For voter registration initiatives, YSA recommends that you connect with our partners at The Civics Center (organizers of High School Voter Registration Weeks), Nonprofit VOTE (organizers of National Voter Registration Day), or the League of Women Voters.

The League of Women Voters (LWV) is a nonpartisan organization that has fought since 1920 to empower voters and defend democracy. They conduct voter registration, education, mobilization, and election protection at the national and local levels through 800+ chapters nationwide. They also power VOTE411.org, a one-stop shop for all the tools and information a voter needs to make their voice heard. With more than a million members and supporters, the League is one of the most trusted nonpartisan civic organizations in the country.

LWV has partnered with youth and youth-focused organizations since its founding, empowering and equipping young people to be civic leaders in their own communities. Local Leagues have strong relationships with school districts, college campuses, and youth-focused organizations, and work together to host civic education events, conduct voter registration drives, and more. If you’re interested in partnering with your local League, you can find contact information and reach out here.

Collaborate on a voter registration drive or another civic holiday event: Local Leagues love to host voter registration drives with partners. If you’re interested in hosting a drive to celebrate National Voter Registration Day on or around September 15th, reach out to your local League to inquire!

If you’re not hosting an event, you can still help your community update their voter registration status / register to vote at VOTE411.org.

Access more resources.

For colleges and universities, supporting this participation is closely connected to student development. When students feel confident navigating civic systems and connecting to their communities, they are more likely to feel a sense of belonging on campus and remain engaged in their communities long after graduation.

The collegiate environment is also where students encounter a simple but important question for the first time: How will you participate in America’s democratic process?

In most cases, the answer begins with voter registration.

Read more.

In high school, I became interested in local government and how communities come together to make decisions. What made it even more meaningful was being able to connect what I was learning in my classes to someone I knew. By the time I turned 18, I knew I wanted to be part of the process myself. I wanted to be a poll worker, like my mom.

I have now worked as a poll worker in my small Kentucky town for three years, and I have absolutely fallen in love with it. Working the polls has taught me a lot about elections, but the most valuable lessons have come from the people I’ve met. On Election Day, I am often one of the youngest people in the room. Many of the people I work alongside have been serving our community for decades.

Read more.

The ALL IN team has developed Voting 101 resources, written guides to help student voters to navigate the voting process.

Check out our information on provisional ballots and our resource for multilingual voters.

In February 2026, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon declared, “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research—not influencing elections.” Unfortunately, her definition of “influencing” appears expansive and seems to extend to nonpartisan activities such as on-campus voter registration drives designed to encourage civic engagement among students.

The statement came in a press release announcing a Department of Education investigation into the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE). NSLVE is a nonpartisan research initiative that tracks student voter participation; colleges and universities use its data to develop effective engagement strategies. The investigation extends to NSLVE’s sponsor, Tufts University, and the National Student Clearinghouse, which provides authoritative enrollment data for NSLVE’s analysis of student civic participation. The department has also threatened to revoke funding for the thousand-plus institutions participating in NSLVE.

Read more.

Whether you’re starting a new initiative, seeking additional services for students, or fostering cross-sector collaboration, asset mapping can help you unlock the potential already present in your schools and communities. Learn strategies for implementing Community Asset Mapping in your communities, including gathering data, connecting with key community stakeholders, and brainstorming steps to take action.

Learn more.

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Transformative Teacher Education: Disrupting Pedagogy, Practice, and Ideology to Forge Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) documents the collective journeys of over 20 faculty members across more than a dozen Pennsylvania institutions of higher education as they worked to embed CRSE into teacher preparation. The chapters share stories of policy sense-making, navigating resistance, and finding solidarity through community. This book is for Prek-12 and higher educators as well as others who believe that teaching is political, transformative, and rooted in love and liberation.

Learn more and read excerpts here.

For bulk order discount codes, please contact luca.poxon@temple.edu.

While we will not pretend to have all the answers to students’ questions, Campus Compact is actively working to add to the conversation—from student fellowships to free online trainings to national coalition groups to seeding new initiatives.

Learn more.

The purpose of this study was to explore what programmatic aspects of a nonformal service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) program contributed to youth being authentically engaged in their communities and how youth participants define engagement. The program investigated was a high school leadership program for students who self-identified as women. Using a sequential explanatory mixed methods design, data was collected via surveys and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data found that components of the Emergent Theory of the Role of Context in Service-Learning Practice Model (Fox & LaChenaye, 2016) were positively associated with participants’ engagement. Additionally, four interview themes emerged about what authentic engagement means to participants: applying learned materials, community and connections, empowered to make a difference, and unique times of COVID-19. Based on these findings and past research, three recommendations were created: the power of empowerment, community, and youth voice.

Learn more and listen to the recording. (Scroll down.)

