User:Iman2464/Youth Leadership Initiative

The Youth Leadership Initiative is a program of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, focusing on civic education for K-12 students. It provides free, technology-based civic education materials to teachers and students in public and private schools in all 50 states and Defense Department schools internationally.

The program emphasizes hands-on participation, allowing students to directly experience the electoral and legislative procedures of American government. The components of the Youth Leadership Initiative include detailed lesson plans, an online mock election, a service-learning curriculum, an online policy-making simulation which engages students in the law-making process nationwide, and a political campaign-simulating computer game.

History
The Youth Leadership Initiative was founded in 1999 as a response to a perception of increasing political apathy among citizens and a decline in the number of schools incorporating civics lessons into their curricula. In its first year it expanded across Virginia, operating in many of the state's public schools. As of 2009, the Youth Leadership Initiative serves over 23,000 classrooms across the country, in all 50 states and in U.S. territories and Defense Department schools overseas.

Mock Election
The Youth Leadership Initiative Mock Election is the largest, student-only mock election in the United States. In 2008, over 1 million students from all 50 states cast online ballots. The mock election is provided free to interested teachers at the K-12 level annually in the fall, with customizable ballots that can be modified to include local races or even elections within a particular school or classroom.

Diane Trim of Inside the School, a website for secondary educators, ranked the Youth Leadership Initiative's mock election highest among three educational mock election programs and praised the Youth Leadership Initiative program for its comprehensiveness and ease of use.

Partners
Current partners of the Youth Leadership Initiative are :
 * American Bar Association
 * National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS)
 * World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
 * Public Agenda
 * League of Women Voters
 * Close Up Foundation