Nonprofit group takes message of active citizenship to Boston youth

Jumbos will proudly admit their devotion to bringing about social change through active citizenship. Members of the Tufts Generation Citizen chapter, however, are not only working with this devotion in mind but are also motivating low−income students throughout the greater Boston area to do the same.

Generation Citizen (GC), founded in 2008 by two students at Brown University, is a nonprofit organization that places a college undergraduate mentor in low−income middle and high school classrooms to guide students through an "action−civics" curriculum.

"The mission of this organization is to empower underrepresented youth to be more involved and active in the democratic process," sophomore Bianca Blakesley, who is involved with the organization, said. "Mentors implement a civics curriculum, which is action−based and student−driven."

The curriculum is designed to provide students with a civics education but also to give them the opportunity to determine an issue in their school or community and take action to generate change.

"By ‘action−civics,' we mean that students in the classroom identify an issue that's important to them and then learn how to create change for that issue," Generation Citizen's Greater Boston Program Manager Gillian Pressman said. "Students have worked on school specific projects, trying to reform school lunches or lobby against school budget cuts, and community issues as well, such as teen pregnancy or domestic violence."

According to Pressman, GC attempts to tackle what they've coined the "civic engagement gap," which suggests that minorities and low−income individuals, especially those of lower levels of education, are dramatically underrepresented in the political process.

"They may not vote, lobby their congressman or generally participate as much, so policymakers aren't hearing their perspectives or needs, and they ignore them," Pressman said. "Then it becomes a vicious cycle. Because policymakers aren't responding to [their] needs, they feel like they don't have a say and are less likely to participate.

Research has shown that the key to targeting this issue is education, according to Peter Levine, a member of GC's National Advisory Board. As the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and research director at the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts, Levine supports the development of GC by offering research−based guidance for the program.

"We have a critical problem that low−income people are left out of democracy, and it's worsened by the education we offer, which tends to make the gap bigger," Levine said. "Generation Citizen is taking that on directly, and it seems to be working."

College undergraduates are successful in the classroom because they provide background experience, enthusiasm and a sense of peer mentorship to their younger mentees, Pressman said.

College coordinators act as the intermediaries between the regional directors, like Pressman, and the mentors. Three students this semester are working as college coordinators to develop and build the Tufts chapter: Blakesley, junior Kathryn Kroetch and sophomore Kara Daniels.

Specifically, each of these coordinators recruits other students to join as mentors, and then provides support throughout the process of instituting the curriculum in the classroom, according to Pressman.

To ensure that all mentors' experiences are running smoothly, they encourage dialogue and collaboration on campus, as well as provide resources and strategies.

"You attend weekly meetings with the rest of the mentors for training, support and troubleshooting for your experience in the classroom," Blakesley said. "We talk about current events and what it means to be a mentor, but we also talk about how to get to know the community that you're working in before you just dive right into it and start talking to the youth about issues that they see."

Learning about the community was a significant part of her experience, Daniels said.

"It's taught me more about the community outside of Tufts," she said. "It's gotten me outside of the bubble, and in talking to these kids, you really get to see the diversity. [There were] kids from every different background working together on this project."

The projects that the classrooms organize culminate in Civics Day. Toward the end of the semester, each classroom will present the issue its students tackled and the steps they took to their elected representatives and other community members, who serve as judges and provide feedback.

"I think they take away our message at the end of the class, and they realize they do have a voice in their community and it's their responsibility to exercise that voice to create change for things they care about," Blakesley, who worked with high school seniors last year, said.