PEAK: Public Education, Activism and Know your rights
Picture a world where knowledge becomes power, where every young person possesses an unbreakable understanding of their rights and liberties. The ACLU of Colorado is excited to announce PEAK: Public Education, Activism and Know your rights program.
Under our groundbreaking new strategic framework, The Road Ahead, we have gone above and beyond, completely revolutionizing our Know your rights and Speakers Bureau training. We have poured our passion and expertise into developing a brand-new program that tackles the very issues that matter most to our community.
PEAK builds upon a decades-long tradition at the ACLU of Colorado of providing well-researched and non-partisan civics and civic engagement education throughout Colorado. PEAK will significantly expand upon those past efforts through three different overlapping strategies:
- Youth Leadership Development: Starting this fall, the ACLU will partner with local schools and professional organizations to launch a multi-week advocacy and leadership development institute, giving young people, ages 14 to 18, and young professionals, ages 19 to 25, the tools they need to fight for civil rights and civil liberties, such as how to handle encounters with police, what their rights are as students and what rights they have as members of the LGBTQ+ community. The program’s focus and curricula integrate feedback the ACLU gathered from multiple focus groups with young people in the spring of 2023.
- Know your rights: The ACLU will provide expanded Know your rights trainings upon request to audiences of all ages with a focus on civics and voting, the rights of students, access to housing, LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive rights.
- Speakers Bureau: Experts from the ACLU of Colorado’s executive, policy, advocacy, organizing and legal teams will be available upon request to speak to youth and community groups on emerging topics and events impacting civil rights and liberties, such as updates on our latest campaigns, our recent amicus brief filings or a debrief on our latest legislative session.
The PEAK program will prioritize requests coming from the following communities: Aurora, Durango, Adams County, and El Paso County, as informed by our recent year-long, statewide Expanding the Table for Justice listening tour.
Research shows that people are most likely to value civics when those principles are not just theoretical but are put into practice. To that end, all PEAK participants will also be given the opportunity to get more deeply engaged with the ACLU of Colorado in fighting for the civil rights issues that matter to their families and communities.
Our PEAK program is currently taking requests for Know your rights training and our Speakers Bureau. To submit a request, visit our website at https://www.aclu-co.org/en/our-work/community