Start a Chapter

We’re excited to help bring Kids4Peace to your community! Starting a Kids4Peace chapter is typically a three-year process, and our expert team of youth educators is here to guide you every step of the way.

As you launch a new chapter, you’ll make powerful new relationships in your area and gain skills to lead social change. Together, we’ll work to bridge divides and create more just, compassionate, inclusive communities.

In this time of rising hate, let’s work together to create a powerful force for good in the work.

Program Components

While every Kids4Peace chapter looks a little different, all programs share three main components:

• Interfaith Dialogue: Youth visit houses of worship, discuss the beliefs and practices of different religions, explore diverse cultures, and learn to see the issues in their community from multiple perspectives. Dialogue also includes attention to race, class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality through an intersectional lens, in order to understand power, privilege and discrimination.
• Leadership Development: Youth learn and practice critical skills for peacebuilding, including public speaking, conflict resolution, negotiation, dialogue facilitation, community organizing and advocacy. Through simulations and real-life projects, youth gain experience as public peace leaders in their schools and communities.
• Social Action: Youth plan projects from community service to political advocacy that focus on critical issues, such as bullying, immigration, gun violence, anti-Semitism & Islamophobia.

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What you Need to Get Started

• Two Youth Champions: Kids4Peace is a youth-led movement, so a chapter should be driven by teens right from the beginning.
• Two Adult Advisors (at least): One should be an educator. One should be a logistics whiz. All adult volunteers need to pass K4P background checks and complete mandatory training.
• Existing Community of Youth: This could be a school, congregation, youth organization, community center, or similar group with at least 10 youth participants. If you have a group of congregations or organizations in the same area who want to go through the startup process together, even better!
• Sponsoring Organization: One congregation, school or nonprofit organization should be the home of K4P in the first three years, providing meeting space and other in-kind support (storage, copying, etc).
• Financial Commitment: On a sliding scale, this financial investment helps cover K4P staff time, curriculum materials, and training. We can work with you to identify individual donors or grants.

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What K4P Provides

• In Person Training: Once a year, one of our expert educators will visit your chapter to train youth and adults on best practices, share new program ideas, and help you plan your annual program.
• Virtual Coaching: You’ll be assigned a coach who’s available by email and videoconference to answer questions, troubleshoot issues, and help you with program and fundraising opportunities.
• Colleagues: You’ll be part of a cohort of new chapter startup teams, who meet every month or two via video. You’ll get to meet other passionate interfaith leaders and peace activists from around the country, as you lean on each other for support and inspire each other with your programs.
• Operational Support: You’ll have access to Kids4Peace’s systems for data systems, fundraising, online giving, communications, website, social media, marketing, and more. Chapters are required to follow K4P policies for background checks and youth protection.
• Curriculum Library: You’ll be able to log-in to a members-only library of proven educational programs. These have been tested in other chapters and are ready for you to adapt for use in your community.
• Summer Programs: You’ll be eligible to join our flagship Global Institute in Washington, DC and the Interfaith Youth Summit, where you’ll meet K4P youth and adult advisors from around the world.

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Here’s How it Works

Year 1: K4P Connect

We’ll work with your Youth Champions & Adult Advisors to plan and implement four “Kids4Peace Experiences” for your existing community of youth – such as visits to congregations of other religions, interfaith service opportunities, and workshops on peace building skills. K4P also provides curriculum modules to help you reflect on their own tradition’s teaching about how to engage with difference. 

Year 2: K4P Core

By the second year, we’ll identify at least 15 youth to join a Core Leadership Program. They might come from your community or from other partners that you met during year one.

The Core Leadership Program meets at least once a month, to help youth become agents of change in their community.  Sessions may include dialogue and community-building activities, text study across religions, meeting with faith-based social justice activists, learning about current issues of inequality and violence, and practical skills like event planning and public speaking, and more!

During this year, we’ll also expand the team of Adult Advisors to at least 4, and begin forming a Chapter Advisory Board.

Year 3: K4P Engage

In this final phase of the startup process, your Core Leaders will plan and implement a series of youth-led activities, such as presentations in schools and congregations, advocacy at the State House, campaigns around pressing social issues, or programs that widen the reach of K4P Experiences (like training teens to host youth from other religions at their congregations).  

Now a full-fledged chapter, the Core Leadership meetings would continue monthly, and you’ll launch new K4P Experiences to involve more congregations and organizations in the movement.