The need is not in dispute. Whole swaths of urban America, disproportionately Black and low-income, live without a supermarket within reach, and the market forces behind that gap have only hardened. The top 20 food retailers’ share of American grocery sales nearly doubled between 1990 and 2019, from 35 percent to 65 percent. Roughly half of all retail stores opened in the United States between 2018 and 2021 were dollar stores, and researchers have found that every three dollar-store openings push out roughly one nearby grocer. A grocery store is a one-to-two-percent margin business. Operators go where volume is guaranteed and real estate is cheap relative to sales. In the neighborhoods that need them most, the arithmetic fails, and the private market is not coming back on its own.

But local governments hold two key levers that can change the arithmetic: real estate and patient capital. Cities own land, buildings, and balance sheets, and they can accept risks and returns that no private grocer can.

Read more.

More than 100 million Americans alive today are too young to remember the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 – or have a personal understanding of the impact of the rare period of unity and service in America that immediately followed the attacks.

We suggest starting your 9/11 Day of Service planning with these eleven reflections about 9/11/01 and related ideas for service or service-learning projects:

1. We came together to rebuild communities.
2. We became more aware of differences and more committed to understanding diversity.
3. We grew to understand the importance of meeting basic needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter.
4. We renewed our commitment to democracy.
5. We were linked to and embraced by a global community.
6. People supported one another with acts of kindness and good will.
7. We emerged with a new fervor and focus on a better future.
8. Everyday acts of service can be heroic.
9. We remember the many who answered the call to serve that day.
10. Our community organizations helped us to survive and thrive.
11. Despite fear and uncertainty, we still supported one another and our community.

Also, the National Youth Leadership Council (nylc) offers two 9/11 Day service-learning toolkits – a student toolkit and a facilitator guide. In the spirit of the unity we felt so strongly after 9/11, these resources are the premier guide to achieving meaningful service with real academic outcomes in just a matter of hours.

The five dynamics we are focused on in this year’s report include two things that are giving us deep inspiration, two big open questions that feel very live to us in this moment, and an exciting opportunity we see to build for the future.

We include the stories and perspectives of executive leaders from organizations in our community, along with ideas for next steps that we believe could move the needle. It is also important to note that this report is intended to initiate a shared conversation between funders and practitioners.

Read more.

To better support educators and youth in this work, the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) is excited to introduce their updated service-learning cycle: IGNITE. IGNITE provides a simple, six-phase roadmap designed to guide youth from initial curiosity to meaningful community change.

Read more.

While we will not pretend to have all the answers to students’ questions, Campus Compact is actively working to add to the conversation—from student fellowships to free online trainings to national coalition groups to seeding new initiatives.

Read more.

Building on the presentations and scholarly work shared during the fall 2025 CUMU Annual Conference, The Power of Place, in Baltimore, MD, this issue features institutional models, strategies, and methodologies for place-based and relationship-centered university-community partnerships. Guest edited by Joby Taylor and Eric Ford, these scholarly works ask and illustrate how we as people and institutions can collaboratively and constructively engage with our communities from a place-based perspective.

Read the journal.

Published by the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU), MUJ disseminates scholarship relevant to urban and metropolitan colleges and universities. MUJ accepts manuscripts on an ongoing basis.

Become a journal peer reviewer

We need you to help build the field. Your professional experiences provide invaluable insights on topics important to urban and metropolitan universities. Whether you describe yourself as an administrator, community partner, or scholar, we need your perspective to review how ideas translate to practice. Reviewing potential Metropolitan Universities journal articles is an excellent opportunity to engage with emerging scholarship. Fill out this form to be considered.

• AmeriCorps State and National: In July, AmeriCorps awarded more than $387 million to state service commissions and 260 nonprofit, faith-based, and community organizations – the agency’s largest grant competition. The funding will support AmeriCorps members nationwide and unlocks more than $166 million in education awards members can use to pay for college or student loans.
• Native Nations Grants: Last month, AmeriCorps awarded 10 grants totaling $4.1 million to Native Nations and Native-led organizations, supporting over 243 AmeriCorps members serving tribal communities.
• AmeriCorps Seniors RVSP: This summer, AmeriCorps Seniors awarded 130 RSVP grants totaling more than $19.8 million to organizations engaging volunteers 55 and older in communities across the country.

We are excited to see the impact these resources will have in communities and on those who serve in the year ahead. Together, these investments are a powerful reminder of the scale and reach of AmeriCorps – and why continued support from Congress matters.

The book highlights the transformative power of these efforts, demonstrating how institutions can creatively address societal challenges, build stronger community relationships, and drive institutional change.

Each chapter offers both inspiration and practical guidance, presenting promising practices and lessons learned while redefining the concept and development of place-based engagement. The book highlights the transformative power of these efforts, demonstrating how institutions can creatively address societal challenges, build stronger community relationships, and drive institutional change. (Includes Chapter 3: Drexel University: Jobs Today and Jobs Tomorrow in West Philadelphia, Joanne Ferroni.)

Learn more.

Learn more and read the articles.

Catalyst is a partnership between the Wake Forest University Office of Civic & Community Engagement and NC Campus Engagement.

Learn more and download the report.