Mission
Students for Civic Impact educates and empowers high school students from around the world to become engaged citizens through university-level academics, respectful dialogue, civic discourse, and experiential learning.
Vision
Students will be able to find their voice by learning communication and collaboration skills to build inclusive communities of awareness, understanding, and action.
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. Realizing there was no program left like the one they envisioned and had seen make such a difference in the lives of thousands of students, the Civic Impact founders quickly organized to set up a new non-profit to serve future students inspired by the JSA summer schools and programs in which they participated and led.
Students for Civic Impact reimagines JSA’s 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. It’s 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.
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 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. 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.
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.
To learn more about the importance of cross-cultural connections, collaboration, and social learning in adolescence, see the following readings:
“Why Is Multicultural Education Important to Students?”
"Project-Based Learning for the 21st Century"—see pages 40-41
"How can project-based learning prepare students for the 21st century?"
Curriculum connections
United States, Common Core—see page 7
The "summer slide" can be prevented or lessened by providing students with socially and academically enriching activities like our program.
