What is the What: Moving from Story Telling to Action

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every person I have encountered these last difficult days…I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength.” - from What is the What by Dave Eggers

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

If you have read the book What is the What, you know that it is both beautiful and heartbreaking. It is the harrowing story of a Sudanese Lost Boy, Valentino Achak Deng, who collaborated with Dave Eggers to share his experiences with an American audience. Valentino was separated from his family during the Second Sudanese Civil War and made his way to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. After leaving the refugee camp, Valentino lived in Kenya for several years and then moved to the United States.  What is the What blends fiction with Valentino’s account of his long and dangerous journey.

In 2006, Valentino created the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation and established Marial Bai’s first high school. Marial Bai is a village in Northern Sudan. The school opened in 2009 with a very limited budget and just 85 students. There is no lighting in the school and the children read by candlelight, but Valentino is determined to offer these children a quality education.

To raise money for Marial Bai Secondary School, Valentino is traveling around the United States hosting speaking events. If you are interested in hosting a dynamic and thought provoking speaker on campus and supporting Valentino’s dream of opening more schools to accommodate the thousands of children of Marial Bai, please visit the Valentino Achak Foundation website.

This Wikipedia article and this Washington Post article were used as background for this blog post.

This is it! Blitz Week at Rock the Vote

Post by Mike Kelly of Rock the Vote for the ADP blog.

This is it. We are down to the final days to register voters for the critical 2010 elections.

Voter registration deadlines start next Saturday and by Tuesday, October 5th, the window to register to vote will be closed in over half of the states in the country. (If you need to find a state’s voter registration deadline, please visit our interactive election center Electionland.)

That’s why we want to invite you to join our efforts to push online voter registration next week. It is Blitz Week at Rock the Vote!

You have your online voter registration tool and a community of people that need to have their voices heard in November. I hope you will make sure they are eligible to vote.

Here are two easy things you can do:

1. Send an email to your students. Through years of testing, we have found that the best messages are straightforward and simple. Let people know that the registration deadline is coming up (be precise about the date, if possible) and make sure they know that folks need to re-register at their current address if they have moved since the last time they registered. And, of course, include links to your voter registration tool.

2. Push the link to your voter registration tool on social networks like Facebook and Twitter . . . and urge your people to share the link to register their friends and family, too.

As always, you can check your progress, get your unique URL to use in emails and social network posts, get the code to put the widget on your website and more at this website.

If you have any questions, shoot us an email – voterregistration@rockthevote.com – and we’ll get you what you need.

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Electionland

We know you want to vote.  And to vote with confidence.  But maybe people yelling at each other at town hall meetings, negative ads and TV shout-fests aren’t getting you the information you need to cast an informed ballot in the 2010 elections.

Well, we’re here to help.  We helped create Electionland as a one-stop shop for the 2010 elections – the place where you can ask and answer questions on everything related to elections in Washington state.  You can make sure you are registered to vote before the voter registration deadline.  You can ask questions about voting as a student or what to do if you have recently moved.  You have access to folks with big brains about what’s on the ballot. Candidates and experts will answer your questions directly.

It is the place to ask questions, provide answers or make comments on anything and everything around the election.

The Third Annual Civic Engagement Student Research Conference

Contact: Joe Corrado, Clayton State University

Students in the University System of Georgia are encouraged to develop an individually compelling sense of social and civic responsibility, community leadership and service to society.

To support this goal, Clayton State University, The New York Times, and the Southeast Region of the National Archives announce the Second Annual Student Research Conference on Civic Engagement to be held Friday March 25, 2010 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm at the National Archives in Morrow, Georgia. Undergraduates and graduate students attending USG schools are invited to submit papers and panel-session proposals on the broad subject of civic engagement beyond the vote.  For more information contact Dr. Joe Corrado at joecorrado@clayton.edu.

Clayton State University

Clayton State University, located in Morrow, GA, is a diverse master’s degree granting institution of the University System of Georgia. Our mission is to give students the knowledge and skills that they need to recognize and respond to the increasingly complex global context of contemporary life.

