Democracy in Action

Legislative dysfunction, special interest politics, foreign influence, and disinformation in the media have eroded measures of freedom in America in recent years and emerged as real threats to our democracy. Democracy is not a given; it depends on robust civic engagement. America—and the world—needs citizens who are both civically minded (who understand government and its processes, who are open-minded and empathetic, who have the skills to advocate for themselves) and citizens who are civically active (who participate in their communities, who read about local and global issues, who vote).

Unfortunately, only 25% of high school students achieved proficiency on the National Assessment for Educational Progress’s 2018 Civics Assessment even though forty states require at least a half-year of civics or U.S. government education. Further, research shows that community service, debates, and other civic actions are effective and necessary tools to engage the disengaged—but most civics classes have no experiential learning or local problem-solving components.

In 2016, a Civic Health Index report was produced in partnership with Connecticut's Secretary of State Denise W. Merrill, the National Conference on Citizenship, and Everyday Democracy. The report called for a stronger civic infrastructure, including “opportunities for children of all backgrounds and income levels to observe and participate in community problem-solving; hands-on civics education for all children, taught in ways that show how civics connects to daily life; and preparing young people and young adults for lives of engaged citizenship through education of civic and social responsibilities and engagement in community-strength.”

America’s underwhelming civics education is reflected at the polls. Though voting is on the rise overall, only 23% of young adults ages 18-29 voted in 2022. Survey data from Tufts’ Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement reveals a powerful disconnect between these poll statistics and youth mindset: most young adults believe both that the country is on the wrong track AND that they have power to change it. Only 21% of young Americans believe democracy is secured for future generations. So why aren’t they taking more action? 

Our failure is clear. Young people need opportunities to learn and practice engaged citizenship. To meet our responsibility to the next generation, educators and researchers recommend civics classes that avoid rote memorization, include media literacy, encourage discussion of issues that young people identify as important, and create concrete civic experiences. The way civics has traditionally been taught needs to change to effectively educate the next generation of global citizens and leaders.

Making documentaries is a deeply civic experience. Filmmakers analyze civic issues, reach out to unfamiliar communities, and engage with different perspectives. When they founded Civic Life Project in 2010, acclaimed documentary filmmakers Catherine Tatge and Dominique Lasseur knew that teaching civics to youth through digital media just made sense.

 · The skills and attitudes required for documentary-making—like collaboration, research, curiosity, and communication—overlap with skills and attitudes that make someone an engaged citizen. 

· Whether exploring school shootings or school lunches, students must find out how laws, policies, and systems make a difference in their lives to develop and produce a documentary.

· Young people already create digital media on their own, so teaching and practicing filmmaking is an engaging and relevant “way in” to learning.

Beginning in just one classroom, we created a unique program that layers civics education with digital documentary-making training and production. In-class activities cover topics like research, interviewing, and digital video production. These lessons are then applied to students’ production of their own short documentary on a topic they select themselves. Their work culminates with community engagement through public presentations, where they reflect on what they learned through their civic experience and field questions from their audiences. 

In 2016, we developed the Democracy in Action Film Challenge, a competition for our young storytellers to showcase their work and connect with a global community through a virtual screening that has garnered 100,000 views. More than 1,000 student films have been submitted to The Challenge since its launch.

In 2020, we could not join teachers and students in classrooms anymore and participation in The Challenge exploded when it went virtual. We realized our program could be just as impactful but more effectively meet the enormous need for improved civic education by expansively disseminating a curriculum package for teachers with remote support from us. We are now embarking on a new chapter with Democracy in Action, an accessible and user-friendly curriculum for educators to teach on their own, in concert with virtual support from our team. We will leverage technology to disseminate our curriculum and connect with dramatically more teachers and classrooms across the country, and continue to give students civic action experiences through their use of digital media technology.

