"Democracy doesn't trickle down from an economy, it bubbles up from people."
From Silos to Synergy for Civic Thriving | March 2026
Educating young people for democracy has been stuck in a silo.
It’s time to get it unstuck.
Our young people are growing up in a polycrisis. AI disruption, climate change, global tensions, and the fragility of democracy have everyone on edge.
Meanwhile, young people are signaling that they’re not ok: mental health, learning outcomes, and engagement in school are in decline.
Many are seeking solutions, but they do so in silos of expertise and age.
Six months of research, 50 practitioner interviews, and research sessions with 25 young people across 6 states revealed a surprising convergence: the solution to all of these challenges is the same. It’s shifting learning systems so that they nuture relationships. That will lead not just to better learning, but to civic thriving.
The Core Insight
Democracy doesn’t trickle down:
it bubbles up from people.
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 and science have 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 and civic imagination of our communities.
Young people are calling for our systems to nurture them into the adults they dream of becoming.
Researchers and practitioners across a wide variety of fields are converging on what it takes to do just that.
If we listen and act, we can create the conditions from which democracy bubbles up: a world in which people care about their own dignity and freedom and about protecting the same for others.
We conducted research with more than 75 individuals including research with young people were distilled into this report.
A multi-layered architecture of aspiration
The New Civics: Intergenerational, Science-Backed, and Collaborative
The new approach to civic renewal begins with adults who genuinely believe the future can be magnificent and who believe that every young person has something remarkable to contribute.
It continues by creating spaces to imagine together what that brighter future for our community might look like.
That articulation of aspiration and imagination builds the curiosity, commitment and drive to engage in the messy, wonderful work of contributing to the civic square.
This form of civic learning is, by nature, dynamic. It belongs not just to the fortunate few, but to all.
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 thriving for all young people.
read the report >
Introducing a Fresh Look at Civic Learning
We are look at our civics issues with a new set of lenses.
"We don't need more perfect students. We need more curious minds who care — and don't mind caring loudly."
3 Lenses
01.
Youth Lens
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 waiting to be unlocked through relationships and experiences of contribution.
Authentic Co-Creation
02.
History Lens
Memory + Imagination
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 waiting to be unlocked through relationships and experiences of contribution.
03.
Systems Lens
The systems lens asks “what are the levers to transform learning for all that works for all at scale ?”
Metrics that measure the right things
Adult capacity that meets young people where they are
Narrative change that redefines what school is for
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
"Democracy depends on memory and imagination."
12 Design Tenets
Three interwoven strands, like strands of DNA,
carry the 12 design tenets that shape the building blocks of civic learning.
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
Curiosity is the engine
Deeper learning builds agency
Key Learning
Co-creation over tokenism
Power must be shared, not performed
Key Learning
To Come
To Come
Fall 2025 Youth Participants | Authoring Tomorrow
Contribution isn't a reward for readiness.
It's how readiness grows.
Authoring Tomorrow: Youth Insights
Young people are the authors of tomorrow.
Across 25 young people from 6 states, the same convictions surfaced again and again, not as idealism but as lived truth.
Democracy = draft mode. Always in revision, always co-created, never finished.
Youth Lens
Anatomy of an Adult,
as defined by young people.
Youth mapped out what their aspirational adult looks like, not based on status or achievements, but on capacities and ways of being in the world.