National Archives at Atlanta

The mission of the National Archives is to preserve the documentary legacy of our past, and the Southeast Region houses an extraordinary collection of documents created by Federal agencies in eight southeastern states. These documents depict the lives of well-known Americans, including John Marshall, Aaron Burr, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Wernher von Braun, as well as everyday people.  These documents have been preserved because they have continuing value for the necessary processes of government, provide protection of public and private rights, or contain useful information for researchers and the general public.

Students from the USG are invited to submit papers and panel-session proposals on any topic relating to engagement in politics in the community besides voting. Faculty may also submit papers and panel-session proposals from course assignments with the permission of their students. Research can include literary research and/or data collection. Possible topics include:

Civic Engagement Proposals: Contact Joe Corrado for more information about how to submit a proposal.

Not in Georgia, but like the idea? Consider hosting your own student research and civic engagement conference. Undergraduate research is a powerful way to encourage strong learning outcomes and perform valuable research for your communities. Giving students a venue to present this research is an excellent way to reinforce this pedagogical practice.

“We the People” – the Return of Citizen Voters Part 1

By Harry C. Boyte, Center for Democracy and Citizenship

We need to rise to the occasion of citizenship. The American Democracy Project can take the lead. In the words of the civil rights song, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

I thought about this during President Obama’s televised Town Hall meeting Monday night on CNBC, three days after September 17, Constitution Day.

The opening question set the tone. A middle-class mother of two, the chief financial officer of a veterans organization, expressed her disappointment.

“I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now,” she said. “I have been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people, and I’m waiting, sir. I’m waiting. I don’t feel it yet.”

A young graduate of law school followed. ”Like a lot of people in my generation, I was really inspired by you and by your campaign and message that you brought, and that inspiration is dying away,” he said. “It feels like the American dream is not attainable to a lot of us.”

The president dutifully listed all the things that he and the administration had tried to do.  The media mavens said it wasn’t enough. “The president’s challenge is to restore confidence in his own leadership,” as Dan Blatz put it in the Washington Post.

No one mentioned the elephant in the room.

People didn’t vote for a man who said he was going to change things.  The country elected a president whose message was “yes we can.” This is the message of the Preamble to the Constitution.  The Preamble doesn’t say the president – or government — will solve our problems. It reads

We the people…in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.

Before 1787, in the great arc of human history, governments were not seen as created by the people as the instrument of the people’s work. Governments were handed down from antiquity. They were established by kings. They were imagined as acts of nature.

It was a breathtaking and bold statement for our nation’s founders to say, “We the people” establish our government as our instrument.

This was precisely the message that Barack Obama ran on for president.

Announcing his campaign in Springfield, Ill., on Feb. 10, 2007, Barack Obama said, “This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose.”  As he campaigned in the Iowa caucuses, he described his experiences as a community organizer. “In church basements and around kitchen tables, block by block, we brought the community together, fought for new jobs, and helped people live lives with some measure of dignity.”   During the campaign, a continuing message was that “active citizenship… will be a cause of my presidency.”

I kept thinking what a difference it would have made if one or two voters on Monday night had looked at the president, at journalists– and then turned to other voters and reminded the nation, we voted for “yes we can.”

At the Civic Agency Institute of the American Democracy Project on November 11-12 in Washington, I think we should discuss, plan, and strategize about how the students, faculty, and staff of our colleges and universities can join with libraries, community groups, and others to build a movement to reclaim our role as “we the people.”

Or, put differently, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Got Debt? What’s New and Exciting with the America’s Future Initiative

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

America’s Future Scholars

Most people are well aware of the abysmal state of the national budget. Each year it seems as though the debt grows without any real solutions being offered for fixing this escalating burden. The America’s Future initiative, whose concern is primarily with the fiscal future and health of our democracy, grew out of a partnership with Andrew Yarrow of Public Agenda. Andrew is one of the foremost experts on our national debt, and enthusiastically agreed to partner with  the American Democracy Project (ADP). We launched the initiative in the fall of 2008 with eight campuses. Click here to view a map of the America’s Future campuses.

Since we’ve launched this initiative, the America’s Future campuses have engaged in an inspiring and innovative set of activities and projects with the goal of informing their students about the national debt and deficit. Below is a sampling of this work.

Emporia State University (ESU): During Constitution Day, ESU will host candidate debates. This has been a vitriolic primary season for Kansas, and this event should be both exciting and informative. Students from ESU have formulated a series of provocative questions to ask the candidates about the national debt and deficit. ESU will be using Twitter to track the debates so those students and community members who are not able to attend in person will be able to follow along. (Information contributed by Rob Catlett.)

