Our Story

In the summer of 2019, Shreya Joshi, a rising high school sophomore, started Project TEAL when she created a five part civic engagement workshop series, to share her passion for political engagement with other students in her local community. She designed these workshops specifically to teach middle and elementary school students the importance of democracy and political participation. She conducted these workshops in her community by partnering with local libraries, school district, middle, and elementary schools. In summer of 2020, she worked with the Citizen Advocacy Center where she was able to build on these workshops and programmed two virtual civic engagement forums : "Ensuring Free & Fair Elections in a Pandemic" and "Civic Advocacy and Mobilization in light of Black Lives Matter". Since then she has expanded the Project TEAL's mission to include both education and legislative advocacy, and broadened the curriculum to include high school students as well. She is excited about continuing to expand Project TEAL from a one person local, community based initiative to a national project that educates fellow Gen Z'ers on the importance of civic education and advocates for pushing legislation in the 11 states that currently do not have a civic education requirement for high school graduation.