Democracy In Action Summit

This summit brought together local and national experts to share best practices on how to help students have their voice heard in the 2018 election.

Democracy Shark Tank

Higher education institutions from across Minnesota organized teams to participate in the Democracy Shark Tank. An interactive competition that allowed participants to put the skills learned earlier in the day into action.

The campus teams' developed ideas and plans to support student voter engagement in the 2018 election. They then pitched those ideas to a panel of “Sharks” that invested $13,000 worth of funding to help support campuses’ work.

Why we organized this event

The LeadMN Growing Voters project seeks to make voting habit forming in young people through a long-term approach of civic education, creating civic agency and tearing down institutional barriers that prevent students from voting. This project is centered on the idea that just “motivating” young voters is purely transactional and that if we want to rebuild our democracy we should cultivate young people to translate their voice into the voting process.