2025 DMV Youth Assembly on Youth Policymaking

Sign-up to take part in the Assembly!

Are you a Washington DC-area resident of high school age?

Want to make helpful community connections, learn a lot, and advance youth voice in government?

Then take part in the first DMV Youth Assembly on Youth Policymaking!

Context

By several measures, the United States is undergoing a democracy crisis, including declining trust in government, media and other institutions; rising polarization; proliferating disinformation; lack of public civic knowledge; and longstanding inequality in civic participation.  In many cases, these problems are particularly pervasive among American youth.  Further, in schools, youth learning is typically divorced from power.  School tests, papers, and projects tend to be strictly academic exercises, intended to move youth along toward the next grade level and graduation, not to connect and socialize students as citizens in wider learning communities participating, with adults, in government policy-making.

For these reasons, Learning Life, a Washington DC-based educational nonprofit, is organizing a Youth Citizen Assembly on Youth Policymaking (hereafter, “the Assembly”) for DC area youth of high school age to be able to come together, learn, deliberate and propose policy solutions that could help give young people in the region more voice in government policymaking that affects them.

Citizen assemblies bring people together to learn, deliberate and propose policy solutions to challenges they face.  Such assemblies are held online and/or in-person, and have been used in a variety of countries, including the USA, to widen participation in policy-making at local to international levels in order to make government policies more representative of the informed views of their citizens.

Given time and budget constraints, the 2025 Youth Assembly does not follow the strict citizen assembly model (e.g., random selection of participants, paid-expert assembly of the facts, multi-day deliberation).  However, it is intended to gather youth affected by policies on a matter of pressing public concern — youth voice in government decisions that affect them — to learn, discuss and draft policy solutions, with an eye to building local public support for more rigorous, representative, annual, youth assemblies in the DC region.  Over years, such assemblies should help inform a wider spectrum of young people in the DMV, socialize them as engaged, connected citizens, and increase their influence on government policymaking to cultivate greater trust and accountability.

About the Assembly

The Youth Assembly on Youth Policymaking will occur in two parts, on Saturday, October 18, 1-3pm via Zoom, then Saturday, October 25, 1:00-3:30pm as part of the second DMV Democracy Festival, taking place at 1-6pm.

The October 25 assembly will proceed as follows:

1:00-1:15pm: Orienting remarks.

1:15-2:30: Speakers present on the problem of, and ways to think about policy solutions to the U.S. youth mental health crisis.  Participants have the opportunity to ask questions with an eye to preparing for their policy deliberations.

2:30-3:30: Participants are randomly assigned to small groups and in their groups discuss, formulate and agree upon one to three draft policy proposals for school, city, county and/or state action to address youth mental health problems.

3:30-4:15: Participants reconvene as one large group to present their proposals, and ask each other questions about their respective proposals.

4:15-4:30: Each participant votes on all the priorities proposed, assigning a priority score of 1, 2 or 3 (1 is lowest priority, 3 is highest) to each proposal.

4:30-5:00: Concluding remarks + participants complete post-survey online via their phones, or on paper if no phone available.

DemFest 2025 on October 25 culminates with a comedy show for democracy at 3:45-4:45pm and a party at 5-6pm with a variety of tasty sweets, music, community info tables, and raffle prizes.  Youth Assembly participants get free access to these culminating DemFest events.  Click here for the full DemFest schedule.

Those youth who sign up for the Assembly will be guided in their learning and deliberation in both sessions by adult professional volunteers in mental health and other relevant fields.  After the Assembly, in December, a report on the Assembly, including the youth’s policy recommendations, will be shared with all those participating, as well as government officials and staff in the DC region.

If the 2024 Assembly is successful, pending funding, Learning Life aims to make youth assemblies an annual event coinciding with DemFest, that works to give regular, public voice to DC area youth on issues and policies that affect them.  This DMV youth assembly project is part of Learning Life’s wider DMV Democracy Learning Community, an association of DC area individuals and organizations working to make democracy more fun and inclusive by developing social events, products, services and spaces that entertain and nurture learning, networking, collaboration and wider, deeper citizen participation.

Requirements & Benefits