Students for Civic Impact - Mission & Vision

Our Mission: Civic Impact educates and empowers students to become engaged citizens and create civic impact in their communities and beyond. We bring together high school students from around the world to a summer program where they develop political awareness and communication skills in dialogue and debate.

Our Vision: Our hope is that students who participate in the program will lead with compassion, celebrate diverse cultures, and find purpose and inspiration while discovering their voice. Throughout the program we will prepare students for college through opportunities to engage in a variety of critical thinking exercises. Together we aim to create a future where every voice is heard, every action makes an impact, and everyone has the chance to lead.

Respect: The start of everything. We respect each other, our backgrounds, and diverse perspectives through active listening and seeking to understand. Integrity: A trustworthy leader aligns their words and actions. By upholding integrity we build a strong community.

Activism: Turn your passion into action. Stand up, speak out, make a difference. Responsibility: As leaders we navigate with purpose, knowing we have accountability for ourselves and the world around us.

Our Story

Students for Civic Impact was established in 2024 by the former staff and alumni of the Junior State of America (JSA). After an astonishing 90 years of summer and school-based programs for civics education and youth leadership development, JSA closed in August 2024. Upon staff learning the news, Civic Impact founders immediately thought of the students they had just gotten to know and said "see you later" to only a week earlier. Realizing there was no program like the one they envisioned and had seen make such a difference in the lives of thousands of students, they knew they had to set up a new non-profit to serve future students. When the announcement became public, faculty, students, and alumni organized to create a new summer program inspired by and modeled on the JSA summer schools and programs in which they participated and led.

Students for Civic Impact is taking the best of JSA and re-imagining the summer program to fit the needs and desires of Generation Z and those to come. The Civic Impact Summer Program has politics and communications courses, student-led dialogues and debates, workshops, simulations, guest speakers, tourism, and special events.

The Civic Impact Summer Program is a unique, pre-collegiate, life-changing, and socially and culturally enriching residential experience for high school students entering 10th through 12th grade (15-17 years old).

Students for

CIVIC IMPACT

supports student development

Why this program?

Because self-government takes skills, passion, and knowledge.

U.S. politics and government is a unique story of self-government and the struggles to live up to the highest ideals of self-government. As nearly 250 years of history shows, self-government requires active and impactful citizenship built upon knowledge, skills, and passion for democratic ideals. The best way to learn is by openly exploring and debating new ideas — the best ideas from history, political science, law, and economics, the most vibrant viewpoints from student peers, and the experiences and challenges that the practitioners of politics today face.

The cross-cultural exchange at our program of students passionate about politics and government—no matter what their viewpoints—is unmatched by any other. Students will come from across the 50 United States, the U.S. Territories and Freely Associated States, and from other countries around the world. At the heart of our program is the belief that students learn best from their peers. Adolescence is a perfect time in human development for people to build the skills of active citizenship, cross-cultural appreciation, and understanding, due to openness to debate and form new ideas. Further, the opportunity to experience guided independence away from home sets students up for future success in college and beyond. Budgeting their time, working on independent and group projects, learning communication skills, eating in the dining halls, and doing laundry on a college campus are all opportunities for personal and academic growth prior to university.

Students for Civic Impact's Civic Impact Summer Program is a pre-collegiate nonpartisan experience for students at various academic levels with a passion for self-government, excitement about active citizenship, and curiosity to listen and learn from teachers, peers, and practitioners. This program is for those who who wish to build and strengthen their skills for democracy. We teach political science and related curriculums, and cultivate both beginning and advanced speakers and debaters from different grades in their high school career. This is unlike many summer academies and summer school programs offered across the country. While we want to see a student's abilities in their application, we care more about why a student wants to attend the program and what they aspire to do with what they learn. Our resident advisors, instructors, faculty, and staff are experienced in tutoring, mentoring, and coaching and love helping students do their best and make new connections and insights. We build time in the schedule for study groups, 1-1 questions, and independent work time.

We are confident that with the experience of our team and the quality of our program that every student will have a unique educational opportunity they will always remember. Students will come away inspired by the possibilities of self-governance and their own capacity for democratic leadership with skills that will last a lifetime.