The new Democracy in Action curriculum lifts up our most interactive workshop-style activities and includes context of contemporary current events. Students learn about democracy and government structures, political parties and public interest groups, and media literacy, while they gain hard digital media skills by practicing all elements of documentary filmmaking including pre-production, production, post- production, and presentation. Teachers across the country will have access to our digital curriculum materials, online video tutorials, and live virtual professional development sessions with our staff. In addition, educators and students will have access to a remote filmmaker consultant for technical troubleshooting during students’ documentary production. All documentaries will be eligible for entry into the Democracy in Action Film Challenge to reach a global audience and the chance to win cash awards.

Civic Life Project targets young people because when sparked early, civic engagement has exponential benefits for the individual, the community, and the country. We believe young adults from all backgrounds should have the skills and knowledge they need to participate civically, and we especially believe young people should know that they matter and belong in civic spaces and processes. 

“I never realized I could do something like this. I always thought I was pretty limited about what I could do as an 18-year-old in school.” - Civic Life Project participant

The Tufts University Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) tells us how important youth civic engagement is. Civically engaged young people experience increased academic performance and improved social-emotional well-being. They are more equipped to bring their diverse perspectives to their communities, schools, and workplaces, shaping culture and social norms. Their increased representation in civic spaces reduces racial, gender, and socio-economic inequities.

High school classrooms offer a pre-existing route for us to most easily reach young people thanks to a civics requirement in 80% of states. But we also see how inadequate those civic learning spaces are when only a quarter of students are performing proficiently on national civics assessments. Beyond school, 60% of rural youth and 30% of suburban and urban young people live where they have few to no opportunities to meet, discuss issues, or solve problems–known as “civic deserts.” Richard Haas’ recent piece in The Atlantic outlines America’s great civics deficit, and how our abysmal standards and resources lead to Americans “know[ing] little about the history, ideals, and practices of their own political system.” 

While in the past Civic Life Project addressed this need by working directly with students, our new model expands our audience through technology to target teachers themselves. Teachers simply do not have enough resources or access to civic experiential learning modules or programs that connect the dots between traditional civic learning and civic engagement. We are thrilled to pivot and support teachers, an underserved population in their own way, so that far more young people are empowered to participate in civic spaces and processes.

Our founders, Catherine and Dominique, were parents of high school students when they conceived of Civic Life Project. They had decades of experience engaging audiences and sparking action by producing films on social issues, history, current events, and more. Their sons, meanwhile, were in social studies and civics classes that were uninspiring. School was not connecting the dots between academic learning and what it meant for a person to be an engaged citizen or why civic participation matters. At the same time, social media and smartphones were just beginning to find widespread use and it was clear digital media skills and media literacy would become more and more important over the coming years. With their understanding of the deep connection between documentary-making and civic engagement, bringing digital storytelling to civics class was almost inevitable for Catherine and Dominique. 

As we work now to bring our educational program to scale, over a decade of in-class experience and feedback informs our new solution. Since inception, we have incorporated feedback from both students and teachers to keep programming engaging, relevant, and digestible. Students asked for video tutorials on production topics that they could revisit outside of class, and so we created them and shared them on our website for anyone to access. When they asked to connect with peers in other schools so they could see each others’ films, we created our virtual film showcase, the Democracy in Action Youth Film Challenge. Educators helped us shape the curriculum that they will now have digital access to, ensuring it is user-friendly and deliverable in a classroom by someone with no prior digital media knowledge. Shamar Mahon, an alumnus of our program, recently joined our Board of Directors to help keep the perspective of students at the forefront of our decision making and organizational planning.

In 2023, a cohort of teachers and students will participate in an independent evaluation of Democracy in Action. We will collect feedback on our impact and how we can do better to advance civic learning and engagement, and we are thrilled to hear what our community has to share.

Our students’ communities are also part of our feedback loop. Students screen their documentaries within their schools and towns, and this community engagement is central to our civic learning activities. Presenting their work ensures students are held accountable for the narrative they present, can field questions from their community members, and discuss what next steps a community member could take pertaining to the issue dissected on film. The responses and insights we hear from the students’ communities also impacts how we approach teaching them to engage as citizens.

Solve can provide invaluable strategic guidance to Civic Life Project as we shift from in-person programming to finding scale through technology. For over a decade, our staff went into schools and taught students digital media and civics directly. As a curriculum and technical assistance package, Democracy in Action has potential to exponentially increase our reach as we connect with schools across the country and beyond. However, our staff are experts in teaching civics and documentary-making, not in product pricing, online marketing, or developing a staffing plan to support growth. 

