Georgia Close Up Foundation

We have concluded our 2008-09 civic education programs and have set the dates for this year's exciting real life learning experiences for our young Georgia Students.

Georgia Close Up will celebrate 33 years of local programming in Georgia this fall semester. We have made great endeavors to promote citizenship and engagement among our young people and have helped thousands to understand their roles, responsibilities and opportunities of citizenship.

We have had the best programs this year and the best set of interns to help run these programs. Please visit our website and read the BIOS of these talent young people (www.Georgiacloseup.org/staff.html). We had more senior citizens than ever before. We had more professional's volunteers this year than ever before, taking time off from work to lend a hand.

We had for the first time, a parent of a former participant join us in planning, administering and executing our Environmental conference at Georgia Tech Research Center this year. The program involved over 30 volunteers alone who helped in the activities like the computer virtual simulation activity, the solar car building workshop and the recycle promotion exercise. The earth parfait simulation with ice cream and the solar ovens activity were a real hit with all of our participants. "Sustainability really makes sense" as one student proclaimed in her evaluation form.

Our first ever, three day Legislative Conference at the Georgia State Capitol was phenomenal. Our participants had to make some tough decisions on current legislation that affects them. They engaged in a Georgia Supreme Court mock trial and in meetings with their State Senators and Representatives. Most of our participants were so compelled that they wrote letters of thanks and concern to their reps about some of the issues relating to current legislation. Our voting results are on our website.

Our conference at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center focused on a very unusual and unfamiliar term "World Citizenship". When polled, most of the participants did not consider themselves as a world citizen nor know what its roles and responsibilities entailed. The "World Cafe" exercise really hammered home the importance of educating yourself about important issues in human rights, environmental and social needs, and they could actually think globally and act locally.

We had more private schools involved this year, adding the kind of diversity among our participants that we like to foster. Some of our participants even came from home schools. But the diversity wasn't just among our participants; we had the most diverse group of undergrad volunteers than we have ever had. Emory, Georgia Tech, Savannah School of Art and Design, Atlanta University and Kennesaw State College and Southern Polytechnic were all represented. We had more foreign students engaged this year than ever. One of our volunteer interns from Paris developed a hand book glossary of environmental terms for our participants. It's available on our website.

View previous Georgia Close Up Newsletters in PDF format.

Become a volunteer- We are always in need of Organizers, Program Instructors, Facilitators, Speakers and so much more. You are NEEDED!
Visit the Volunteer page to learn more.