As Youth-Nex celebrates 10 years, we are pleased to invite you to the 7th Youth-Nex Conference: "Dialoging for Democracy: Youth Moral Reasoning and Social Justice" (#YouthAct19). This is a free conference which will be held Tuesday & Wednesday, November 12th & 13th, 2019 at the University of Virginia.

The conference will provide a forum for youth, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers across the country to participate in a robust discussion about whether contentious and contracted historical and contemporary social issues is necessary for the health of our democracy. During this conference we will explore how we engage with issues of human welfare and justice with young people, taking into account their developmental capacities and social identities. Young people themselves are actively making meaning of the world and leading the conversation in many areas of social change, including a number of issues on which youth themselves have pointed out the moral imperative for action (e.g., climate change, gun control, racial and economic justice, immigration). During this conference, participants will discuss the developmental underpinnings of moral reasoning, best practices for engaging adolescents in generative discourse that promotes the development of one’s moral reasoning, and examples of how this is applied in classroom and out-of-school settings to further democratic engagement.

Please register as early as you can, as space is limited. Once slots are filled, registration will close. Read more about the conference and agenda on our website, and then register to attend here.

Select panelists at the conference include:

• Dr. Joyce King
• Dr. Larry Nucci
• Youth and Staff from Teen Empowerment Rochester
• Dr. Rob Jagers
• Dr. Janie Ward
• Youth and Staff from Mikva Challenge
• Steve Becton from Facing History
• Dr. Onnie Rogers
• Youth and Staff from Side by Side