give

In light of recent events involving deep cuts to the NEH and the termination of general operating support grants to all state humanities councils, Humanities Montana is currently unable to offer programs and grants.

The Democracy Project

Resources
Survey of Interest
Current Participant Toolkits
Previous Years

Funded by the Charles Engelhard Foundation

Teen-led Civic Participation

What is the Democracy Project?
The Democracy Project is a teen-led, non-partisan initiative supported by local libraries, community partners, and Humanities Montana. This program gives teens the resources to meet community needs while learning their role in an evolving democracy. Through direct civic engagement, teens work for six months on projects they feel are vital to their community, ending with a public showcase.

Jennifer.Bevill@humanitiesmontana.org

Teens build skills like:

Leadership
Critical and Creative Thinking
Collaboration
Information Literacy

Year Four Program Locations:

Open to people 13-19 years old

For the 2024-25 project year, the Democracy Project welcomes 7 sites in the full program and 6 sites in the soft launch option. The soft launch option is for libraries who wish to build a teen audience before joining the full program. This year, the Democracy Project short film premiered. Created to support sites in gathering teen groups, explaining the program to parents, partners, and funders, and generally building excitement about participating, the film is available on the Democracy Project webpage. Participating librarians traveled to Providence, RI to present alongside Humanities Montana program staff at the National Humanities Conference. At the conference, the Democracy Project was awarded a prestigious Schwartz Prize for outstanding public humanities programming from the Federation of State Humanities Councils. As the Montana biennial legislature is now in session, Democracy Project teens have been focused on voter registration, understanding the ballot, and following what their representatives are doing in Helena.

Current and Recent Projects

What Teens are saying: