School of Hope

Our democracy is at risk. Following the deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection, scholars increased the American Threat Democracy Score to “substantial erosion” levels. Meanwhile, the US’s Freedom in the World score fell by 11 points from 2010 to 2020, putting us on par with Panama, Romania, and South Korea, and about 10 points below historical peers such as Germany and the United Kingdom. The report cites polarization, skepticism, and distrust as fueling the country’s decline. And while a decline in civic engagement can be found across all age groups, civic participation is especially low amongst young people.

Why is civic engagement so low? A lack of civic education plus apathy. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, nearly half (49%) of young Americans say they do not know enough about the issues to get involved, and this is more likely among young women than young men. According to a 2016 survey by Annenberg Public Policy Center, 1 in 4 Americans are unable to name the three branches of government. About four in ten (39%) Americans say they do not get involved because they do not believe it will make a difference.

To maintain a government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people requires broad participation in our democratic processes. It requires educating all people, and especially young people, on how our government works and how we can all take an active role in being part of the solution to improve outcomes for our own communities.

Our solution, School of Hope, will address these challenges and flip the script on civic engagement. 

• Problem: Civic education is at an all-time low. Solution: School of Hope delivers civic education through a more engaging platform and content.

• Problem: Activism is lonely and hard. Solution: School of Hope makes activism social, fun, and easy. 

• Problem: Our democracy is not working for everyone but instead caters to the rich and powerful. Solution: School of Hope knocks down participation barriers to expand participation. 

• Problem: Big money runs politics. Solution: School of Hope builds people power across the “tiktok teens” generation and moves them from online action to action IRL. 

School of Hope aims to become the Duolingo of democracy, presenting a gamified, entertainment-first learning experience that is both educational and fun. Drawing on our 8+ years of passing 60+ laws with and for survivors of sexual violence around the country, and the lessons learned from our accelerator program (Rise Justice Labs), we have developed a proven training model and curriculum that successfully teaches everyday people how to pass their own laws. 

Americans can exercise citizenship through voting, running for office, protesting, and volunteering in the community. One lesser-known pathway: we can all play an active role in writing and advocating for new laws to improve outcomes for our communities. This pathway into direct advocacy has largely been discouraged by systemic powerholders, so that the people in power can stay in power.

The School of Hope learning platform invites learners to complete bite-sized mini lessons and challenges to learn more about democratic processes and how to use their voice for change. The School of Hope participatory learning modules encourage learners to apply their learning to real-world issues, including supporting others on the platform as they advance their own campaign initiatives. 

In essence, School of Hope serves up civic education through a gamified, social, and entertainment-first learning experience. And we’ll meet learners where they are: on their phones. 

In a post-Covid world, we need everyone to be part of the solutions that will shape our future. The challenges our communities face are too big for today’s low levels of civic engagement. Climate change, growing income inequality, racial injustice, and misinformation, among other staggering risks, pose looming threats to our collective wellbeing. At Rise, we believe the people closest to the pain should be closest to the solutions. The people who have solutions to the world’s most pressing problems are the people who live those problems every day. Without their involvement, everyone suffers. 

To date, the Rise Justice Labs program has trained 60 individuals from 17 different organizations. They have yielded from the troubled teen industry, communities plagued by gun violence, students face poverty and hunger, and people with disabilities seeking fair housing options. Through Rise Justice Labs, we have taught them how to research and write their own bill, pitch prospective bill sponsors, talk to the press and testify in a legislative hearing, and organize to build support for their campaign. Since 2019 our Rise Justice Labs community members have gone on to pass 8 laws for their communities. 

Due to capacity and funding constraints, the Rise Justice Labs cohort has thus far only been available to only a few dozen changemakers. The acceptance rate into the program is only 7%, so we know there is high unmet demand for hands-on civic engagement training. 

School of Hope will allow us to scale this learning–dramatically. To seed a revolution of engaged citizens penning their own rights into existence, we need to reach a lot more people. According to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, the threshold for mass social change is 3.5% of the population. This equates to 2.4 million Gen Z’ers and 2.5 million Millennials, or about 5 million people, actively engaging in the legislative process.

The Rise team leads the most successful legislative reform movement in United States history. In our United States campaign for survivors’ rights, we have trained more than 250 everyday citizens who have gone on to pass 60 laws impacting more than 105 million people. We went on to successfully usher in a United Nations General Assembly resolution for sexual assault survivors’ access to justice, impacting at least 1.3 billion survivors of sexual violence worldwide. 

