The 1996 APA National Public Education Award winner is KIDS (Kids Involved Doing Service) as Planners, a program created by the KIDS Consortium, a nonprofit organization in South Portland, Maine. The mission is to improve children's lives by providing them with opportunities to learn skills and attitudes essential to building a reasonable and viable future.

To achieve this mission, KIDS Consortium builds the capacity of educators, community leaders, city officials, and preventionists to implement an innovative model of apprentice citizenship known as KIDS as Planners. The KIDS program challenges young people to work with their town government to identify, research, and solve real-life problems in their communities as part of an integrated curriculum. By learning all subject areas in a relevant, meaningful context, students are not only motivated to learn but they learn that they matter and that they can make a difference as citizens and stewards of their schools and towns.

In the past four years, KIDS has developed a network of 5,000 young people making a difference in their communities in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Colorado. They are tackling issues such as historic preservation, water pollution, public health and safety, protection of wildlife and other natural resources, land-use planning, neighborhood revitalization, and recreation.

The KIDS model is community-based. It succeeds because it builds and enhances relationships with community stakeholders: teachers, students, administrators, parents preventionists, city officials, public agencies, community-based and nonprofit organizations, and businesses.

The students own the process from the beginning by identifying community needs in their neighborhood to deciding what they need to do to learn more about them. They have many opportunities to exercise leadership in the classroom and in the community.

The educational strategy which uses the "town as the text" to create authentic learning opportunities transforms the academic curriculum, and is service learning at its best. In 1994, KIDS Consortium embarked on a three-year national demonstration project, KIDSNET, to revitalize New England schools and towns through the KIDS as Planners process. Over the three-year period, the project will build the capacity of five New England school districts to initiate, expand, and replicate the KIDS as Planners model.

KIDS Consortium