History and Supporters of Students Speak Out
Our current Students Speak Out (SSO) projects are supported by the Minnesota Department of Transportation and The Comcast Foundation. We are also currently improving the capacity of our young SSO leaders as part of the Civic Youth Leadership Initiative in partnership with the Minnesota Active Citizenship Initiative (Kowalski's Markets, Cretin-Durham Hall School, and the Islamic Civic Society of America).
SSO emerged from Citizens League's Minnesota's 150th Anniversary Project (MAP 150) as we sought to improve Minnesota's problem-solving capacity by developing tools and processes that place citizens more fully in the role of "co-producers" of the public good. SSO proved to be a success on this front, and attracted attention from Education|Evolving who partnered with us to test SSO's capacity for bringing student voices into conversations about education policy issues in Milwaukee. This project brought additional investment from the Milwaukee Public Schools Futures First Initiative, The Bradley Foundation, Elizabeth A Brinn Foundation, and Bostik, Inc. We later received support from The Minneapolis Foundation and Best Buy @15 to further improve our processes and engage teens in our work. Citizens League continues to pursue investment from foundations.
In early 2010, we gathered and reported Minnesota-wide feedback on a proposal for new assessment and accountability for high schools that was prepared by a Minnesota Legislative Task Force, via University of Minnesota College Readiness Consortium. And in winter 2010/2011, teens influenced the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources as it formed a plan for the legislature regarding how to improve Parks and Trails using dedicated sales tax revenue.
In an era where citizen participation in solving public problems is increasingly understood to be important, Citizens League has the tools and processes to give young people the space to authentically voice their ideas about your on policy ideas, programs, projects, or even your school. We offer a team of consultants who come prepared to customize a package of SSO processes and tools that work for you and your budget to get the input you need to design policies and programs that work. We are also always seeking connections with youth leaders and teachers who want to find ways to get the teens they work with involved with SSO projects.
To get a further idea sense of SSO's history, we encourage you to check out our Archives and Findings pages as well as our current projects.