Founding office
Zayden Jackson
Founder · 14 · From Alabama
Zayden Jackson founded The Youth Civic Project. He is 14. He is from Alabama. The audience is students across the United States.
Who founded it
The Youth Civic Project was founded by Zayden Jackson, a fourteen-year-old from Alabama. He built the organization. Zayden is the public student voice of the founding office.
The sentence that started it
Some people tell kids they don’t have rights. That’s not true. I wanted a place that shows youth the rights they actually have, as simple as possible.
The other useless sentence
The opposite slogan is just as useless: you can say anything, anywhere, and no one can touch you. That collapses the first time a public school, a private platform, an employer, or a court gets involved. A fourteen-year-old who only hears slogans is unprepared for a search of a locker, a three-day suspension, a deleted account, or a youth-court date. The Project exists so the real map is on a page before the crisis, not after someone already signed a paper they did not understand.
Posters are not enough
Rights that live only on a classroom poster are easy to lose in an office. A poster says “you have rights.” It does not say what Tinker held, what T.L.O. changed about school searches, what Goss required before a short suspension, or that a private school and a public school are not the same legal world. Zayden started the library so a student in any U.S. state could find the text, see how a court treated it, and be told when the page is United States law versus a local statute they still have to check.
Why a fourteen-year-old from Alabama built a national desk
He is from Alabama. The audience is the United States. A student in California, Ohio, or Texas should be able to use the same method: find the clause, name the institution, separate government from private rules, then read the local handbook. Alabama is where the founder lives. It is not a claim that every page is Alabama code. When a page is about a U.S. Supreme Court case, it says so. When a page is about a principle that appears in many systems — speech, fair process, limits on official searches, child-labor hours — it says that too.
What he refuses to let it become
Not a founder personality page that exists to sell merch. Not an outrage farm. Not a sports league. Not a place that coaches a minor to hide an emergency from a parent. If a reader is in danger, the page points to local emergency services and, in the United States, to 988.
The charity path
The Youth Civic Project is a U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity. Contributions are tax-deductible for U.S. federal income-tax purposes to the extent allowed by law. A gift does not buy a ruling or a case result.
What he wants a reader to leave with
Find the text. Know which institution you are standing in. Ask the question in a thread that will still be there. If the matter is live and serious, take a trusted adult and a lawyer licensed where you live. That is the whole founding theory, written long so no one has to guess why a fourteen-year-old from Alabama started a national civic-education project.