Robin mentioned knowledge of voting and voter registration law. In the 2012 election, this was a major issue nationally, which came through in our summer 2012 youth poll

Close Up believes that a strong democracy requires active and informed participation by all citizens; therefore they seek to reach participants of every race, creed, geographical community, socio-economic level, and academic standing. To carry out their mission, they partner with educators, schools, and youth organizations throughout the country to help young people develop the skills and attitudes to become informed and engaged citizens. Since 1971, nearly 800,000 participants have participated in Close Up programs.

College students face special challenges when attempting to register and vote in their college communities. They lack information about voter registration rules and deadlines, do not have acceptable ID for voter registration or voting purposes, are confused about where to vote, may not have transportation to the polls, and occasionally are confronted by unfriendly or unsympathetic elections officials or poll workers. In 2011 the situation got worse when state legislatures around the country pursued new laws that sought to limit access to the polls, with particularly damaging effects for student voters. The Campus Vote Project seeks to address these challenges well in advance of Election Day to pave the way for successful student voter turnout in 2012.

A new CIRCLE study, "Understanding a Diverse Generation: Youth Civic Engagement in the United States," shatters stereotypes and dispels conventional myths about the ways in which young people ages 18-29 are involved in the United States political system. The study from CIRCLE, which is part of Tufts University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, uses U.S. Census data on young voters from across the United States and compares youth engagement in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles. Despite the over-simplified portrayal of young Americans in the news media, their political engagement is diverse. The study shows that at least three quarters of youth were somehow engaged in their community or in politics in both 2008 and 2010. But they engaged in very different ways. The key finding of the study is that young Americans were divided into six distinct patterns of engagement in recent years. In 2010, the clusters were: * The Broadly Engaged (21% of youth) fill many different leadership roles; * The Political Specialists (18%) are focused on voting and other forms of political activism; * The Donors (11%) give money but do little else; * The Under-Mobilized (14%) were registered to vote in 2010 but did not actually vote or participate actively; * The Talkers (13%) report discussing political issues and are avid communicators online, but do not take action otherwise; and * The Civically Alienated (23%) hardly engage at all.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service promotes lifelong civic engagement and sustained community impact through service initiatives at Washington University. Our definition of civic engagement is purposefully broad. We include volunteering, community service through groups or as individuals, service-learning courses, long-term partnerships with neighborhoods and organizations, as well the pursuit of political life and public service careers.

Today, most citizens register to vote without regard to race or color by signing their name and address on something like a postcard. But it was not always so. Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to nonwhites. This process was often referred to as a "literacy test." But in fact, it was much more than just a reading test, it was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos and Native Americans) the right to vote.

Each year, Sociedad Latina serves 3,000 youth and adults. Three hundred of those youth age 11-21 engage intensively with Sociedad Latina through our comprehensive array of daily programming designed to build skills in four areas, identified by our constituents as those most in need of support: Education, Workforce Development, Civic Engagement, and Arts & Culture. Programs promote long term engagement and positive relationships with adults, providing youth at-risk with a vast network of support that enables them to grow into confident, competent, successful and self-sustaining adults.

Here is a fact sheet from CIRCLE on the long-term influence of Americorps participation.

A report from America's Promise and Campus Compact on Connecting Communities with Campuses. America's Promise believes in cultivating these campus-community partnerships in an effort to fulfill the Five Promises for children and youth. For the past several years we have been working with universities to integrate the knowledge, expertise and creativity of their faculty and students to meet the specific needs of Communities of Promise. There are countless opportunities for higher education to have a real and valuable impact on Communities of Promise. One of the most important resources they have to share is knowledge. Dedicated faculty and staff stand ready to apply their expertise and leadership in practical, constructive ways. But service by faculty and staff is just one of the ways that colleges seek to develop a sense of partnership with the community. Students, of course, play one of the biggest roles in a campus-community partnership.

The study was conducted by surveying a diverse sample of 344 YouthBuild alumni and conducting extensive interviews with 54 graduates. It demonstrates that YouthBuild has had a profound effect in developing the leadership skills and civic engagement of young people. The findings are extraordinary because these alumni, mostly young people of color from low-income households, have emerged as civic leaders despite facing severe disadvantages. Almost all the alumni interviewed for the study had left high school without a diploma, some involuntarily. Many were victims of violence. One third of the alumni were parents when they began the YouthBuild program. Others were homeless. Some had been in gangs or convicted of crimes. Almost half expected that they would be dead by early adulthood. With the help of YouthBuild's innovative leadership-development and community-service model, these young people's life trajectories have been changed.