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), the largest professional association advocating for social studies education in the United States, is co-branding and endorsing Democracy in Action. They are advising us now during our curriculum development, ensuring it meets and exceeds their national standards. We will be a presenter at NCSS’s annual conference in December, featured in digital newsletters and other marketing materials, and a verified resource for educators in NCSS’s online library. With more than 10,000 member teachers across all 50 states and 34 countries, this partnership brings invaluable and transformational capacity to our organization. However, the potential of the relationship could be unrealized without expertise on how to leverage it. Solve’s resources would be game-changing as we explore and determine how to bring Democracy in Action to classrooms around the country and the world.

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) leads discourse, research, and recommendations on American social studies and civics education. NCCS studies report that fewer and fewer students are receiving a quality civics education because high-stakes, standardized testing is marginalizing instructional time and resources for social studies, and children become disengaged when lessons are limited to textbook learning. There is a litany of research like NCSS’s on our failures to provide adequate civic education, and it is a testament to Civic Life Project’s uniqueness in the field. 

In an overwhelming market of curricula and other education resources, civic action is overlooked. Civics teachers do not have enough resources to bring experiential learning to their classes, and our particular approach of using documentaries and digital media is unique while being highly relevant and resonant with youth. Democracy in Action has the opportunity to innovate not just in the classroom experience or educator toolkit, but it can serve as an example of interdisciplinary learning and how digital skills and the arts can enhance our understanding of social studies and civics.

Our immediate goal is to enhance the toolkits of educators and improve civic learning experiences in the classroom so that more young people can demonstrate civic readiness through skills, knowledge, and behaviors. We aim to move from pilot to growth with our new product, finding scale through technology, and to be part of a national and global movement to improve civic learning. In the long-term, our goal is that dramatically more young people are empowered to participate in civic life.

Civic engagement is typically defined as the expression of civic knowledge, skills, and behaviors. Civic knowledge means an understanding of our government, systems, and responsibilities. Civic skills include those necessary to engage effectively as a citizen like research, critical thinking, and collaborating. Civic behaviors are how we participate, such as volunteering, protesting, voting, and donating. 

To assess the impact of our solution, we are partnering with an independent evaluator this year. She will develop and execute a plan to collect qualitative and quantitative data from teachers and students in our fall 2023 cohort, and produce a final evaluation report. Based on preliminary conversations, we anticipate the process will include pre/post surveys, focus groups, and interviews. With our evaluator, we will identify and measure the specific student outcomes that demonstrate anticipated change among students. We expect they will include increased knowledge of American civics; increased confidence, collaboration, and empathy; learning and practicing media literacy and research skills; and increased comfort and interest in engaging with the community.

The evaluation will also look at how we equip teachers with tools to teach video storytelling and civics. Teachers will provide feedback on their training with us and the in-class lessons. Our program is successful if teachers have useful, engaging lesson plans and the capacity to create experiential learning opportunities in civics classes through online support from us.

This year we will formalize our theory of change for Democracy in Action in collaboration with our independent evaluator and a curriculum advisor. Their expertise will especially help us identify the indicators we will use to measure our outcomes and confirm the validity of our solution. Below is our draft theory of change for Democracy in Action.

ACTIVITIES: PROVIDE EDUCATORS WITH CIVIC LEARNING RESOURCES ALIGNED WITH NATIONAL STANDARDS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• Share a digital storytelling and civics curriculum and resource package (lesson plans, activities, video tutorials, etc.) with educators

• Coach and train educators on the topics and activities in our curriculum 

• Provide on-call technical and educational support 

• Host a virtual, global documentary screening for young adults

OUTPUTS: CREATE EVIDENCE-BASED CIVIC LEARNING EXPERIENCES

• Educators facilitate activities in the classroom from the Democracy in Action toolkit on American civics and documentaries 

• Educators facilitate technical digital media and storytelling training from the Democracy in Action toolkit