Keene State College:  Mel Netzhammer, provost of Keene, has put the college’s resources behind three ADP initiatives: Deliberative Polling, America’s Future and eCitizenship. There has been strong institutional support for the America’s Future initiative at Keene State.  Keene created a financial literacy program for undergraduate students to learn about personal finance and how to manage budgets. In addition, faculty members from Keene are developing curriculum that will be presented to and modified by secondary and middle school teachers during a series of summer institutes. This curriculum will be disseminated to classrooms in the K-12 system in Keene, New Hampshire. The guiding philosophy of the creators of the institutes is to incorporate big ideas about what we owe each other and the meaning of life with practical questions about personal finance, ultimately culminating in a consideration of issues about national finance and budgetary matters. (Information contributed by Wes Martin.)

Stephen F. Austin State University: Stephen F. Austin has been taking a different approach to educating undergraduates about American budgetary issues. They are conducting ongoing assessment of the impacts of America’s Future programming on undergraduate students. Freshmen are surveyed to determine their knowledge about these issues. Then the same students are surveyed again after exposure to curriculum that explores the issues surrounding the national debt and deficit. The goal is to measure the impact on students of this curriculum.  So far, this assessment has revealed gains in knowledge and understanding about the national debt and deficit.

In addition to this assessment work, Stephen F. Austin has hosted a series of events to build awareness about the national debt. Concord Coalition has been invited to campus to give presentations about different approaches to mitigating the effects of the national debt. In addition, a version of IOUSA was shown to 350 students. Andrew Yarrow visited Stephen F. Austin and gave a riveting lecture that presented another set of approaches to solving the debt problem. Finally, close to 70 students participated in intergenerational dialogues that focused on the national debt. (Information contributed by Cindy Pressley and Steve Galatas.)

To read more about the America’s Future initiative, please visit this website.

What are you doing to engage students on this important issue? If you have an interesting program, initiative, or curricular approach to educating students about the national debt and deficit, please contribute your example to the comments section of this blog post.

From the Classroom to the Polling Site

ADP participant, Missouri Western State University, received a grant from the Election Assistance Commission to create a guide for creating service-learning student poll worker projects that are integrated into the classroom. This guide will be distributed throughout Missouri in the hopes that it will encourage academic institutions to engage their students in the 2010 midterm elections. The guide is called, “From the Classroom to the Polling Site: College Student Poll Worker Service Learning Project Manual.”

As part of a grant from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, colleges and universities throughout Missouri are being asked to participate in the College Student Poll Worker Service Learning Project. The focus is on encouraging students in your classrooms to serve as poll judges as part of a service learning class project designed to achieve two things: 1) enhance students’ understanding of the election process and value of their right to vote, and 2) increase the population of skilled poll workers at a time when the transition from paper to electronic registration and voting requires poll workers with technology talents.

Missouri has the opportunity to lead the nation in utilizing students via the Student Poll

Worker project to generate a pool of willing and able poll workers, and we encourage all colleges and universities in the state to participate. It’s easy. This manual will give professors and other education officials all the information they need to incorporate the College Student Poll Worker Service Learning Project into college and university courses. The manual addresses the following key content areas:

1. Information about starting a College Student Poll Worker Service Learning Project on your campus.
2. Curriculum modules to be included in any class.
3. Ideas for working with your County Clerk or the Election Board official who oversees voting in your community.
4. Evaluation instruments to measure outcomes related to student engagement.
5. Ideas for recruiting students outside of the classroom for a service learning project.

All of the materials contained in this manual can be used as is or adapted for your classes. Although the guide is specific to Missouri, there are a lot of valuable and interesting approaches to involving college students in the midterm elections. Please visit this website to view the guide in its entirety.

Announcing the Civic Agency Institute, Nov. 11-12, 2010

 

Read the newest blog post about the Civic Agency Institute here.

Follow the Institute on Twitter! Use #CivAg10 to follow us on Twitter.

