CalCenter seeks to inform, activate, and empower youth to find their unique voice to address issues they care about and explore civic pathways to take meaningful action. Our programs are free of charge because we understand that historically marginalized communities face enough obstacles and that to level the playing field, we have to be intentional about breaking barriers. Over 90% of our alumni say our programs helped them to champion causes they care about in their communities.
What Does Civic Participation Mean to Us?
We think of civics in a broader sense. Civic participation is a family affair. As such, it must engage youth and families and be intergenerational, intercultural, and linguistically appropriate. Civic participation is anything you do to improve your community and beyond. Yes, voting protects all other rights, but we recognize there are systems in place that need work. We want to be part of the solution and help communities have a say in shaping their future. Some essential elements of civic participation are collaboration and community engagement. Our programs emphasize challenging and transforming systems in institutions, narratives, cultures, and forces that impact our lives.
Moreover, our programs support youth through research, subject matter experts, group discussion, planning, and hands on trainings. This helps instill the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills needed to build and maintain power among this age group and beyond. Youth focus on issues like health equity, environmental sustainability, political advocacy, gender equity, and combating injustices related to xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, and racial discrimination. Participants emerge from our programs more confident with the necessary skills to lead systems change efforts in their communities.
Other exciting work underway! Please support us!
- We're in the process of reimagining our place in the civic space ecosystem. We know there are so many amazing organizations doing work, but we do not seem to have a tool to enable collaboration. That's one of our biggest aspirations. To provide a tool where any grassroot or community organization can go to learn about important work by region, issue, ethnic group, and language. We want statewide collaboration!
- Another initiative is our civics education campaign in digital form. We need your help to fund this effort.
- To engage families, we need to invest in developing tools and curriculum in language and culturally appropriate to involve families.