What is the Youth Civic Hub?

The digital Youth Civic Hub (youthcivichub.org) is a for youth, by youth one-stop clearinghouse of civic programming, opportunities, and resources, and an updatable calendar of civic events and opportunities in New York City.

This Hub will activate a broad range of young people in NYC, with a particular emphasis on those from historically marginalized communities and civic deserts, by helping them, their families, and their teachers identify and engage with high-quality civic opportunities that align with their interests. It will also make voting, and registering or pre-registering to vote, more accessible to young people, using youth friendly features and language.

Where are we at in the development process?

At the heart of this work is equipping New York’s young people to be informed and engaged civic actors. Thanks to the hard work of our Youth Civic Hub Working Group, we launched V1 of the Hub in April 2024. The team will continue to improve the site based on user feedback, creating an even more robust Hub in advance of the 2024 and 2025 elections.

You can read about our vision, goals, and timeline for the Hub during its ideation and research phases of 2023 in these slides below.

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What is on the Hub?

Our team of student engineers and research fellows built five central features of the Hub:

NYC Elections Portal: This page will feature up-to-date information about NYC local elections, candidate scorecards focused on young people’s high priority issues, voter registration links and deadlines, and poll worker information.

Civic Opportunities and Events Portal: Internships, jobs, volunteer opportunities, training, and events aimed at youth in one central location. We hope to establish a pipeline in which young people get and stay involved in civics, political life, and advocacy work–and organize peers and family members to do so as well.

NYC Power Map: A who’s who of elected and appointed officials–in youth friendly terms. We’ll synthesize the responsibilities of each role, the current office holder, their term length, and their contact information alongside handy guides and templates about how to effectively communicate needs to municipal officials.

Dynamic Directory: A vetted list of community organizations, services, and partners doing work around NYC for racial, criminal, economic, gender, immigration, and mental and physical health justice. This directory will be searchable based on location and issue area so that youth can find organizations in their communities doing impactful work.

Civic Glossary: A library of terms related to civic and political life in NYC to explain the complex connections between systems of power in our city in language accessible to young people–and all people.

Eventually, this Hub will credentialize civic learning, ensuring young New Yorkers receive recognition for what they’ve achieved and set them on a trajectory for lifelong civic learning and participation. NYC Civic Coalition members will identify the civic competencies their programs are developing and their process for assessing these skills. They will then map these competencies and the work of existing organizations to the requirements of the NYS Seal of Civic Readiness and to national standards for democracy education found in the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap. This will allow schools and community organizations to work together more effectively and graduate more students with the Seal of Civic Readiness.

Meet our Youth Working Group

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Tech Advisory Board

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Want to know more about the Hub or get involved in its development? Email Elisa Mateo-Saja at elisa@yvoteny.org

This work is supported by the Charles H. Revson Foundation through the NYC Civic Coalition that YVote co-leads alongside Do Something.