Family and Youth Programs
in American History

NEH invites proposals for public programs that engage young people in learning about significant topics in U.S. history and culture. Grants will support programming tailored to youth and family audiences at museums, libraries, historical societies and sites, parks, and other places.

Programs should

• strengthen knowledge and appreciation of American history among young people through activities outside the classroom; or
• encourage families to explore themes from American history together.

To achieve these goals, projects should employ the following means: highlighting primary documents that helped define America, making humanities content central to the project, and collaborating with other organizations to extend the project’s reach. The next three paragraphs elaborate on these means.

Projects should use one or more significant American texts to explore events, eras, individuals, or ideas in American history.  Texts might include speeches, publications, museum artifacts, or other documents from individuals whose words and ideas helped shape the course of American history, such as Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King, Jr.

Projects should also put together a team of humanities advisers whose expertise is tailored to the particular needs of the project.  Advisers should play an active role in shaping the project—defining themes, incorporating a variety of perspectives, drawing on relevant scholarship, and developing interpretive approaches.

Finally, projects should collaborate with cultural, community, professional, or social organizations; state humanities councils; or other institutions as a means of increasing project resources and recruiting new audiences. Projects should also take place at multiple venues regionally or nationally. Organizations or associations with regional or national distribution mechanisms are often best equipped to do this.

Single-site project applications may be competitive if they are of exceptional scope and quality, if they hold unusual promise as models, or if they are conceived as pilots for larger-scale projects.

Sample projects

A national youth organization designs a “History Summer Camp” for elementary school children in four cities focused on aspects of life in colonial America, from agriculture to politics. Guided by local educators and scholars, children spend three weeks visiting living history sites, botanical gardens, and farms, experiencing daily life in the colonies, “meeting” significant figures from early America such as Benjamin Franklin and Abigail Adams, and discussing key texts from the colonial period.

A network of senior centers and a state historical society engages five groups of teenagers from diverse communities in producing a documentary video based on interviews with African Americans who served in the military during World War II. The teens work closely with two historians and a documentary filmmaker, investigating the wartime experiences of African Americans and learning how scholars research and understand the past.  The video becomes a springboard for public discussions at senior centers, historical societies, and libraries.

An urban public library and a city museum create a series of intergenerational reading and discussion programs for recent immigrants and their children, exploring the immigrant encounter with America.  Reading selections include diaries, historical newspaper accounts, poetry, fiction, and oral history. The project team develops scholars’ guides and reading lists that can serve as models for other organizations developing similar collaborative projects.

Please note that applicants proposing Family and Youth Programs projects must apply to the America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations program, for either a planning grant or an implementation grant.