About the non-profit

Our Education is the voice of young people across the country who believe that all American children should have access to high quality education. Created as a response to the sad reality that the most critical stakeholders in education—students themselves—do not have a voice in school reform efforts, Our Education’s mission is to improve K-12 education by engaging and empowering America’s youth in a national movement for better schools.

Our Education primary initiative is our “A Million Voices, One Right” national student petition campaign. Working with high school student leaders and college students in hundreds of schools, we are leading petition drives across the country in support of an American right to high quality public education. The goal of the petition is to gather hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of youth signatures (ages 13-24) in support of high quality education as an actual American right for ALL children, and then to deliver those signatures to our nation’s leaders in Washington , DC in 2007.

By mobilizing public demand for quality education through this campaign and our locally-focused Student Voice Project, Our Education will put long-needed pressure on our elected officials to make education a national priority, with the resources and tough, common-sense policies needed to provide all our children with first-rate schools.

What are your day-to-day responsibilities?

The greatest bulk of my time is spent communicating with high school and college student leaders across the country who are leading their petition drives on their campuses. This involves phone calls, emails, and instant messenger conversations with hundreds of students and supporting them to come up with plans for when, where, and how to gather as many signatures as possible from their classmates for quality education as an American right!

I also spend time working with our board of directors and awesome national youth advisory board, engaging in partnership management with other key stakeholders, fundraising, financial management, etc. - we wear lots of hats in the non-profit start up world ;)

Most notable milestones

- Held our 2nd annual Connecticut Student Voices Conference in Fall 2006.
- Selected a national youth advisory board of nine outstanding high school and college students in November 2006.
- Gathered our 10,000th signature on our petition for quality education as an American right in November 2006.
- Entered fourth year of Our Education the magazine, published online at www.OurEd.org/pages/the-magazine

What's the niche?

The mobilization and organization of a national, student-driven social movement for education reform has never been attempted in the U.S. A great many existing education advocacy organizations deal with education reform using a top down approach, incorporating students only when convenient and not by design. It is hardly a surprise, then, that little progress has been made for underprivileged children in recent decades. This lack of success stems from a common weakness of the organizations seeking to bring about change: they too rarely engage the individuals whom they aim to help. Herein lies the power of Our Education: because the organization is created for, composed of, and led by students, it possesses a unique combination of legitimacy, capacity, and political power that will enable it to affect real and lasting change in the American education system.

What's the biggest challenge?

The greatest challenge we face is simply the tremendous scope of the change we seek to make: overhauling the American public education system so that it serves ALL children with excellence is a big, hairy, and audiacious goal, to borrow Jim Collins' phrase.

But piece-by-piece, we're starting to make a difference as young people across the country begin discussing these issues and signing up to be a part of our movement for change.

What's in store for the future?

The national student petition campaign will continue for the better part of 2007, after which we will be holding a national student conference to discuss student priorities in the national education reform scene and recruit and prepare student leaders on effective advocacy strategies when they return to their homes. The key is to build a large base capable of exerting a powerful influence on public opinion and elected officials not unlike the way that Chile's high school students have done of late!

Who would you like to be contacted by?

Anyone from the age of 13 to 24 who believes that education holds the key to the future of our society, who wants to see a world in which all children have the opportunity to attend a good school with good teachers -- not just those who are luckiest among us. I would love to work with you and get you all the information you might need to become a leader in this growing youth movement by helping to spread the word to your peers in whatever ways are most exciting to you. I also strongly encourage you to visit our website at http://www.OurEd.org and sign our petition for quality education there!

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