We are pleased to announce the Civic Agency Institute in Washington, DC, November 11-12, 2010. The Institute will be co-hosted by Harry Boyte and Dennis Donovan of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship. We will begin the official program on Thursday, November 11th. We will end the program at 2:00 PM on Friday, November 12th. This means you should be able to fly out as early as 4:00 PM on Friday without missing any programming. The Civic Agency Initiative seeks to further develop and operationalize the concept of civic agency. The goal of this initiative is to produce a series of national models for developing civic agency among undergraduates and to disseminate those models broadly throughout American higher education. For more information about the Civic Agency Initiative, please visit our website or wiki.

To register for the Institute and reserve your hotel room for this excitinginstitute, please contact Cecilia M. Orphan.

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Hotel Information

 

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Hotel Information:  Please read carefully

 

AASCU has negotiated a rate of $169 at the Marriott Residence Inn, located at 1199 Vermont Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005. This hotel is a short distance (0.6 mile) from the AASCU offices. You will be able to walk to AASCU’s 1307 New York Avenue location. The hotel cut-off date to receive this conference rate is Wednesday, October 13^th. Breakfast at the hotel is included in the $169 rate.

AASCU operates tax-free in Washington, DC and as a courtesy to our members, we will be making all hotel reservations and hotel rooms will be tax-free as well. In order to receive the tax free benefit, AASCU will pay for your hotel room in advance and then invoice you for your stay after the meeting.

You will need to provide a credit card for incidentals upon arrival to the hotel.

PLEASE NOTE:  If you must cancel your hotel room, please notify AASCU by Noon on the day of your scheduled arrival. If you do not notify us in time, you will be charged for a one-night stay. You will not receive the conference rate if you call the hotel directly to make your room reservation. You must make your reservations through AASCU by filling out the attached registration form or by calling Jill Gately, Meetings Manager, at 202-478-4668.

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Program Highlights

 

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• Presentations by Civic Agency campus representatives about their work
• An exploration of the importance of Public Work led by Harry Boyte
• Community Organizing 101
• Facilitated discussions by Harry Boyte and Dennis Donovan of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship
• Information about how to join the national Civic Agency Initiative
• Information about how to launch a Public Achievement project on your campus
• An opportunity to develop a campus project plan

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For questions about the program, please contact Cecilia Orphan (orphanc@aascu.org) or 202-478-7833.

 

For questions about the hotel, please contact Jill Gately (gatelyj@aascu.org) or 202-478-4668.

See you in DC in November!

eCitizenship Institute: November 4-5, 2010

The American Democracy Project (ADP) is pleased to announce the 2010 eCitizenship Institute, taking place November 4-5, 2010, in Detroit, MI. This is an opportunity to learn more about eCitizenship and to become formally involved in this growing and exciting ADP initiative. The three-year initiative, now in its second year, is a partnership of AASCU and the Center for the Study of Citizenship at Wayne State University. The participating institutions are working together to study how emerging technologies, particularly social networking tools, support and facilitate civic and political engagement. The main goal of the initiative is to provide insights and strategies for engaging undergraduates in the use of social networks and technology tools for civic purposes. Those strategies can then be broadly employed to prepare undergraduates for lives of engagement and participation. For more information about the initiative, please visit this website.

Registration

Please contact Cecilia M. Orphan to receive a registration form for this exciting institute.

Agenda

The program begins on Thursday, November 4 with breakfast at 7:30 a.m. and concludes at 2 p.m. on Friday, November 5^th (in time for people to make flights home).

Organizing Your Team

We strongly encourage campuses to bring a team to the Institute. On Friday of the Institute we will be offering structured team time for campuses to begin planning for their on-campus work. A team ideally consists of one student, a member of the campus’s IT team, and a faculty member/administrator. If it is not possible to bring a team, single representatives are, of course, welcome. Teams have been proven to make more dynamic change on campuses, though, which is why they are encouraged.

Hotel Information

The conference is being held at the Westin Book Cadillac.  We have negotiated a special room rate of $129 plus 15% tax for single and double rooms at this historic hotel.

To make a reservation and receive the conference rate, please call 1-888-627-7150 and refer to the AASCU eCitizenship Group. Please note than an early departure fee of $75 will apply to the guest charges if the guest does not notify the hotel of the early departure the day before arrival.  Also, if you must cancel your room please do so one day before your scheduled arrival.

Check in time is 3 p.m.  Check out time is Noon.

