for youth to understand how to harness its functions and avoid being influenced by AI-generated curated and/or false narratives through questions, research, and open discourse.
• AI may be used to influence voters, and the marketing psychology it deploys needs to be evaluated and broken down.
• independent
• facilitate discourse
• provide easy-to access, inexpensive platform for data storage and sharing
• accessible via phone

 We will use a closed social platform for interaction, not tied to platforms that sell personal data or are accessible to marketing BOTs (ning.com is one example). We will leverage existing and emerging technologies to facilitate interactions among cohorts across the country (e-meetings).

The main criteria we use in selecting new and emerging technologies is that they are:

• independent
• facilitate discourse
• provide easy-to access, inexpensive platform for data storage and sharing
• accessible via phone

There is no single technological fix, and we will continue to seek platforms that enable discourse in a safe environment.

Incorporating diversity, equity and inclusivity is not a side or after thought. It is who we are. Our team is diverse, our community is diverse, and our mission is to bring all American youth into conversation, regardless of their demographics. As mentioned earlier we intend to bring youth of different communities and lived experiences together. It is how we grew up, and we have lived how well it works.

Ms. Soto and Ms. Ahmad are both from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, who have benefitted from a wide diversity of experiences growing up. This diversity legitimizes us as we impart and share our knowledge and perspectives, inviting those we work with to think not just for themselves but also through different perspectives.

We have facilitated conversations among American, North and South Vietnamese on perspectives and lived experiences during the Vietnam war; black and brown perspectives on the use and meaning of language; American and Afghan educated women on the ability to ask direct questions; and so much more. Ms. Ahmad grew up as a multi-racial child whose father represented the Non-Aligned Movement at the UN as a diplomat for his country imbuing her with this inclusive perspective.

We are a non-profit, seeking to offer services free to the community to the extent feasible.

We have strong networks in the local community, among educators, and with numerous non-profit organizations. Through leadership positions in organizations such as the 1919 National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, part of the Business and Professional Women’s Organization present in 111 countries, as well as the Harvard Alumni Disaster Preparedness and Response Team Shared Interest Group (also global), and the UN Civil Society Committee on Migration (inter alia), we have access to expertise, thought leaders and well-connected individuals. However, we need the expertise and network SOLVE provides to bring us to a level at which we can effectively exercise our reach through these other networks.

Our expectation is to build out, evaluate and deploy our curriculum and the technology platforms we use prior to creating our Youth Center. Initially this will be grant driven and will evolve into a professional center that will ultimately continue the Your Voice in Action without our direct engagement, thus ensuring that it remains pertinent, uses emerging and innovative technology, and benefits society through its longevity.

Once we have the results from our pilot program, we will seek sustained donations to support its deployment. Certain portions of the project are intrinsically sustainable as they are intended as a blended enrichment program for high schools. Guest speakers, law student clinics, and visiting politicians do not represent a direct cost to the program, and maintaining contact with them is seen as part of civic engagement from the classroom.

Our actual costs are in the development of the curriculum, and in presenting and marketing it at school conventions and conferences, and through our educator networks.

Our goal for opening a Center in five years will depend on a mix of tuition-based master classes, and a robust fund-raising campaign.