The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Based on the lens of history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s best-selling book, “A People’s History of the United States”, the website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level.

Reaching 200,000 youth per year, Youth Speaks is a national organization focused on empowering youth by helping them to find their voice through spoken word and poetry. YS organizes an annual poetry slam, offers workshops, under 21 open mics, offers development opportunities for poet-mentors and teachers.

We at YouthPower believe that young people are at the heart of solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. That’s why we’re dedicated to strengthening systems in communities to achieve sustainable outcomes in health, education, and political and economic empowerment. By helping young people pursue their aspirations, we empower them to contribute to, and benefit from, the creation of more peaceful and prosperous communities.

Promoting positive youth development (PYD)
YouthPower promotes a shared understanding of positive youth development (PYD) whereby young people are empowered to reach their full potential. PYD transitions away from problem-focused responses to youth crises, to proactively building skills, fostering healthy relationships, transforming systems, and making youth an active partner in development efforts.

Advancing youth development
YouthPower improves the ability of youth-led and youth-serving institutions to design, implement, and assess the programs and policies that impact young people. Using lessons from our own research and knowledge sharing, we support the scale-up of sustainable youth programs, within and across multiple sectors. We do this to equip young people to actively engage in the development of their communities.

Creating a learning network
YouthPower’s Learning Network connects youth-serving initiatives, community-based organizations, international donors, academics, and government entities engaged in improving the knowledge, skills, practices, and partnerships around positive youth development. Together we are united in our aim to support the transition of young people into healthy, productive adults.

Providing evidence, evaluation, and technical guidance
YouthPower conducts research, evaluates innovative youth programs, and disseminates information to expand the knowledge base on what does – and does not – work in youth development. By compiling and sharing resources that take an evidence-based approach, we provide practitioners and researchers with the necessary tools to continuously improve the effectiveness of youth development practices.

The world’s largest writer’s site for young adults ages 13 to 25. Youth can share their literacy works in this online community and receive constructive criticism on their poem or story.

Take a virtual self-tour of the Yosemite National Park

Engage students with Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, a PBS KIDS series based on the Ordinary People Change the World books by Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos. The show follows the adventures of Xavier Riddle, his sister Yadina, and their friend Brad as they travel back in time to meet real life historical figures when they were kids.

Use these video clips, teaching tips, and historical figure biosketches to support students’ social-emotional, literacy, and social studies skills.