Too often when we think of promoting civic engagement in young people, our attention turns to either high school students who are at a crucial age for shaping life-long habits of engagement or college students enrolled in four-year institutions who have resources at their disposal to participate in public life. However, a recent article in NPQ by Rick Cohen argues that students in community colleges are an untapped yet ideal demographic for civic engagement campaigns precisely because these students attend schools in the communities in which they grew up/currently live and tend to come from struggling lower income families whose needs and concerns are different from the “typical” college student and are often directly related to the community (immigration, free public transportation for students, and voter registration services are just a few of the issues community college students find of interest).
It is also community colleges students’ disposition toward education that makes them prime candidates for civic engagement. Deborah Rappaport of the Rappaport Family Foundation (RFF) and organizer of the RFF Spark Initiative (a program promoting civic engagement among community college students in California) believes that unlike most students who attend a four-year institution and consider without pause higher education as the next step from high school, community college students “are among the most dedicated, hardworking, and intelligent . . . [because] they had to make an absolutely proactive decision in their lives that this was worth struggling for . . . [and] that this is what they wanted to do.”
With approximately 2.8 million full-time and four million part-time students attending community colleges across the nation, there are plenty of opportunities to work with these students and give them the resources to become involved in issues that are of concern for them. ‘They are going to be practicing their trade and profession nine to 10 hours a day,” Rappaport says of most community college students. ‘The rest of the time, they’re citizens who should know how to use their voice to make things better for themselves.”
Check out the full article to read more about why community colleges are ideal hubs of civic engagement and what kind of success the RFF Spark Initiative has seen in promoting its mission.
“Tiny Foundation, Big Idea: Foster Civic Engagement with Focus on Community College Students”