Beginning in 1998, the Civic Education Consortium has received support annually from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to distribute grants ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 for innovative, collaborative civic education projects that develop effective citizenship among North Carolina’s children and youth. Since its inception, the program has awarded over $470,000 to 79 outstanding projects across the state.

The Consortium is especially interested in funding programs that:

• Foster direct application of classroom civics lessons, allowing teachers/adult leaders and students to use the community as a learning laboratory;
• Involve youth directly in government issues, programs, processes or services;
• Incorporate service-learning in aspects of the curriculum that help young people learn about civic/community involvement or explore public policy issues;
• Help teachers or adult leaders learn more effective ways of teaching civics and government, such as experience-based programs, dialoguing about current events, and using "real life" issues in the curriculum;
• Encourage students to value democracy and exercise both rights and responsibilities of citizenship;
• Involve families with low income on citizenship development;
• Involve participants who are diverse in background, age, achievement level, income, ethnicity, religion and geography.
  

Past Small Grants Recipients

For additional information about the Small Grants Program contact Christie Hinson at hinson@sog.unc.edu or 919.962.8389.