Club Stride

Club Stride, Inc. was founded as a grassroots initiative in 1997 to support teen girls through co-curricular activity and leadership principles. The organization is a 501 (c)(3) public benefit corporation formed in the State of California in 2012 for the principal purpose of training and empowering young leaders. Today, Club Stride, Inc. provides high-quality experiential civic education to increase the scale, impact, and equity of civic engagement, to close civic participation gaps and contribute to building strong healthy communities, and to highlight connections between media literacy and civic education to ensure a youth-centered, participatory approach to civic renewal. Civic health will be a key factor in the development of our community’s future economic health. Yet, large civic participation gaps persist, and marginalized populations continue to be grossly underrepresented, while the kinds of high-quality civic learning experience necessary to promote civic readiness is distributed in favor of affluent students. Through a series of leadership and social justice initiatives, Club Stride, Inc. utilizes civic media to inspire youth expression, discussion and informed action for or against public issues. The organization has developed confident, young public speakers and community advocates since 1997. Today, our members engage in a variety of projects aimed at preparing them beyond a basic knowledge (i.e. voting and understanding how powers are divided). Our members are armed with the broader skills they will need to deliberate with fellow citizens to make difficult decisions that affect their communities, or advocating for themselves and others on matters of public relevance, and understanding how he or she can contribute to collective civic health. Students who participate in our programs are reshaping the identity of youth culture, magnifying the youth voice, and modeling a supportive and positive youth presence in the world.