10 Years of Generation Citizen — A speech delivered at an event in Providence, RI to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Generation Citizen’s founding. I first want to thank everyone, so much for coming tonight. To the Sorensens and the Vascellaro’s- thank you, so much, for hosting. Generation Citizen would not be where it is…

Looking Inward at our Shift in Strategy — “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” Colin Kaepernick’s recent Nike commercial ends with that phrase. It’s powerful- thought-provoking. Know what you stand for, and push for that, even if it’s uncomfortable. I’m not sure we’ve done that as of late at Generation Citizen. I’ve been thinking about…

Does hope for a new Zimbabwe still exist? It is increasingly seen as a fact that American democracy itself is at risk. The toppling of long-standing norms and the degradation of public institutions, coupled with unprecedented polarization amongst citizens and politicians alike have resulted in a distrust of our government…

Putting Constituents At the Center — By Emely Anico, Sydney Menzin, and Scott Warren We are the best. The biggest. The most effective. The only. We are saving lives. We are transforming systems. We are the solution. Check out any non-profit’s mission and vision statements: the superlatives abound. Find your way to the impact part of…

Doing More to Elevate Youth Voices — In our current times, we often bemoan the state of our politics, wondering if the decline of our very republic is nigh. Tweet after tweet, argument after argument, seemingly bring us closer to the edge of no return. Or so we say. Book after book is released articulating the existential…

Lessons for Generation Citizen from Parkland — On February 14th, when I heard there had been another school shooting, I admit that I was simultaneously devastated and defeated. Crushed that yet another shooting had occurred, but already completely succumbed to a reality that nothing substantive would change in the tragedy’s aftermath. The shooting in Parkland, Florida seemed…

Finding inspiration through a presidential historian’s belief in the citizen — When I tell the origin story of my motivation behind founding Generation Citizen, I talk about growing up abroad as the son of a Foreign Service Officer. I observed democratic elections in Kenya, witnessed a coup in Ecuador, and was in Zimbabwe during violent run-off elections (very much top of…

Answering the question we’re asked so often — For the first six years of Generation Citizen’s programming, all of our sites were located on the coasts: Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, and California. We realized though, that if we were serious about proving that Action Civics could work anywhere, we needed to expand to more diverse geographies. …

How a focus on the citizen-centric process of democracy leads to better outcomes — By Emely Anico, Nora Howe, Brandon Klugman, Sydney Menzin, Sarah Nicita, Scott Warren Over the last few months, several of us at Generation Citizen, with the help of Brown University students, have been conducting research centered on the practice of democracy. Specifically, we have been investigating whether the current state…