Terriquez Releases ‘Learning to Lead’

The CSRC is pleased to announce the release of Learning to Lead: Youth Organizing in Immigrant Communities by Veronica Terriquez, CSRC director and professor of urban planning and Chicana/o and Central American studies. The book is published by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Drawing on extensive surveys, semi-structured interviews, and other data, Terriquez shows that nonprofit youth organizing groups strengthen adolescents’ capacity to address the systemic challenges facing their communities through political engagement. These groups generally share a commitment to supporting young people’s healthy development, offer a critical form of civics education, and provide extensive guidance on how to participate in civic life. They adapt their programming in response to local demographic and political dynamics.

Adolescents who participate in youth organizing during high school tend to remain highly active in civic life into early adulthood. Terriquez concludes that these groups offer important lessons for schools and other youth-serving institutions seeking to strengthen engagement in a multiracial democracy.

Learning to Lead offers a thorough examination of how young people acquire the capacities to become a meaningful political force.

For more information, visit https://www.russellsage.org/publications/book/learning-lead

A 25 percent discount is available with use of the code TERRIQUEZ.

Read the author’s acknowledgements.