While teaching at an all-Black middle school in Atlanta, Meira Levinson realized that students' individual self-improvement would not necessarily enable them to overcome their profound marginalization within American society. This is because of a civic empowerment gap that is as shameful and antidemocratic as the academic achievement gap targeted by No Child Left Behind. No Citizen Left Behind argues that students must be taught how to upend and reshape power relationships directly, through political and civic action. Drawing on political theory, empirical research, and her own on-the-ground experience, Levinson shows how de facto segregated urban schools can and must be at the center of this struggle. Recovering the civic purposes of public schools will take more than tweaking the curriculum. Levinson calls on schools to remake civic education. Schools should teach collective action, openly discuss the racialized dimensions of citizenship, and provoke students by engaging their passions against contemporary injustices. Students must also have frequent opportunities to take civic and political action, including within the school itself. To build a truly egalitarian society, we must reject myths of civic sameness and empower all young people to raise their diverse voices. Levinson's account challenges not just educators but all who care about justice, diversity, or democracy.

Understanding the developmental precursors to civic involvement in emerging adulthood is important to help cultivate and sustain youth's civic involvement. Guided by Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory of human development and social capital theory, this study examined the pathways that link childhood neighborhood attributes, changes in family and school social capital during adolescence, and civic involvement in emerging adulthood. Three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 7,209, 54 % female, 63 % white, 18 % African-American, 11 % Hispanic) and multi-level models were used to examine the research questions set forth in this study. Findings revealed that increases in family and school social capital during adolescence had direct influences on emerging adult's civic involvement 7 years later. The effect of childhood neighborhood attributes was only weakly mediated by family and school social capital. However, the expression of family and school influences on emerging adult's civic involvement was found to differ by neighborhood groups, gender, and race. These results help to illustrate the importance of examining multi-contextual as well as demographic influences on civic involvement in emerging adulthood. In addition, the results from this study can inform efforts to strengthen the theory of adolescent civic involvement and policies on how to educate youth and communities on civic involvement and its benefits.

Numerous studies have chronicled students lack of trust in large social institutions, declining interest in politics, and decreasing civic skills. This book is a comprehensive guide to developing high-quality civic engagement experiences for college students. The book defines civic engagement and explains why it is central to a college education. It describes the state of the art of education for civic engagement and provides guidelines for designing programs that encourage desired learning outcomes. In addition, the book guides leaders in organizing their institutions to create a campus-wide culture of civic engagement.

he Civic Works Project is a two-year effort to create apps and other tools to help increase the utility of local government data to benefit community organizations and the broader public. This project looks systemically at public and private information that can be used to engage residents, solve community problems and increase government accountability. We believe that there is a new frontier where information can be used to improve public services and community building efforts that benefit local residents.

The future of young people -- The Kettering Foundation wants to hear about your concerns for our country's youth ages 13 to 18. We offer three ways for you to be involved, depending on your interest and time.

A good book on a developmental approach to access and success, with a focus on community building How can an understanding of adolescent development inform strategies and practices for supporting first-generation college-goers? In Ready, Willing, and Able, Mandy Savitz-Romer and Suzanne M. Bouffard focus on the developmental tasks and competencies that young people need to master in order to plan for and succeed in higher education. These include identity development, articulating aspirations and expectations, forming and maintaining strong peer and adult relationships, motivation and goal-setting, and self-regulatory skills, such as planning. The authors challenge the predominant approach of giving young people information and leaving it to them to figure out how to apply it. They call for a new approach that integrates the key developmental tasks and processes of adolescence into existing college access practices in meaningful ways. Rather than treating young people as passive recipients of services, the authors argue that adults can engage them as active agents in the construction of their own futures.

This is one resource around Latino youth and social media:

A monograph by the National Resource Center for First Year Experience and Student Transition.

The Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project, launched in 2001 as the Pew Hispanic Center, seeks to improve public understanding of the diverse Hispanic population in the United States and to chronicle Latinos' growing impact on the nation. The project conducts public opinion surveys that aim to illuminate Latino views on a range of social matters and public policy issues, including its annual National Survey of Latinos. It also publishes demographic studies and other social science research on a wide range of topics, including economics and personal finances, Hispanic/Latino identity, education, health care, immigration trends, the Latino vote, technology adoption, youth and work and employment. The project is well-known for its estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S.

Gay-Straight Alliance Network is a national youth leadership organization that connects school-based Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) to each other and community resources through peer support, leadership development, and training.