Project Citizen is a portfolio-based Civic Education Project for students, promoting competent and responsible participation in society. It serves as a model performance assessment activity, engaging students in monitoring and influencing public policy, while motivating civic participation among members of the community.

The objective: to encourage students to work collaboratively towards developing an action plan for implementing their policy, while building values inherent to the project- of self discipline and governance, respect for the rights of other individuals and for the rule of law. This done through a process of critical mindedness, negotiation and compromise will lead to the common good.

As a class project, students work together to identify and study a public policy issue, eventually developing an action plan for implementing their policy. The final product is a portfolio displaying each group’s work. This portfolio is then presented in a simulated legislative hearing, demonstrating knowledge and understanding of how public policy is formulated.

With support from the Centre for Civic Education, California, this program was begun in 2005 and initiated as a pilot project in 11 schools in Delhi. With over 500 teachers who have already been trained, the program is being successfully run in 252 schools in thirteen states and 2 Union Territories in India. A 100 of these schools are in the rural areas run under the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya.

There have been three National Show casings held in Delhi from 2005 to 2007 with State level Show casings being held at the regional level each year.

The fourth National Showcasing for Project Citizen, India was held this year on October 22nd at 9.30am at the PHD auditorium. Over 30 schools participated and 5 of these were from the rural regions of Hyderabad, Pune, Punjab, Lucknow, and Jaipur.

The students from Delhi were chosen to participate at the International Showcasing at Washington from July 14th to 18th 2007 where they were honored to be one of the nine country representatives selected for a documentary film on Project Citizen. “The World We Want” had its World Premiere at AFIFEST 2008 in Hollywood.

In recognition of India’s success, the program has been linked with Maryland University in Washington and the Civic Education program in Kazakhstan. The delegates from the Indian Government were introduced to the functioning of the State Department of Education and other civic curriculums. This program was supported by the United States Department of Education

To propagate Citizenship Education in India, fifteen schools in India are doing action research on the impact of Project Citizen on the participating students.

This research is being supported and mentored by Learning Links Foundation.

Meera Balachandran
Country Coordinator Project Citizen India

Project Citizen is designed to be used with students from ages 11 to 18 and can be used at various grade levels, depending upon the decisions of the School Administrators.