We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it
If only we're brave enough to be it
–Amanda Gorman's Inaugural Poem, Jan. 21, 2021
You are welcome to visit Voices Free Online School. Our hope is to have it up and running by Fall 2023. The Book 1: Democratic Values minicourse and the Project 1: Stop Gun Violence minicourse are fullly developed and can be viewed in Learndash now. Please provide any comments or suggestions for future minicourses.
Voices Institute is Committed to Supporting
Children, Young People, and Adults
in Our Country and Around the World
to Lift Their Voices
to Overcome the Obstacles that Divide Us
and to Advocate for
a More Compassionate, Just, and Free Democratic Country and World!
Voices Institute provides two educational websites: Lift Every Voice and Voices Free Online School. The Lift Every Voice Website includes Lift Every Voice Books which provide background information on democratic values, skills, and knowledge. In the Lift Every Voice Projects, you can apply these democratic values, skills, and knowledge to some of the most important social and ecological problems of our day. These projects conclude with delivering a speech advocating a solution to these problems. The Voices Free Online School provides Lift Every Voices Minicourses in which you can explore these democratic competencies and social and ecological problems in more depth.
What Are Lift Every Voice Books?
The Lift Every Voice Books focus on five major democratic competencies, beginning with Book 1: Democratic Values and then Book 2: Social-Emotional Skills, Book 3: Democratic Skills and Practices, Book 4: Social and Ecological Awareness, and Book 5: Democratic Knowledge. We believe that the most important competency is the learning and applying of Democratic Values. Click here to view the Lift Every Voice website which includes both the Lift Every Voice Books and the Lift Every Voice Projects.
"We stand now where two roads diverge . . . The other folk of the road—the one less traveled by—offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assumes the preservation of the earth."<br> —From Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Lift Every Voice Begins With Democratic Values
Lift Every Voice seeks to help young people and adults to understand, embrace, and apply these democratic values as they research major contemporary social an ecological problems. They can integrate them into their proposals and speeches.
"I've long talked about the battle for the soul of America. We must restore the soul of America. Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. It is time for our better angels to prevail."
—Election Eve Speech by President-Elect Joe Biden (Nov. 7, 2020)
What Are Lift Every Voice Projects?
Lift Every Voice is designed to help people to learn and master these core democratic competencies and then apply these values, skills, and knowledge to advocating for ways to solve major social and ecological problems in our country and world. These are just four of the many problems that we need to solve. They are just the beginning.
"And as we lay you to rest today, the movement won't rest until we get justice, until we have one standard of justice. Your family is going to miss you, George, but your nation is going to always remember your name because your neck was one that represented all of us and how you suffered represented our suffering . . . "
—Eulogy for George Floyd by Rev. Al Sharpton
Eight Steps for Lifting Our Voices
Lift Every Voice Projects are organized into Eight Steps. In Step 1: Connect to the Problem you can explore what you know or have experienced about the problem. In Step 2: Compare and Evaluate Case Studies, you try to get a handle on the problem by delving into case studies of the problem. While in Step 3: Analyze the Data, the objective is to get a broad understanding of all the facts related to the problem, then in Step 4: Listen to and Share Stories, you can listen to the stories of those affected by the problem and share your own study. Step 5: Listen to and Read Proposals begins the process of choosing your proposal by getting a broad understanding of state and local legislative proposals as well as the proposals of advocacy organizations. In Step 6: Develop and Present Your Proposal, you will develop your proposal, write out your speech, and deliver your speech on video. After that in Step 7: Discuss and Debate Proposals, you can listen to and discuss other people's speech and see if you can reach a compromise and common ground on how to solve the problem. Finally in Step 8: Lift Your Voice, Cast Your Votes, you will have the opportunity to vote on all the proposals and to lobby elected officials to support your proposal.
What Are Lift Every Voice Minicourses?
The Voices Free Online School is being developed by Voices Institute to provide free digital resources and minicourses to young people in the United States and around the world that can help them learn how to create, maintain, and improve their democratic institutions and culture. There are two sets of Lift Every Voice Minicourses. First, there are the minicourses that go along with the Lift Every Voice Books. Currently, you can view the Book 1: Democratic Values Minicourse. Hopefully the minicourses for Books 2-5 will be available by Fall 2023 and Winter 2024. The Lift Every Voice Books Minicourses are organized into five steps. Second, there are the minicourses that go along with the Lift Every Voice Projects. Currently, you can view the Project 1: Stop Gun Violence Minicourse. Hopefully the minicourses for Projects 2-4 will be available by Fall 2023 and Winter 2024 as well. The Lift Every Voice Projects Minicourses are organized into eight steps.