The hotel cut-off date to receive this rate is Friday, October 8^th.  After that date you will be subject to the hotel’s regular rates.

For program information contact Cecilia Orphan at orphan@aascu.org or call 202-478-7833.

For hotel and other logistical information contact Jill Gately at gatelyj@aascu.org or call 202-478-4668.

What people said about the first eCitizenship Institute.

“I felt motivated to learn about, understand, and use these tools that were taught to us to become more a part of the world I live in and help others do the same. Every ADP/ AASCU conference I have attended has left me feeling more informed, motivated and empowered in knowing that everyone can do something – and that these social media tools are free and only a click away.” Joy D. Britt, Grad Student, University of Alaska, Anchorage

“After attending the ecitizenship institute last November, I found new ways to use social networking tools to engage and inspire fellow students to become more involved in our College’s community. I realized that social networking could be used to mobilize people into action quicker than other mediums. It was an experience that has changed my view of being a citizen and has opened new avenues to express myself as an active member of my community through social networking tools.” Lauren Rohrer, Student, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

See you in Detroit!

Become a Partner with Rock the Vote for the Midterm Elections

Rock the Vote wants to partner with you on the largest, non-partisan voter registration drive in the history of a midterm election. We admire the work that your organization does every day to build community, engage volunteers and address critical needs. Our hope is that you – and community-based, non-profit organizations like yours – use those deep connections to ensure that the people you touch are registered to vote. And that we can help you do it.

In 2008, Rock the Vote and over 20,000 partners helped over 2 million people get registered to vote and it is critical that we continue this momentum in 2010. We have a free and easy-to-use online voter registration tool that makes it very simple to get voters on the rolls.  

You can sign up at www.rockthevote.com/partner to get started.  Once you do, you will get a unique URL that links to your voter registration tool and code to put it on your website.  The tool is simple, effective and can help you build your organization.  Here’s how it works:

• Voters register using a secure, customizable registration widget and never have to leave your website to do it.  You will get a unique code that allows you to put a link or button that spawns an overlay of the tool on top of your website.
• The step-by-step wizard guides users through the registration process in either English or Spanish and creates a PDF of the registration form that users print, sign and send to their Secretary of State.
• You have instant access to all of the information users enter through your site so that you can easily track registration totals and communicate with your lists.
• RTV hosts all partners’ tools for free and ensures that all data is transmitted to and through secure servers.
• You can customize your tool by adding your logo to it, add users to your email and mobile lists, ask people to volunteer for your organization and learn more about applicants by customizing survey questions that appear at the end of the registration process.

There are a couple of ways for you to use the online voter registration tool effectively: (1) putting the widget on your website and (2) providing a link to your tool through email and social media pushes to your community – volunteers, clients, constituents, donors, etc.  We are eager to work with you, so let us know how we can help.

If you have any questions, please contact Eric Zoberman at ericz@rockthevote.com or 202-719-9915.  Thank you for your continuing role in bringing positive change to our communities.

This Constitution Day, Watch NCoC: Live!

By Kristen Cambell of National Conference on Citizenship

The 65th Annual National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) is taking place September 17, 2010 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Themed “BIG Citizenship: Citizens as Catalysts and Innovators,” the conference will explore the powerful role civic innovators are playing in fostering societies that are informed, engaged, giving and trusting.

This theme was inspired by the recognition that individuals everywhere are self-organizing to meet community needs, demanding transparency and accountability from government, and greater social responsibility from corporations.

As ADP campuses are well aware, September 17 is Constitution Day. For schools looking to further their important conversations about the role of citizenship and civic engagement in 21^st Century society, NCoC can provide programming for campuses across the country. The conference will be streamed live online and we invite ADP campuses to watch and virtually engage with us:

• Tweet your questions and comments with #NCoC and every time we open the stage for questions, we’ll take the first one from Twitter. Send @NCoC a tweet and let us know you’re watching, and we’ll add you to our official participants list.
• Blog about the Conference, and we’ll link to it. Want to be an official NCoC Blogger? Email me.
• Snap photos or video and share them on our Facebook page. We’ll make sure to incorporate them into our Conference wrap-up, and could use them in our annual report or website discussions.

Visit NCoC.net/live for more details. If your class decides to tune in, let me know, and NCoC will give a shout out to your school!