Want to make a difference in your community and learn how to become a stronger agent of change?

The 2024 Encampment will focus on civil and voting rights, July 2 – 23, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Join your peers (ages 15-18) from around the nation for an immersive experience in civil and voting rights. You will gain a deep understanding of the past, the present, and the future of Civil Rights. We hope to directly engage with the community of Montgomery to learn about the struggle for fair housing, equity in education, clean water access, voting rights, and the violence of Jim Crow. With help from our guest experts, museums, and community organizers, we will analyze the different strategies from the Civil Rights Movement and discuss how we can take inspiration to battle the current attack on civil rights. As always, we will examine the role of culture in social justice movements: What keeps us hopeful and strong?

With EFC’s community-based and arts-as-activism approach, you will:

1. Learn about different approaches to organizing and policy change
2. Incorporate the arts as part of organizing and community building strategies
3. Learn group and meeting facilitation
4. Understand intersectionality and the historical context of the civil rights movement and current social injustices
5. Gain confidence in the power and knowledge that young people bring
6. Participate in group decision-making processes and consensus building
7. Learn practices that support health, wellness, and resilience, personally and in your community
8. Develop interviewing skills, how to listen, ask questions, and hear people’s stories
9. Experience the interconnectedness among different communities
10. Develop your observational and questioning skills: see more deeply and see the details
11. Strengthen your voice, including not being afraid of people disagreeing with you, except when it is unsafe
12. Gain tools to deal with feeling discouraged or burnt out (can’t do it alone)
13. Receive four months of follow-up support to develop an action plan.
14. It may be possible to arrange school or community credit for your EFC experience & it provides a great topic for college application essays.

**There will be a virtual pre-Encampment orientation in June and four months of follow-up programming in the fall. The 2023 orientation dates TBD.

Apply now!

If you are a returning Encamper, please use this link.

Encampment Fee Waiver Application 2024

Questions: admin@encampmentforcitizenship.org.

The Power of Creative Collaboration

Check out this music video re gentrification created by Hosea and Carter at the 2020 virtual Encampment. 

“…they give me tools that I didn’t realize I needed, to make an impact larger than myself.”

Lilia is both an alum of the 2020 virtual Encampment and a Pesticide-Free Soil Project (PFSP) intern.

Questions?

Contact us for more information about applying for the 2022 EFC program.