The Democracy Project helps create good memories and bonds. You also get to interact with your school and community. It helps you get to know other people and their perspectives.
The Democracy Project
Funded by the Charles Engelhard Foundation and the Llewellyn 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.
Teens build skills like:
Program Locations:
2025-26 Program Year sites are indicated by green icons.
Since 2019, the nonpartisan Democracy Project program has been situated in 26 libraries across Montana including public libraries, school and community libraries, and Tribal college libraries. Through the Democracy Project, teens learn what it means to live in a participatory democracy and what privileges and responsibilities come along with being a citizen. The program expands teens’ knowledge of civics including learning about local government structures, voter registration, and the Montana State Constitution. Teens develop media literacy skills to become critical thinkers and healthy consumers of media. Each group dives deeper into an issue of their own choosing to plan and implement a project that makes an impact in their community. Supported by their local librarians, teens begin to build a lifelong relationship with their public library.
The Democracy Project was inspired by the Teens Leading Change program at the Los Angeles Public Library. In 2024, the Democracy Project was awarded the prestigious Schwartz Prize for outstanding public humanities programming from the Federation of State Humanities Councils. In 2025 some Democracy Project sites have been selected to participate in Democracy in Dialogue, a national civic education virtual exchange program of the Smithsonian Institution’s Rural Education Initiatives.
Current and Recent Projects
What Teens are saying:
Our librarian believed in us! It’s hard to do something without a believer. She helped us become more organized and brought such a positive aspect.
It’s become a huge family and we’ve been super collaborative in terms of being able to fundraise and just create this whole project from the ground up. We started with a mind mapping experience and that came all the way from a community garden to a green space and seeing it develop from last year has been an amazing experience.
I think our project will help the community by having a sanctuary that’s safe for people to go when they don’t feel like they have one. It’ll be a fun space to hang out with your friends and it’ll make our community look nicer.
We were able to introduce a bill to the legislature and create a website about mental health and spread this information, and skill sets, and vocabulary surrounding mental health for the teens in our state and that is a very pressing, pertinent, and important issue for us all.
These people will become YOUR people. Our group is full of so much love and care and it really gives you a sense of deeper meaning. If you want to be able to make a change, small or big, to make new friends that will stick with you, or find your voice, Democracy Project is a wonderful place to start.
The Democracy Project kind of just opened our eyes that we could make a change if we wanted to, instead of just waiting around for the next person to do it. We just take the initiative to do it ourselves.