🔹🔹🔹🔹 WELCOME TO YOUTH IN ACTION 🔹🔹🔹🔹
🔹🔹 WHERE REAL PEOPLE MAKE REAL POWER MOVES 🔹🔹
Eighteen is not a magic number. Power up youth do not until they’re 18 to get in the real life game. They begin shaping the world they want to live in now. When they ask questions, learn about their communities, connect with others and take action together and they use their “power for good” now.
Their perspective knowledge, skills, and ideas questions and voice are their power now. They realize they don’t have to know everything or do everything alone. They find partners and real world ways to put their power to good use now.
You can too. Start now, where you are. Discover what matters to you. Connect with your helpers. Help solve real world and make a power move for your future right now. We can help you do it.
🔹 WEVE BEEN MAKING POWER MOVES SINCE 2024 🔹
To us “Learning is Lifin’”. Learning is more than what happens in a classroom. Learning is how we start shaping our world. Power Up With YOUth learn the issues. They learn and connect with people, organizations, and opportunities that help them discover what they can do—and they learn they can take action and make a difference.
🔹Look At What Happens When Power Up People Take Action Together
Power up youth get opportunities to explore real issues, work with others, and contribute to something that matters.
The people who pour into them help to turn knowledge into action and possibilities into progress. Look at some of the things we are doing and what we have done.
1. Up the Turnout 2026
Informed People. Stronger Democracy.
Democracy works best when people understand their power and use it. Up the Turnout 2026 focuses on helping young people and community members move from awareness to understanding, from understanding to participation, and from participation to meaningful voting. Votng is the first step in their responsibility as citizens to understand elections, evaluate information, learn about ballot measures and participate in decisions that affect their lives.
Voting is important. Your voice matters —and it takes a lot of informed voices to make democracy strong.
2. Up the Turnout 2024
The Action
In 2024, Power Up With YOUth worked with 8 San Diego Unified District 8 Schools and the BAPACSD Foundation and 120 students to encourage their eligible friends and family to participate, register, and vote.
The effort demonstrated what young people can accomplish when they have the knowledge, tools and opportunities to take action. Participating students exceeded their goal of reaching 1,200 additional voters.
The Project lesson: Young people are not just future leaders. They can make a difference right now.
3. Transform the Trail - Phase One
The Action
Transform the Trail reflects an important part of civic engagement: learning to see your community with fresh eyes, recognize opportunities for improvement and work with others to make a difference.
A youth walking through the Encanto community saw a neglected walking trail and recognized its potential to connect people and places. What began as noticing a problem became an opportunity to ask questions, explore possibilities and bring attention to realizing the City’s promise of a high quality community wellness resource.
The Project lesson
Change can begin with one person noticing something others have overlooked.
4. Power Up the Trail 2.0
The opportunity Power Up the Trail 2.0 is the next chapter and expands the idea beyond the trail itself and turn a community concern into a cultural and wellness asset .
The Starting Point. Bridges to What’s Possible
The starting point for learning, relationships and collective action is imaging and asking questions.
How can young people and residents connect with the organizations, public officials, information and resources that can help address community needs?
The next right step. Bringing people together to discover where we are, share truth and knowledge, explores how youth, community organizations, residents, schools and public institutions can work together to connect possibilities and people.
The Power up Project Lesson: Every Project Can Be a Connection Point
Whether registering voters, learning about democracy, identifying a community need or connecting people with resources, young people can help shape what happens next. When we meet people where they are, build bridges to what’s possible, and help take the next right step we make a power move, It’s your world too. What move will you make with your power?
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The Power Up With Youth Lessons:
1. Make Your move you way
Not every young person will choose the same move—and that’s a good thing. You don’t have to do everything. You can discover what interests you, what you have to offer, and where your contribution might make a difference.
One young person may move to understand how government works. Another may move to use technology to investigate a community concern. Someone else may have a talent for design, a passion for helping people, or an idea that brings people together.
The Power Up With Youth Lesson:
2. Connect. Start by discovering your thing. Then make connections. Ask questions, learn a skill, join an existing effort, share an idea, or help someone else.
True story:
One important connection began with an everyday conversation.
Power up leader, Sandra, met a local professional and his wife at a line-dancing class and learned about his company, Spatial Perspective Group LLC, which provides aerial mapping and business solutions.
That conversation led to an opportunity to connect the professional’s expertise with STEM students to make a move on a real life community concern.
Working together, they used drone photography to document the trail. Students had the opportunity to work with specialized technology, and some operated the drones under the appropriate arrangements.
The effort brought together community knowledge, professional expertise, young people’s curiosity, and technology.
It also gave students an opportunity to see how skills they were learning could be used to investigate a real-world issue.
A conversation opened a door. A connection created an opportunity. Young people got to learn by doing.
Start where you are. Find your people. Take your own next right step.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR POWER UP WITH YOUTH?
More Possibilities. More Connections.
Power Up With YOUth is continuing to explore ways to connect young people with real-world projects, community organizations, people with specialized knowledge, and opportunities to learn and contribute.
We’re interested in what young people care about, what communities need, and what might become possible when people connect their strengths.
As new projects develop, this is where we’ll share the opportunities, experiences, and contributions of young people in action.
YOUR TURN. What Would You Like to Do?
You might have an idea of your own. You might want to learn something new, meet people doing meaningful work, or find a way to contribute to your community. You don’t have to figure it out alone. Power Up With YOUth. It’s your world, too.
Explore Get involved.