December 18, 2014
Contact: Taylor Cohen (602)340-7235
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Earlier this month, the Arizona Bar Foundation hosted Project Citizen, a program of the Center for Civic Education. The program encourages active participation in the community for students at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. However, Project Citizen doesn’t teach its program directly to the students, the program focuses on training the educators so they can return to their schools and implement the program with their students. This particular training event was a webinar, allowing educators from throughout the state to attend virtually. The webinar utilized several tools that allowed participants to actively participate in small group activities, sometimes even connecting educators from opposite sides of the state in comprehensive group training activities.

Project Citizen helps to promote responsible and competent participation in state and local government by teaching students to identify problems in their community, and work together to develop strategies to remedy these issues through developing and implementing public policy. The program focuses on training the educators to be proficient in three main objectives; guiding students through the process of making changes in their community, understanding public policy and how it relates to students, and promoting responsible student participation in local and state government. Project Citizen is interdisciplinary, educating teachers and students on several valuable skills for helping the community. Concentrating on state and local government, the program applies students to real public policy issues and how to effectively participate in solving them.

In addition, Project Citizen is an excellent model for performance assessment, and an exceptional method for implementing project-based learning. The Arizona Bar Foundation is proud to partner with the Center for Civic Education in providing this excellent program to educators from across the state, and we are excited to see our youth grow into the future leaders of their communities with the skills they have learned through Project Citizen.