Adolescents, including the 5.25 million young people who call California home, live in an increasingly complex and chaotic world. The public education system plays a unique and essential role in supporting young people as they develop critical thinking skills and make meaning of the rapidly changing world around them. The Purpose of Education (POE) Fund centers the role of public education in the country’s diverse democracy and aims to make California an example of schooling that enlivens civic engagement.

The POE Fund’s expansive definition of civic education includes experiential and hands-on opportunities for learning and engagement inside and outside of school. To this end and as a companion to school-based efforts, the POE Fund invests in youth organizing as a successful strategy for supporting adolescents with the opportunities, skills, and orientations to be actively engaged in advancing positive change in their communities. Civic education and engagement in and out of formal school settings can support positive long-term outcomes, including lifelong voting, the development of valuable workplace and leadership skills, deepening of young people’s sense of community and social networks, and the promotion of collective action towards common goals.

There is an opportunity to build energy and momentum for this work in California due to the state’s investment in the State Seal of Civic Engagement, a rich history of youth organizing, a set of promising organizations working to advance youth engagement and agency, and an existing research base on the types of engagement and education that yield strong youth outcomes. The POE Fund will invest in innovative programs and organizations that directly reach thousands of California’s adolescents, fund research to learn what works, and identify promising opportunities to spread civic education and engagement statewide. This work serves to advance the goal of supporting adolescents to strengthen their communities and preparing them to engage in our diverse democracy.

The Stuart Foundation is partnering with leading philanthropists and foundations to advance this shared goal. The partners of the POE Fund include: California Community Foundation, Crankstart, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Longview Foundation, James B. McClatchy Foundation, San Diego Foundation, Schott Foundation for Public Education, Spencer Foundation, and Stuart Foundation.