Students Transforming Civics Education
Our Partners
Stanford Democracy Day
Stanford's Annual Day of Civic Service
In the Spring of 2021, the Faculty Senate voted to acknowledge the importance of democracy and engagement by designating Election Day (the Tuesday after the first Monday of November) a non-instructional day, and a university-wide academic holiday. To recognize that civic engagement isn't restricted to electoral participation, Democracy Day is held annually, even in years without American presidential elections.
Democracy Day is meant to encourage voting, participation, civic engagement, dialogue, community-building, and reflection on the role of public service in your life and the lives of others.
TurnUp Activism
TurnUp is a 501(c)(3) non-profit mobile app and organization that has embarked on a mission to build the most organized, active, competent, educated and powerful progressive grassroots activist network of young people. In 2020, as the largest and fastest-growing youth voter turnout and activism organization and mobile app, TurnUp reached 36 million young voters nationally with voter registration and election information; texted 1 million young Georgians; reached each young Georgian on social media 8x in the 6 weeks before the runoff; made 17,000 connections between young activists through the TurnUp mobile app; and trained 1,600 young activists who completed over 2,000 volunteer shifts in a 3 months long program. Youth turnout increased more than 10 points.
TurnUp consistently creates and invests in new civic technologies and ideas including an innovative mobile app for youth activism and the organization includes staff as well as 300 youth organizers working on a daily basis and over 20,000 young people that are mobilized to get out the vote and stop voter suppression.
Krupica
Krupica strengthens democracies by educating young people about disinformation threats. Based in Slovakia, the organization creates innovative non-formal education materials, workshops, and social media content that bridges professional expertise with Gen Z energy. In 2024, Krupica successfully implemented a NATO grant, educating 1,000 Slovak students in person and reaching over 78,000 through social media.
GenUp
GENup is California’s largest youth-led education policy organization, engaging over 4,000+ student leaders from across the state that come from 85 K-12 public school districts as well as University of California and California State University institutions.
GENup’s successes include working with the State Board of Education to create the State Seal for Civic Engagement, championing the historic ethnic studies bill (AB101) through the legislature & into law, fighting for equitable education funding during COVID, advocating for statewide mental health reform through legislation, successfully authoring/advocating/passing a bill into law on student board member rights (AB 824), campaigning for the U.S Department of Education’s first youth-advisory council, and passing (Los Angeles Unified, San Diego Unified, and Fresno Unified) first student bill of rights, collectively representing over 1.2 million students.
VR'ing Democracy
VR’ing Democracy harnesses the power of interactive education through virtual reality to deliver engaging and easily-accessible voter education to underrepresented voters. By partnering with public libraries and grassroots organizations, our virtual reality application project will specifically target lower-income and marginalized communities to help each citizen make informed decisions and fight off the daunting steps into democratic participation.