1. Democratic Values: Unite and Guide Our Country
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
—Statue of Liberty Inscription, Emma Lazarus
Explore eight core democratic values that can guide us to reunite our country beginning with love and freedom. (view now, enroll fall)
2. Social and Emotional Skills: Stand in Other People's Shoes and Resolve Conflicts Nonviolently
Explore and learn to master core social-emotional skills such as social perspective skills and conflict resolution skills. The ability to stand in someone else's shoes or moccasins is one of the most important social skills to learn and practice. (view summer, enroll fall)
3. Democratic Skills and Practices: Advocate, Discuss, Debate
Explore and learn to use core democratic skills and practices to advocate for ways to solve important social and ecological problems. The most important democratic skill is democratic voice—the ability to use your voice and all your talents to express your thoughts and proposals for improving our democratic society and government. (view summer, enroll fall)
4. Social and Ecological Awareness: Pursue Social Justice and Ecological Balance
To improve our country and world we need to first understand the distribution of power in our societies and scientific evidence about the causes of global warming. With a realistic understanding of the social and ecological obstacles confronting us, we will be much more able to overcome and solve these problems. (view fall, enroll winter)
5. Democratic Knowledge: Understand Our Democratic Rights and Protect Them
To improve our democracy, we need to understand its roots and how it has grown over the last two centuries. This includes all the rights that we have declared for ourselves and how to use the different branches of government to pursue and protect these rights. Most recently, we have experienced one of the most violent threats to our democracy, perhaps only exceeded by the Civil War. Our government is now surrounded by fences. (view fall, enroll winter)
Stop the Pandemic
Explore how to use the Lift Every Voice democratic values, skills, and knowledge to help you advocate for solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. (view now, enroll fall)
Stop Global Warming
Explore how to apply Lift Every Voice democratic values, skills, and knowledge to help you advocate for ways to stop global warming. (view fall, enroll winter)
Stop Police Violence
Explore how to use the Lift Every Voice democratic values, skills, and knowledge to help you advocate for ways to stop police violence. (view summer, enroll fall)
Stop Gun Violence
Explore how to use the Lift Every Voice democratic values, skills, and knowledge to help you advocate for solutions for stopping gun violence. (view now, enroll fall)
Oral Language Skills
The Oral Language Skills Minicourse includes: (1) Listening Skills; (2) Narrative Oral Language Skills; (3) Argumentative Oral Language Skills; (4) Explanatory Oral Language Skills; (5) Persuasive Oral Language Skills; (6) Oral Dialogue, Discussion, and Debate; and (7) Academic Oral Language Vocabulary. (view summer, enroll fall)
Reading Comprehension Strategies and Skills
The Reading Comprehension Strategies and Skills Minicourse includes: (1) Motivation and Purpose; (2) Non-fiction Texts: News Articles; Real-Life Stories, Proposals, Speeches; (3) Academic Reading Vocabulary; (4) Discussion and Debate; (5) Reading Comprehension Strategies; and (6) Background Knowledge. (view fall, enroll winter)
Writing Skills
The Writing Skills Minicourse includes: (1) Motivation and Purpose; (2) Narrative Writing Skills; (3) Argumentative Writing Skills; (4) Explanatory Writing Skills; (5) Persuasive Writing Skills; and (6) Academic Writing Vocabulary. (view fall, enroll winter)
Critical Thinking Skills
The Critical Thinking Skills Minicourse includes: (1) Higher–Order Thinking Skills (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create); (2) Questioning; (3) Problem-Solving; and (4) Empowering. (view summer, enroll fall)
How Can We Save
and Build Our Democratic Country?
By Advocating for a More Compassionate, Just,
and Free Democratic Country and World!
We envision young people and adults anywhere being able to go online and listen to empowering stories and speeches, share their own stories, deliver their own speeches, and discuss their thoughts with other young people and adults about the best ways to create more compassionate, just, peaceful, and free democratic governments and societies.
Hopefully, Lift Every Voice will help us save and strengthen and improve our democracies.
The better angels of our nature are the democratic values that we embrace and which can guide us as we seek to heal and unite our country!
"Our history is defined by the youthful push to make America more just, more compassionate, more equal under the law. This generation–of Parkland of Dreamers, of Black Lives Matter– embraces that duty. If they make their elders uncomfortable, that's how it should be. Our kids now show us what we've told them America is all about, even if we haven't always believed it ourselves: that our future isn't written for us, but by us."
—Excerpted from "Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, and Alex Wind" by Barack Obama. Time Magazine (12/12/18)