The Rise Justice Labs accelerator program trains people to pass their own laws. Since 2019, 17 campaign teams have gone on to pass a total of 8 laws in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, Tennessee, and Utah on issues ranging from gun violence prevention to campus sexual violence to the troubled teen industry. 

Expanding our efforts to train and mentor the next generation of social changemakers requires growing our programmatic and operational capacity. Due to our unprecedented success, Rise has been approached by various causes and organizations seeking organizing training and coaching. We know our civil rights accelerator model works. Going forward, we want to scale the accelerator program to reach more changemakers, disrupt the lobbying ecosystem, and ultimately strengthen our American democracy. The way we plan to scale is through School of Hope: a more accessible, lower commitment learning experience that can reach more would-be changemakers.  

At this time, our biggest needs are technical and strategic support to develop the School of Hope web app. We already have the proven training model, curriculum, social media presence, and market-ready content. What’s missing is the vehicle to deliver the content to target learners in a way that’s most accessible to them–most likely on their mobile devices. We have considered different staffing models for bringing on talent to build the tool, and could benefit from any human capital guidance the Solve team can offer. 

We would benefit from mentorship and support to build the learning platform and determine how to best position the app in the civic engagement market. While we largely envision this tool to be used outside of the classroom, we would be open to pursuing partnerships with educators and in-classroom tool providers. To this end, we could use strategic advice when it comes to product distribution.  

No other organization provides comprehensive social movement acceleration to assist activists in establishing a campaign, equipping boots on the ground with tools, gamifying the legislative process, and coaching grassroots efforts as they discover their voice.

Like peer institutions that accelerate start-up companies, Rise Justice Labs is intentionally a hands-on, experiential learning program. Brad Feld, cofounder of TechStars, stresses the importance of the accelerator model for its “immersive education, where a period of intense, focused attention provides company founders an opportunity to learn at a rapid pace.” Y Combinator, a Silicon-Valley based accelerator, first debuted this model in 2005 and has successfully launched some of the largest corporations in the business world, including Airbnb, DropBox, and Stripe. Rise Justice Labs aims to become the Y Combinator for social movements and civil rights campaigns. Through this model, Rise Justice Labs, as Feld asserts, “compresses years’ worth of learning into a period of a few months.” Nothing quite like this has existed for legislative campaigns, until now. 

We know our civil rights accelerator model works. Going forward, we want to scale the accelerator program to reach more changemakers, disrupt the lobbying ecosystem, and ultimately strengthen our American democracy. We can do this through School of Hope, a gamified web-based learning platform that shares civic engagement lessons in bite-sized pieces. Think: Duolingo for Democracy. Getting democracy-boosting information and skills to the masses, daily lesson by daily lesson. 

To seed a revolution of engaged citizens penning their own rights into existence, we need to reach a lot more people. According to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, the threshold for mass social change is 3.5% of the population. This equates to 2.4 million Gen Z’ers and 2.5 million Millennials, or about 5 million people, actively engaging in the legislative process. 

To this end, we aim to train 5 million people on how to pass their own law within the next 5 years. We aim to rapidly scale up the learning from Rise Justice Labs to a much larger audience via the School of Hope web portal. The portal would extend aspects of the Rise Justice Labs experience and learning to a broader audience of advocates. 

At Rise we have always measured our impact by the number of people impacted by the laws passed by our team and community. To date, we have passed 60 laws impacting more than 105 million people. We went on to successfully usher in a United Nations General Assembly resolution for sexual assault survivors’ access to justice, impacting at least 1.3 billion survivors of sexual violence worldwide. And the 8 laws passed by the Rise Justice Labs alumni community have impacted 1.9 million people. 

Through the laws passed by the School of Hope community, we can imagine those numbers of impacted people to increase exponentially.

Goal 15 - Gender Equality

• 5.5.1 - Proportion of seats held by women in (a) national parliaments and (b) local governments. Explanation: Rise intends to increase political participation amongst traditionally low-participating groups such as women and non-binary individuals. Inspiring civic engagement at a young age through School of Hope is one pathway to seeking political office in future. 

Goal 16 - Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions 

• 16.6.2 - Proportion of population satisfied with their last experience of public services. Explanation: Through School of Hope, we aim to demonstrate to citizens that they have the power to advocate for better public services through advocacy and activism. 

• 16.7.1 - Proportions of positions in national and local institutions, including (a) the legislatures; (b) the public service; and (c) the judiciary, compared to national distributions, by sex, age, persons with disabilities and population groups. Explanation: Rise intends to increase political participation amongst traditionally low-participating groups such as women and non-binary individuals. Inspiring civic engagement at a young age through School of Hope is one pathway to seeking political office in future. 

