This year’s Project Citizen Showcase took place at IRSC’s Kight Center. Teams of 7th graders from across the District came together to discuss their civic-minded projects with judges and vie for an opportunity to move on to the state-level competition.
About Project Citizen:
Project Citizen is a curricular program for middle, secondary, and post-secondary students, youth organizations, and adult groups that promotes competent and responsible participation in local and state government. The program helps participants learn how to monitor and influence public policy. In the process, they develop support for democratic values and principles, tolerance, and feelings of political efficacy.
Entire classes of students or members of youth or adult organizations work cooperatively to identify a public policy problem in their community. They then research the problem, evaluate alternative solutions, develop their own solution in the form of a public policy, and create a political action plan to enlist local or state authorities to adopt their proposed policy. Participants develop a portfolio of their work and present their project in a public hearing showcase before a panel of civic-minded community members.
Source: http://www.flrea.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29&Itemid=26
