Youth Outreach: Voter Registry, Civics, News Literacy

The LWV of Alameda views our youth as critical to the future health of our democracy. With this in mind, we are exploring a number of ways to increase youth awareness of issues affecting their lives. On a practical level, we encourage and assist voting-age youth to exercise the right to vote. Youth outreach is perhaps our most important mission.

Youth Voter
Registry
The League of Women Voters of Alameda, with the assistance of the Registrar of Voters (ROV) visit civic classes in participating Alameda high schools once a year to demonstrate online voter registration through the California Secretary of State website.

The ROV helps students understand the responsibilities of keeping one's registration current.

The LWV of Alameda demonstrates the use of the State website; and we show them how the Voter's Edge website provides unbiased, in-depth voting information on candidates and ballot measures.  

Youth Civics Program
In partnership with the College of Alameda (CoA), the League of Women Voters of Alameda has created the Democracy Matters: High School Civics Scholarship Program to help students become informed, critical thinkers and participants in Making Democracy Work.

This lively educational program, begun in 2015, encourages students to develop their communication skills in competition with their peers by analyzing and taking positions on key public policy issues. This program was begun to increase youth engagement in the League, expose teens to our education and advocacy missions, and enrich local schools' civics education.

Debate topics are selected from positions taken by the League of Women Voters. The winner receives a $1,000 scholarship, and the runner up a $500 scholarship. All participants earn League recognition and a credit in Communications from the CoA. This year's event details are below. 

Speech
Tournament
Since 2015, The League of Women Voters of Alameda and College of Alameda (CoA) have held an annual Democracy Matters High School Civics Scholarship Speech Tournament. All high school students who enter receive a college credit from the Communication Department at COA for their participation. Additionally, the winner receives a $1,000 scholarship and the runner-up gets a $500 scholarship. 

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we are unable to hold this event in 2020, but we look forward to being able to doing so again in the spring of 2021. 

News Literacy & Civics
We have created Verify, an online, single-player news literacy and civics education game to help middle school, high school, and college students identify fake news and understand the U.S. election process. However, we think that people of all ages can benefit from playing. We are all susceptible to believing misinformation or disinformation, and we must all become informed citizens to protect our democracy.   

Click the Verify logo to play. Educators, you can get details about the LWV of Alameda's news literacy and civics education game on our Verify webpage.