“We the People” means our youngest Americans, too. This semester, our Youth Civic Leadership team is launching a new program, Civic Buddies, that brings different age groups together to build literacy and strong citizens at the same time.
With generous funding from Dollar General, Civic Nebraska is supplying sets of books on civics and citizenship to our Community Learning Centers at Sherman and Lothrop Magnet elementary schools in Omaha and Campbell Elementary School in Lincoln. Then, students in our Trailblazers Afterschool Academy at Omaha’s Lewis & Clark Middle School will lead a series of live, virtual “read-alongs” with the elementary students. Discussions and activities, led by the middle-schoolers and also within the elementary CLCs, will follow.
“This is a great combination of promoting reading and citizenship, two key elements of our democracy-building mission at Civic Nebraska,” said Kent Day, Civic Nebraska’s director of youth civic leadership programs. “We’re eager to get started.”
Initial titles for the series include What Does it Mean to Be an American?, What Does it Mean to be Green?, We Can Vote, and Character Counts: Be a Good Citizen, with more to come.
