The Kids Are Alright, and They're Fixing Their Neighborhoods After Natural Disasters

The Donetsk Regional Children and Youth Center runs the Technology of Good Volunteering School, a program designed to help teenagers build social and civic skills and learn how to contribute to their communities. Graduates have spearheaded projects such as creating a children's room for a local hospital and sewing baby clothes for new mothers.

The Appalachian Queer Youth Summit, West Virginia's only summer camp for LGBTQ2S+ teenagers, provides a welcoming venue for campers to explore their identities and connect with other queer youth, all while building skills in storytelling, advocacy, citizen lobbying, and knowing your rights. Participants have gone on to advocate for changes in their state, successfully driving efforts to ban conversion therapy at the municipal level, and have also formed a tight-knit community that extends beyond the camp grounds.

High school and college-age volunteers in Culver City, California are playing a significant role in the creation of a food-distribution system that aims to help their neighbors who have been financially impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. While the project is having a positive impact on the community, it is also having a positive effect on the young voluteers by providing a sense of connection during this time of social isolation.

Eliminating food deserts is a community effort. Thanks to work of members, volunteers, and other partners of the East New York Farmers’ Market (ENYF), the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, formerly troubled by a lack of nutritious food, now benefits from semi-weekly produce markets. ENYF also serves as a positive community service for youth and young adults.

San Bernardino's Generation Now, a diverse group of young adults, is injecting their city with a boost of civic action through organizing local people at forums and increasing voter turnout at the polls. From rehabilitating local parks and gardens to holding open dialogues on San Bernardino's greatest challenges, the group is changing the civic landscape of an economically depressed city.

Juvenile Hearing Boards in Rhode Island divert first-time youth offenders from traditional detention to community-based volunteers who assign restorative sanctions like community service and counseling, resulting in a recidivism rate of less than 10% compared to the state's overall 33% three-year recidivism rate.

The Gonzales Youth Council, which allows young people to advise local government on issues that affect them, has inspired other youth councils to sprout up in neighboring communities. Youth commissioners participate in a paid summer fellowship to learn about city and school district processes, and the council has made several recommendations that have gone on to become ordinances, including fines for adults who facilitate underage drinking.

Through Youth Voice Youth Vote, nearly 800 young people in Portland took part in a participatory budgeting process to decide how to spend $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding. The winning projects, including a paid internship program, expanded access to menstrual products, and a job resource fair, are now in the process of being implemented.

At Philadelphia’s inaugural Civics Day competition, students from high schools across the city presented their work to address issues important to their community, from countering sexual assault to improving safety on public transit and preventing gun violence. The students were part of a pilot project by Generation Citizen designed to teach youth how to actively participate in political and civic life.

At least 33 states now involve students in education policymaking through formal advisory roles or positions on state boards, and these youth have helped spearhead changes, such as a Massachusetts rule requiring student feedback to be considered in the teacher evaluation process and a Washington bill creating school-based liaisons to coordinate homelessness services.