MISSION

The Youth Free Expression Program empowers youth with knowledge, tools and opportunities to assert and defend their right to free expression.

Young people become thoughtful and informed adult citizens by learning, questioning and building critical thinking skills. This is undermined by attempts to stifle young voices and shield young people from controversial, disturbing or “inappropriate” content. YFEP believes that denying young people the freedom to create, explore and inquire is counterproductive and dangerous. Young people have every right to participate in conversations–locally, nationally and globally–that affect their lives.

KEY ISSUES: Books + Protest Press Art Internet

RESOURCES

Kids' Right to Read Book Censorship Action Kit

Book Censorship Action Kit

Youth Censorship Database and Map

Tools for Activists

Tools for Activists

Be Heard! Protecting Your Protest Rights

Defend LGBTQ Stories

Defend LGBTQ Stories: A Resource

The Show Must Go On: Toolkit for Organizing Against Theatre Censorship in Schools

Theater Censorship in Public Schools

OUR WORK

Book Censorship
NCAC’s Kids Right to Read Project (KRRP) confronts challenges to books in school and public libraries, advocates against book rating systems and opposes censorship in school curricula. We work behind the scenes with groups of teachers, administrators and school leaders on policy guidance.

If you have experienced a book challenge in your school or library, please report it here.

Student Advocates for Speech
The Student Advocates for Speech (SAS) Fellowship is a one-of-a-kind program which focuses on creating high school-level student advocates who can speak about the direct impact that book bannings and other forms of educational censorship have on their ability to learn and engage in free inquiry and critical thinking.

More information about the program is available here.

Youth Free Expression Film Contest
The annual YFEP Film Contest invites teenagers to create a short film on a contemporary free speech debate of particular relevance to young people. The theme for 2024 is “Free Speech and Artificial Intelligence”

The theme for 2023 was “Speaking with People whose Ideas you Hate”.

AMPLIFY STUDENT VOICES

Meet Ny’Shira Lundy and learn how she became a LITERARY ACTIVIST, watch Maggie Budzyna‘s film CENSORED and read about Jessica Kim‘s FIRST PROTEST. Read about a painting created at an after-school Black Lives Matter workshop at Sunset Park High School, and about the student journalist protest at Prosper High School; learn about how recent student sit-ins broke the record for the longest ever Howard University student protest, harkening back to historic campus takeovers by black student activists in the 1960s.

GET IN TOUCH

The best way to combat censorship is to call it out as it happens.

REPORT CENSORSHIP

If you have experienced or witnessed a threat to free expression rights, please contact us! An advocate will get in touch with you.