Purple America is a national initiative of Values-in-Action Foundation to re-focus the American conversation to a civil, productive and respectful dialogue around our American shared values.
Values-in-Action Foundation empowers students and adults to build communities of kindness, caring and respect through programs that teach, promote, and provide skills and tools to enable individuals to make positive values-based decisions every day. To learn more about Project Love, our school-based, character-development initiative of Values-in-Action Foundation, visit www.viafdn.org
Why Purple?
Purple America is a national initiative of Values-in-Action Foundation, a character-building education and training organization that has trained more than 75,000 American teens and 2,900 educators to build a culture of kindness, caring and respect in their schools.
Purple America’s mission is to re-engage Americans in civil dialog and constructive social action rooted in the common ground of our shared values.
To highlight the American values that unite us, we are creating new forums to share our beliefs, engage young people in meaningful dialogue about values, and connect all Americans through the discovery and celebration of our shared American ideals.
Why Purple America was founded
Today, values discussions are missing from many schools and families. Some say an entire generation is unaware of what America stands for and the positive values that connect us. Widespread cheating, cyber-bullying, dating violence and violence in media reveal the ways that fraying values harm young people, both rich and poor.
Election cycles deliberately emphasize and often exaggerate our differences without offering a comparable values discussion vital for a unified nation. These divisions make it harder and harder for Americans to come together to solve problems that seriously threaten our future.
Civic Engagement
Young people are the least likely to vote and least civically engaged of any age group. Purple America gives educators and parents a unique means to engage students in civic affairs and values-building dialog in a critical election year and beyond. Engaging young people in civic affairs makes them more likely to work harder in school, avoid drug use and pregnancy, volunteer and vote, and have better work ethics as adults. (“Encouraging Civic Engagement”, Knight Foundation Child Trends Research Brief.)
