Programs and resources
Community needs more people who know how to show up.
Civicship Works helps young people move from being reached to building relationships, participating with purpose, and leading in the communities they call home.
Why Civic Education and Engagement Is Critical
Community does not maintain itself.
For generations, Americans learned how to live together not only through textbooks or elections, but through clubs, neighborhood groups, congregations, unions, recreation leagues, schools, service organizations, block associations, and informal circles of care. Those spaces taught people how to listen, disagree, organize, help, and belong.
Bowling Alone gave a name to what many communities were already feeling: the networks of trust and reciprocity that hold public life together had been thinning. The concern was never really about bowling. It was about what disappears when people stop joining, showing up, and knowing one another well enough to act together.
That tension matters. People still care. They still serve. They still want to belong to something larger than themselves. Yet participation is often episodic, institutions can feel distant, and too many young people are expected to navigate community life without being personally invited into it.
The answer is not simply more information. It is more relationship, service, purpose, and places where people can practice caring for one another. That is the humane promise behind civicship: not turning everyone into a political expert, but helping people become neighbors, contributors, question-askers, problem-solvers, and stewards of the places they share.
Reach out to someone who has not been asked. Bring a young person into the room. Learn the name of the person who serves your block, school, or neighborhood. Offer one hour. Ask one question. Civic life grows through small acts repeated by many people.
Mutual aid, neighborhood associations, clubs, congregations, schools, and service groups made participation part of ordinary life.
Social movements and community organizations widened public participation and showed how organized people could reshape institutions.
Bowling Alone documented a long decline in many forms of civic participation and social connection.
The work is to rebuild connection around relationships, service, purpose, and the everyday spaces where people meet.
Data sources: U.S. Census Bureau and AmeriCorps, 2023 Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement; Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone; U.S. Surgeon General resources on social connection.
About Us
People first. Place matters. Insight should lead to action.
Civicship Works is powered by Re/val Strategies, a research, evaluation, strategy, and community-engagement firm that helps organizations understand what is happening, why it matters, and how to move from evidence to meaningful action.
Our work sits where people, place, policy, education, and opportunity meet. We partner with schools, nonprofits, foundations, public agencies, community leaders, and young people to create practical experiences and resources that are rigorous enough for institutions and human enough for the communities they serve.
We do not believe communities need more programs designed at a distance. They need thoughtful invitations, relevant information, strong relationships, and opportunities to practice shaping the places where they live. Civicship Works turns that belief into programs, tools, research, and partnerships.
We ask better questions, listen for what standard measures miss, and translate knowledge into decisions and experiences people can use.
The Team
DaVonti’ Haynes
Founder and Lead Strategist
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Hover or focus to reveal emailPrograms
Each program can stand alone, or the three can be combined to create a broader journey from exploration and preparation to civic understanding and participation.
The Opportunity Exchange
An interactive, live exploration of what it takes to move from an interest to an actual education, career, service, or workforce pathway—and how public and community supports fit into adult life.
Why this program matters
Young people are often asked what they want to become without being shown the steps, credentials, costs, decisions, and support systems between where they are and where they hope to go. This experience makes that pathway visible, social, and practical.
How the experience works
Participants select a career or life direction, meet a real employer or representative, and learn what credentials are required. When preparation is still needed, they move through college, training, trade, apprenticeship, military, workforce, and community-resource stations before returning ready to move forward.
What participants encounter
- Local employers explaining real entry requirements, responsibilities, advancement opportunities, and workplace expectations.
- College and community-college admissions staff describing programs, applications, financial aid, and credential pathways.
- Trade, apprenticeship, workforce-development, military, and service representatives outlining alternatives to a four-year degree.
- Social-service agencies explaining supports such as food assistance, workforce programs, transportation, health care, voting, and other adult systems.
Suggested format
A live, high-energy school or community event using stations, role cards, pathway tickets, and guided reflection. The experience can be adapted to local employers, institutions, opportunities, services, and workforce needs.
Who helps bring it to life
Schools, employers, colleges, workforce agencies, trade and apprenticeship programs, military and service organizations, public agencies, local government departments, social-service providers, and community partners.
Clear outcomes
Participants leave with a clearer view of the steps between an aspiration and a real pathway—and with names, programs, and supports they can act on.
Connect goals to credentials
Identify the education, training, experience, or service requirements connected to a chosen pathway.
Navigate available supports
Recognize where to seek admissions, workforce, financial, public-benefit, and community assistance.
