From Silos to Synergy for Civic Thriving | March 2026
It’s time to get excited about civics
For too long, civics has only been able to reach a few students with the message that democracy matters and that they can shape it. It’s time to change that narrative.
Our report on Civic Thriving is an effort to do just that. It’s the result of 6 months of interviews, a collaborative gathering, and several research sessions.
But it will take all of us to shift our education systems so that they truly ensure that all young people feel supported in their growth and inspired to contribute to their communities.
read the report >
This is where it all begins.
Reading this report, interacting with it, and seeing how important it is that we create onramps to agency and mattering for all young people. This is where it all begins.
We’re in a moment of crisis.
What is the report?
We conducted 6 months of interviews with morethan 75 individuals including research with young people were distilled into this report. The core of the story is:
The Core Insight
Democracy doesn’t trickle down: it bubbles up
We long believed that a functioning economy plus a bit of civic education could produce the engaged citizens we need for a complex world. But history has proven that humans need systems of care that connect them to one another and to a shared vision for the future.
Today, technological and cultural shifts have disrupted the relational infrastructure of our communities.
Practitioners in education, mental health, civics, and community organizing all are recommending the same cure for the challenges we face: experiences and relationships that help humans thrive as individuals and in community, connected to their past, and with a sense of agency in the present and aspiration for the future. That’s when democracy bubbles up.
What is the report?
Lens 01:
History
We must see where we are in this unique moment in time, including all of its challenges, historical legacies/outdated systems, enduring values, and immense possibilities, so that we can help people of all ages to see the role they can play in writing the next chapter of our nation’s history–together.
"Democracy depends on memory and imagination."
Memory + Imagination
Lens 02:
Youth
The science of learning and development and the voices of teens themselves say the same thing. All young people, not just those who fit the mold of a young civic “leader”, have immense potential that is just waiting to be unlocked through relationships and experiences of contribution.
"We don't need more perfect students. We need more curious minds who care — and don't mind caring loudly."
Authentic Co-Creation
Lens 03:
Systems
Individual interventions and programs can have results without shifting anything at scale. The systems lens asks: what are the levers to transform learning for all? Metrics that measure the right things, adult capacity that meets young people where they are, narrative change that redefines what school is for, and network structures that let collaborative clusters replace isolated heroes.
"No one organization holds any of these levers. It takes collaborative processes and clusters forming together."
Levers + Change
Why Now
We are in a historic moment of convergence and it changes everything about how we need to act.
Researchers, practitioners, funders, educators, and young people, working separately in different silos, are arriving at the same conclusion. This is not a coincidence. It is a signal.
Trust sits at the center of it all. You cannot have self-directed learning without trust. Community-connected learning without trust. Curiosity-driven learning without trust. When we don't trust young people, we constrain them, and constrained kids disengage. The data bears this out: young people reported finding belonging and thriving outside school, not inside it.
The convergence moment is also a design challenge. This report offers 12 design tenets — not as prescriptions, but as patterns that keep emerging when adults design well for and with young people.
"Adults across different fields are arriving at the same solution. Individual and collective flourishing are mutually dependent and the field is ready to move — if we can stop competing and start weaving."
12 Design Tenents
Three interwoven strands, like strands of DNA, carry the building blocks for civic thriving.
Learning and wellbeing are inseparable and mutually reinforcing. COVID made visible what was always true: kids need to be well to learn, and they need to learn to be well.
Tenents
Learning + Wellbeing
Individual + Community
Past, Present + Future
Individual agency grows through contribution. Communities thrive with genuine participation. The trap of peak narcissism is thinking flourishing is individual — it is not.
Tenents
Identity, belonging, resilience, and agency deepen through history and imagining futures. Civic practice without historical memory is rootless; without imagination it is hopeless.
Tenents
Key Learning
Key Learning
Curiosity is the engine
Deeper learning builds agency
Key Learning
Co-creation over tokenism
Power must be shared, not performed
Key Learning
Key Learning
Co-creation over tokenism
Power must be shared, not performed
Civics has been stuck.
THREE LENSES CAN GET US UNSTUCK
After conducting 6 months worth of research, 50 interviews with practitioners, and 25 conversations with young people, a surprising convergence was revealed:
The solution to the youth mental health crisis, the AI disruption crisis, and the democratic fragility crisis may be the same thing.
Looking to Historians to Reshape the Future
02
Activating and Amplifying
Youth Voices
01
Creating Experiential Learning Systems
03
THREE LENSES CAN GET US UNSTUCK
After conducting 6 months worth of research, 50 interviews with practitioners, and 25 conversations with young people, a surprising convergence was revealed:
The solution to the youth mental health crisis, the AI disruption crisis, and the democratic fragility crisis may be the same thing.
Looking to Historians to Reshape the Future
02
Activating and Amplifying
Youth Voices
01
Creating Experiential Learning Systems
03
Spring 2026Intergenerational Field Insights Report
We are designing learning to nurture individual wellbeing and becoming, in community, connected to one’s past, present, and future that will, and can, reweave the fabric of human relationships and advance democratic mindsets and systems simultaneously.
We are in the middle
of a historic storm.
A Call for New Civics
AI disruption
Schools that fail to engage
Climate anxiety
Democratic fragility
Adults and teens are working frantically to respond, but they are working in silos defined by speciality and age.
Many are naming human flourishing as a shared north star, but our learning systems are stuck in old models, and solutions are slow to scale.
A year ago, a small group founded a network that didn’t exist. A group of humans of different ages, connected by a shared belief in how to make learning work so individuals and communities can thrive.
Spring 2026 | Intergenerational Field Insights Report
We are designing learning to nurture individual wellbeing and becoming, in community, connected to one’s past, present, and future that will and can reweave the fabric of human relationships and advance democratic mindsets and systems simultaneously.
We are in the middle
of a historic storm.
A Call for New Civics
AI disruption
Schools that fail to engage
Climate anxiety
Democratic fragility
Adults and teens are working frantically to respond, but they are working in silos defined by speciality and age.
Many are naming human flourishing as a shared north star, but our learning systems are stuck in old models, and solutions are slow to scale.
A year ago, a small group founded a network that didn’t exist. A group of humans of different ages, connected by a shared belief in how to make learning work so individuals and communities can thrive.
We now know, this is the New Civics
