Who we are.
For years, our team of youth organizers has been strategizing about how to best address the rising cynicism and disengagement with democracy among our generation. Late last year, we launched the Youth Democracy Lab to accomplish exactly that.
Now, with multiple programs and projects underway, we’re creating this newsletter to keep our partners -- and the broader ecosystem focused on youth, democracy, and technology -- in the loop.
The Youth Democracy Lab develops high-quality training pipelines, cutting-edge AI research for social change, and capacity-building for youth-led groups on the front lines of our generation’s most pressing challenges. We invest at the level of state governments, where democratic backsliding has weakened government’s responsiveness to our generation - and risks losing our generation’s trust and civic participation as well.
The problems we’re solving for.
Young people can be powerful advocates for multiracial democracy. But to do so, they need rigorous training and access to high quality research. They need a community of other young people to learn and solve problems with. They need the opportunity to work in roles that make a meaningful impact. And, most importantly, they need to believe that they are capable of making a difference. Most of our peers lack that belief.
Our movement has a problem; young people are highly segregated between the politically active activists and the politically distrustful majority. If we want to build a movement that heals that distrust in institutions and inspires a generation to build better, bolder institutions that work for us, we’ll need to prove in the immediate term that democracy can work and changemaking is for everyone. In short, that’s the niche the Lab is trying to fill.
What we’re doing about it.
The Lab’s programs aim to solve each of these goals with a particular emphasis on the underanalyzed role of technology like social media in the lives of young people.
Our hallmark program involves partnering with a state-based, youth-led, power-building organization. From there, we recruit, train, and job-match 30-60 students into roles within the key pillars of state-based democracy: their state legislature, in labor unions and nonprofits, and as local organizers. This network of diverse, talented youth are then positioned to:
Defend critical democratic processes like public comment in legislative committees.
Win popular outcomes to widespread problems like funding schools or addressing the crisis of social media addiction.
Earn our generation’s trust that organizing can win and the government can work.
Build the governance capacity of youth-led organizations.
We’ve been busy.
Since January, we’ve:
Launched our leadership discussion group, where 50+ youth leaders from 24 states and Puerto Rico join us for near-peer discussions on youth leadership and organization-building.
Launched our state-based fellowships in Florida, Texas, and North Carolina, with an anticipated engagement of 100-150 students.
Facilitated a June strategy convening for 10 youth organizations in the responsible technology space, alongside our partners at the Young People’s Alliance and the Design It for Us coalition who convened the event.
Developed comprehensive reports on topics including: youth sentiment towards social media regulation, political narratives on school vouchers, and youth voice in public education media coverage, along with ongoing projects mapping networks of support for authoritarianism alongside the Horizons Project.
Doubled our team.
And this is just the start!
The year ahead.
Over the next year, we’ll be expanding our programs, launching new initiatives, and scaling our work to reach more states and more young people. You can follow along with our work and get to know the youth leaders in our network by subscribing to this substack. We’ll be sharing updates, long-form strategy papers, our latest research, and occasional interviews.
Our Partners
We’re grateful for our many partners - in particular Piece by Piece Strategies, the Progressive Leadership Initiative, and the 22nd Century Initiative - who provide more than generous advice and support.
