Projects

To date, Democracy Education Network (DEN) has completed several projects, as follows:

1. Ongoing Voter Education Initiatives (2015 on)
DEN's innovative, leading VoteParty.ca, VotePromise.ca and VoteChallenge.ca voter education and turnout initiatives have reached more voters than any non-governmental initiatives in Canada.

2. Ongoing free Democracy Skills Civics and Citizenship Course (July 2000 on)
DEN provides a free 8-class, semester-long unit plan containing 40 how-to lesson materials for civics and citizenship teachers to use to teach young and new Canadians (and anyone else) the democratic skills needed to engage effectively with other citizens, governments and corporations to solve societal problems. DEN continues to try to raise funds to develop a nation-wide network that will support teachers offering this active civics education unit, and other key democratic problem-solving skills lessons, in various courses at secondary schools across Canada so that every student learns these lessons in at least one course before they graduate.

3. Custom Democracy Skills and Campaign Workshops (2000 on)
DEN also offers customized workshops on each of these skills.

4. Ongoing Non-Partisan Partner and Coalition Efforts for Democratic Reforms (1998 on)
DEN works in an ongoing partnership with Canada's leading democratic reform advocacy group, Democracy Watch, undertaking research and public education efforts that support coalitions of citizen groups that are calling, in strictly non-partisan ways, for key democratic good government and corporate responsibility reforms across Canada.

5. Citizenship Education, Participatory Democracy and Social Change Conference (2003)
On October 17-19, 2003, Democracy Education Network participated in and presented at this international conference. This conference was hosted by the Transformative Learning Centre of OISE/UT and the Instituto Paulo Freire of Brazil.

6. Citizenship Education in the Commonwealth (2000)
DEN prepared a multi-country report and coordinated a symposium on citizenship education for the November 2000 conference of the Commonwealth Ministers of Education in Halifax.

7. Ontario Consultation on Constitutional Issues (1998)
In 1998, DEN also helped design the high school curriculum materials for the Ontario government's consultation on constitutional issues.

8. Federal Citizenship Promotion Strategy (1996)
In 1996, DEN drafted the new citizenship promotion strategy for the federal government's Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

9. Advising on Federal Public Consultation Processes (1996)
In 1996, DEN advised on the consultation process for the federal government's National Forum on Health, and also advised on the public dialogue process for The Society We Want project of the Canadian Policy Research Networks.

10. Study Circles on Federal Immigration Law (1994)
In 1994, DEN helped coordinate the public consultation on the federal immigration law policy. In the consultation, DEN used a participation process, study circles, that had never before been used by the federal government.  Across the country in five cities in the summer of 1994, 1,100 Canadians sat down in 60 study circles with their neighbours to discuss their opinions about immigration in Canada. In addition, 2,200 students discussed immigration issues in their schools. Both processes used a workbook prepared by DEN.

11. Other activities
DEN has held workshops for federal policy-makers on public consultation, and helped coordinate the 1997 international conference on public participation.