• Student teams produce documentaries on topics meaningful to them

• Students screen documentaries and engage with audience feedback in their local communities and online via the Democracy in Action Film Challenge

SHORT-TERM OUTCOMES: THE INTERVENTION LEAVES EDUCATORS BETTER EQUIPPED TO TEACH CIVICS PER RESEARCH-BACKED RECOMMENDATIONS AND PRODUCES STUDENT CHANGE

• Educators have improved skills and resources to bring experiential learning and digital skills to more classes

• Students demonstrate civic readiness through increased civic knowledge and skills, and concrete practice with civic action

LONG-TERM OUTCOMES: POST-PROGRAM SKILLS AND BEHAVIORS GENERATE SUSTAINED ADULT CIVIC ENGAGEMENT LINKED TO MEASURES OF A STRONG DEMOCRACY

• Young adults engage civically in diverse ways–volunteering, protesting, voting, donating–and our democracy is strengthened

Democracy in Action uses technology in two ways.

1. Students learn digital media technology to produce documentaries. We teach students digital research skills, how to use audio and video recording equipment, and how to use editing software. Students develop a story, plan and shoot interviews, digitize files, and edit their films with b-roll, graphics, narration, and music. The use of audiovisual media technology engages them with their civic learning in a novel way, while building twenty-first century digital skills and media literacy.

2. Teachers will learn in live, online professional development workshops and have access to our digital curriculum and educational resources. For the first time, we will use technology to give teachers access to our tested and innovative lesson plans and connect with them across the country to learn from us directly so they are prepared to teach students in their own classrooms. This type of technical assistance package is used already around the country with an increasing comfort for online learning thanks to the pandemic.

Across our work, we are mindful of systemic barriers to academic achievement and historically inequitable educational outcomes across racial and socio-economic student populations. We also acknowledge how laws and systems directly and indirectly exclude certain groups from civic participation, while promoting the inclusion of others. With that in mind, our solution is especially relevant through our reach across student populations in public schools to all those who are excluded or dissuaded from civic participation. Through targeted outreach, we strive to work with schools in rural, suburban, and urban districts whose students represent a racially and socio-economically diverse group. We are only successful if our programming gives every student the same chance to become a more engaged citizen.

We actively monitor the diversity of our small Board of Directors and staff team. At present time a third of our board seats are held by diverse directors.

We provide an online educational resource package to high schools that will help them meet and exceed state and national recommendations for experiential learning in civics and increase student engagement and academic performance. Schools will receive a curriculum guide for their teachers, with lesson plans, activities, as well as online video tutorials. School teachers will have access to live virtual professional development workshops via Zoom, facilitated by professional filmmakers with more than ten years of experience teaching civics and digital storytelling to high schoolers in-person.

We are in a pilot stage, sharing our curriculum with teachers online for the first time this year and offering a financial incentive for their participation. Our next step is to develop a plan to shift from teacher-by-teacher outreach as we have done for years to engagement with institutional clients (schools and school districts) so that we can create replicable and sustained impact within a school system and charge for our product and services.

As we shift our program and business model to online delivery, we need to develop a pricing plan for Democracy in Action that is cost effective for school and nonprofit partners while supporting our financial sustainability. In the short-term, institutional grants and individual gifts will give us the flexibility we need as we pilot Democracy in Action and create a product revenue model. Based on initial exploration, we know the appetite for our product exists but as schools’ capacity to fully cover our costs (or deliver a profit) may be limited, we expect to always depend on philanthropic support to subsidize our work in public school systems. The private school market may provide a profit-generating opportunity that could also subsidize public school partnerships.

Civic Life Project has successfully generated revenue from diverse sources since we launched in 2010. We are a small nonprofit organization with a big impact, and in the last five years alone we raised more than a million dollars for civic learning and civic action from local grants, individual donations, corporate sponsorships, and program service revenue from partnering schools. We have an active and committed Board of Directors involved in our fundraising efforts and we recently brought on additional staff to step up our fundraising and reach out to new potential donors who can help support a sustainable plan to scale our impact through Democracy in Action in the coming years.