Take a next step
Leave with at least one concrete action, contact, application, visit, or question to pursue.
Pathways
A four-year cohort program delivered in high schools through monthly live instruction that helps students grow into informed community participants while preparing for college, community college, work, trades, service, military pathways, or other postsecondary directions.
A sustained invitation
Pathways does not treat civic learning or postsecondary preparation as a one-day event. Students move together through a four-year sequence that grows with their experiences, questions, responsibilities, and decisions.
Cohort-based learning
Students develop relationships with one another and with consistent facilitators. Monthly instruction combines discussion, civic knowledge, community exploration, practical planning, and opportunities to apply what they are learning.
Four-year learning arc
- Year 1 — Engage: identity, community, belonging, interests, and how local institutions affect everyday life.
- Year 2 — Connect: relationships, public systems, education and career options, mentors, and community resources.
- Year 3 — Participate: communication, service, advocacy, teamwork, public problem-solving, and postsecondary planning.
- Year 4 — Lead: transition planning, civic responsibility, leadership practice, next-step execution, and giving back.
Program structure
One live instructional experience each month across four school years, supported by cohort activities, reflection, local speakers, field experiences, and practical tools. Content can align with school calendars and local opportunities while preserving the overall sequence.
Possible learning experiences
Community mapping, local-government exploration, postsecondary visits, employer conversations, service projects, public-speaking practice, civic simulations, resource navigation, financial and workforce preparation, and individual transition planning.
Clear outcomes
Students build civic habits and postsecondary readiness over time rather than being expected to make major life decisions from disconnected information.
Belong and contribute
See themselves as people whose knowledge, choices, relationships, and actions matter to community life.
Prepare across pathways
Evaluate college, community college, workforce, trade, service, military, and other options with practical information.
Graduate with a plan
Complete concrete next steps while understanding how to seek support, participate, and lead beyond high school.
Policy to the People
A practical civic-learning experience organized around five essential ways to understand and engage with public policy.
Policy in 5
Participants learn a five-part method for examining any public policy: what it is, who created it, who it affects, how it is implemented, and what people can do in response.
Policy close to home
Each session connects policy to a recognizable issue, service, institution, or community condition so participants can see how public decisions operate in everyday life.
The five parts of Policy in 5
- What: Identify the policy, decision, rule, budget, or practice in clear language.
- Who: Identify who proposed it, approved it, administers it, and has authority to change it.
- Impact: Examine who may benefit, who may carry burdens, and how places or groups may experience it differently.
- Implementation: Follow how the decision moves through agencies, institutions, funding, staff, and local practice.
- Action: Determine how people can ask questions, provide input, organize, testify, monitor, evaluate, or advocate for change.
Program experiences
Policy in 5 exercises, issue-mapping activities, policy simulations, community conversations, youth forums, public-document reviews, and facilitated examinations of current local issues.
Possible formats
Interactive workshop, classroom lesson, civic-learning event, community forum, or facilitated policy lab.
Clear outcomes
Participants leave with a repeatable five-part process they can use to examine public decisions and decide how to respond.
Use Policy in 5
Apply the five-part framework to a real policy, decision, rule, budget, or practice.
Identify responsibility
Recognize who creates, approves, administers, implements, and can change a public decision.
Choose an action
Select an appropriate way to ask questions, provide input, monitor implementation, organize, testify, or advocate.
Know and Contact Your Public Officials
Effective participation begins with knowing who is responsible—and continues with learning how to communicate clearly, respectfully, and persistently.
Know Who Represents You
A practical guide to identifying the people and offices responsible for representing, serving, regulating, administering, and making decisions for your community.
More than names and titles
Participants learn not only who holds an office but what that office controls, what it does not control, how levels of government overlap, and where local departments and appointed officials fit.
Representation close to home
The experience starts with the participant's actual address or community and moves through neighborhood, school, municipal, county, state, and federal structures.
What participants build
- A personal representation map tied to where they live, attend school, or work.
- A working understanding of elected officials, appointed officials, public agencies, boards, departments, and constituent-service offices.
- A guide for determining which office is responsible for a particular issue or question.
- A reliable process for finding official contact information and verifying current officeholders.
Possible formats
Classroom lesson, youth workshop, community session, civic scavenger hunt, representation-mapping activity, or companion experience to Contacting Your Public Officials.
Clear outcomes
Participants leave knowing who to look for, where responsibilities sit, and how to avoid being passed from office to office without direction.
