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Building a Healthy Democracy with YLI and the UVA Center for Politics
This fall the University of Virginia Center for Politics and the Youth Leadership Initiative (YLI) have produced resources to help inspire students to evaluate the health of democracy in their communities. Using documentaries created by the Center, YLI developed the lesson plan, Civic Engagement: Building a Healthy Democracy, which guides students through the viewing of the Dismantling Democracy documentary series. Using that knowledge, students then take a critical eye to their own communities and work in collaboration to identify a specific problem that they will address through a service learning project. Teachers may use additional YLI resources such as Democracy Corps and Talking Turkey: Taking the Dis Out of Civil Discourse to supplement the lesson plan and engage community organizations and parents in tackling community challenges. These and all YLI lesson plans are available free of charge for registered teachers.
