Our beginnings were in 2013, when a group of 6th-grade classmates in Kansas City, MO, and their parents, gathered for bi-weekly after-school conversations on social justice. Initially, the meetings were guided by the parents but three years later, when the group moved to high school, the youth created the Social Justice Club and started leading their own activities. One of the Club’s most successful activities has been designing and leading weekly classes on social and environmental justice to 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students.

In 2019, the high schoolers started offering also a Social Justice Club for middle school students, which since 2020 has expanded to youth from around the world in the form of social justice summer camps and weekly Zoom meetings. Now in its tenth year, over 300 children and youth have attended the Club and hundreds more have been positively impacted by its outreach and community service activities. 

The goal of the club is to challenge youth to excel in the context of cooperation and mutual care. With the help of group discussions and activities, we seek to develop a critical understanding of the commonalities that bind us all together, across cultures and nations. Through service projects, we are able to nurture and give purpose to the diversity of talents and capacities that make for a vibrant and thriving community.  

It is within this framework, that we encourage youth to think about the personal qualities and attitudes that are required to build a more just society, such as:

1. Striving for excellence

2.  Avoiding shortcuts and choosing the right means to our goals

3.  Moral courage

4.  Finding one’s passion

5.  Thinking independently

6. Mutual care

7. Cooperation