The Youth Cafe is a member of the Kettering Foundation’s Deliberative Democracy Exchange (DDEx), which brings together participants from across the United States and some other countries. While each of the 14 learning exchanges addresses a specific fundamental problem of democracy, together they speak to a common concern: how people can work together, despite their differences, to shape a shared future. This is how we understand democracy.
Kettering Foundation research is done primarily through collaborative studies carried on in learning exchanges. In these meetings, Kettering “trades” what it is learning for what others are learning through their work. The operating principle in the learning exchanges is self-responsibility (which is also the operating principle in democracy). Everyone can and should learn with others, but no one can learn for someone else. Democracy is learned through the experience of doing democracy, and the greatest lesson is the discovery that people and communities themselves have the power to act. Too often that potential goes unrecognized, which is why Kettering conducts its exchanges in ways it hopes promotes this self-discovery.
The central question in Kettering’s work is, What does it take to make democracy work as it should? What the foundation has found, in a nutshell, is that democracy requires the following three things:
• Citizens who are civically engaged and can make sound choices about their future
• Communities of citizens acting together to address common problems
• Institutions with public legitimacy that contribute to strengthening the work of citizens