Identify representatives
Find current officials and offices across local, county, state, and federal government.
Match issues to offices
Determine which person, department, agency, board, or level of government is responsible.
Use trustworthy sources
Verify information through official websites, public directories, district maps, and agency resources.
Contacting Your Public Officials
A hands-on experience in communicating with elected officials, appointed leaders, government staff, departments, agencies, boards, and public-service offices at every level.
Contact with a purpose
Participants learn how to report a problem, request support, ask for information, share an experience, offer an idea, invite participation, follow up on a public service, or contribute to a decision.
Choose the right method
The program compares email, telephone calls, office visits, constituent-service requests, public comment, testimony, meetings, letters, online portals, social media, and other communication channels.
What participants practice
- Writing a clear subject line and concise message that identifies the issue, location, impact, request, and desired response.
- Making a respectful and focused phone call or in-person request.
- Preparing for a meeting with an official or staff member.
- Submitting public comment, testimony, service requests, complaints, and follow-up documentation.
- Knowing when to contact an elected representative, department, agency, ombudsperson, public board, or other official.
Public officials include more than elected leaders
Participants consider mayors, council members, commissioners, legislators, congressional offices, governors, school-board members, agency leaders, department directors, public authorities, clerks, inspectors, ombudspersons, constituent-service staff, and other appointed or career public servants.
Possible formats
Interactive workshop, classroom lesson, communication lab, issue-based simulation, public-comment preparation session, or companion program to Know Who Represents You.
Clear outcomes
Participants gain the confidence and practical skill to communicate with public institutions without needing to already feel like civic experts.
Make a clear request
Communicate the issue, relevant facts, community impact, and action being requested.
Use the right channel
Select an appropriate office, person, platform, meeting, or public process.
Follow through
Document communication, ask for timelines, respond to referrals, and continue engagement responsibly.
Books
Books written by Civicship Works team members can be featured here as they become available. Duplicate a book card to add a title; empty its title to remove it.
Sample Book Title
Use this space for a concise description of the book and its connection to civic life, community, youth, or public participation.
Where to buy →
Future Team Book
Add the book’s purpose, intended audience, publisher, and available formats.
Purchase or learn more →Research
Use this section to feature articles, reports, briefs, studies, and public scholarship produced by team members. Duplicate an entry to add research; empty the title to remove it.
Sample Research or Report Title
Summarize the question, community, major insight, and why the work matters in practice.
Read the research →
Future Research Feature
Add a plain-language overview and connect the findings to programs, policy, or community action.
View publication →Opportunity to Partner
Bring civicship closer to where people live and learn.
We partner with schools, nonprofits, public agencies, foundations, employers, colleges, workforce organizations, community groups, and local leaders to adapt programs and resources to real places and real priorities.
Partnership may include hosting a program, contributing local expertise, connecting young people to opportunities, sponsoring participation, supporting research, or helping build the relationships required for sustained civic engagement.
Donate and Support
Support this work
Help more young people see a place for themselves in civic and community life.
Your support helps bring practical programs, local relationships, civic-learning tools, books, research, and opportunities for participation to schools and communities. A contribution is not only support for a program. It is an investment in the places where people learn to know one another, serve together, and build a shared future.
The civicship journey
Participation grows when people are invited into it.
Civicship is not a single lesson or event. It is a progression. We begin by reaching people intentionally, help them build meaningful connections, create practical opportunities to participate, and support them as they grow into leadership in their schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and communities.
Engage
Reach out intentionally, make the first invitation, and connect civic learning to real interests, questions, and everyday life.
Connect
Build relationships with people, institutions, opportunities, and communities that can help young people move forward.
Participate
Practice asking questions, navigating systems, contacting leaders, using resources, and contributing to public life.
Lead
Develop the confidence, habits, knowledge, and responsibility to help others and strengthen the places we share.
Civicship Works helps schools and communities create the next meaningful invitation.
Resources
Tools that help people keep participating.
These sample modules show how books, guides, activities, and public-facing tools can appear. Empty a resource title and its card disappears automatically.
Civicship Starter Guide
A sample downloadable guide introducing the Engage–Connect–Participate–Lead journey.
Download sample →Contacting an Official Worksheet
A sample planning tool for identifying the right office and preparing a clear message or request.
View sample →Educator and Facilitator Resources
A sample location for lesson extensions, reflection questions, facilitation notes, and local adaptation tools.
Browse sample →