• 16.7.2 - Proportion of population who believe decision-making is inclusive and responsive, by sex, age, disability and population group. Explanation: Through School of Hope, we aim to demonstrate to citizens that they have the power to become involved in decision-making processes that impact their communities’ outcomes. 

• 16.10.2 - Number of countries that adopt and implement constitutional, statutory and/or policy guarantees for public access to information. Explanation: Through School of Hope, we aim to demonstrate to citizens that they have the power to advocate for greater transparency and access to information.

The School of Hope learning platform invites learners to complete bite-sized mini lessons and challenges to learn more about democratic processes and how to use their voice for change. School of Hope’s participatory learning modules encourage learners to apply their learning to real-world issues, including supporting others on the platform as they advance their own campaign initiatives. Our immediate goals are to grow a community and share these lessons with at least 100,000 learners, to spark a revolution of empowered community leaders. These immediate goals link to our long-term goal of increasing engagement in our democratic processes and empowering a new generation of young people to become changemakers in their communities. We’ve tested the curriculum with the 17 teams that have gone through the Rise Justice Labs accelerator program and gone on to successfully pass 8 laws, impacting 1.9 million people.

At its core, School of Hope is an online learning platform that incorporates diverse audiovisual media to draw users in and pay attention to bite-sized learning modules. Modeled after learning platforms in the tech accelerator space, such as YC Startup School, the School of Hope web portal could include the following modules:

• User Dashboard: Main screen each user sees when logging in

• Curriculum: Pre-recorded and produced videos of the Hopeanomics lecture series for users to watch on-demand

• Weekly Movement Snapshots: Users submit their movement snapshot to track progress and for Rise to collect metrics on an ongoing basis to measure program impact

• Directory: Contact information for users to find one another and work together 

• Discussion Forum: Channels for discussion topics -- sharing resources and strategy, seeking volunteers and connections, etc. 

We plan to explore opportunities for AI to enhance the functionality of the web platform, namely by create pre-populated templates for learners based on their campaign and goal (e.g., a script to call legislators and express support for a bill, an agenda for a meeting with a potential supporter). AI can also be utilized to monitor and alert users about upcoming opportunities to engage, such as legislative hearings seeking witness testimony or public events related to their focus issue(s). 

Finally, the platform will be closely integrated with social media networks, so that learners can easily share their accomplishments and learnings. At Rise we celebrate movement wins small and large–this culture would extend to School of Hope. Learners can earn “badges” when they excel through new levels of the course and for taking on new missions (e.g., sign a petition, have a 1:1 meeting with someone else who cares about your issue, sign up to testify in a city council hearing, etc.). 

Rise is run by a CEO and board that are primarily of women of color. Our organization has focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion from the outset. Since the start, we have continued to grow our policies and practices to reflect our values. Some of those practices include a blind job application process when hiring, quarterly wellness plans and office- wide collective disconnects. We’ve also begun an unlimited PTO policy with required time off so that our team is well rested when they come to this work. Externally we engage with diverse communities as we design and do outreach for our programs.

We intend to offer School of Hope as a tiered subscription model, with a free version that all users can access and tiers with additional tools and add-ons for a paid subscription. For instance, at a higher tier users could access issue-specific modules or premium functions such as AI-generated advocacy outreach templates.The subscription cost would be an annual or monthly fee and revenue will cycle into Rise’s nonprofit service offerings, as a form of regenerative philanthropy. To distribute the tool, we would target three different verticals: individuals, advocacy organizations, and corporations. Individuals will most likely discover School of Hope through social media where they are already engaging with others about their issue(s) of focus. Advocacy organizations and corporations would be invited to purchase a group access license to offer School of Hope to staff as a learning and development offering.

While we plan to have a variety of subscription options to generate revenue, our priority is for our program to be as accessible as possible. That's one of the reasons that we're applying for this program alongside other operational grants. We feel that School of Hope can only be accessible to those who truly need it if cost is not a barrier to entry.

Over the past 8 years of operation Rise has received unrestricted general operations support for many of our other programs. Given that, we have been able to build out the beginning of what this program could look like. However we know that to take this project to the next stage, we must secure grants directly attributed to this project. We have included some of Rise's past general operations grantors below:

- The Elevate Prize Foundation

- Pivotal Ventures

- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

- The Schusterman Family Foundation

- Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

- Uber Technologies