Civic Empowerment Guidebook

For YouthTruth partners who surveyed students during the 2023-2024 school year, these activities can be further enriched by incorporating your school’s or district’s own data related to these questions:

1. Helping others is important to me.
2. In school I have learned how to make my school, my community, or the world a better place.
3. In school I have learned how to evaluate the evidence that backs up people’s opinions.
4. Being actively involved in national, state, or local issues  is important to me.
5. It is important to vote.
6. It is important to work with people with backgrounds  and experiences that are different from mine.
7. I can make a difference in my school, my community, 
8. I work with others to solve problems in my school or community or the world.
9. I have helped change things for the better in my school, my community, or the world.

Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neither agree nor disagree, Agree, Strongly agree.

how to use this guidebook

This guidebook is composed of a series of activities that together form a comprehensive workshop. You can use the entire guide to run a full workshop, or adapt individual activities to suit your needs. Each activity is designed with clear objectives, detailed instructions, and includes sample responses from actual civic empowerment workshops that YouthTruth piloted with students in districts in Ohio, Texas, and California.

YouthTruth Highlights Youth Civic Empowerment

October 2024

We surveyed over 150,000 students to gauge their attitudes and behaviors on civic engagement, culminating in our recent report offering insight into the current state of youth civic empowerment.