OVERVIEW
Building on the lessons we learned from 2003-2008, The League of Young Voters enters 2009 positioned to mobilize our core constituencies (young people of color, non-college youth and low- income youth) like never before in our history. Our 2009 field program will consist of Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) programs, issue campaigns, lobbying, online organizing and leadership development. The League of Young Voters will be running field campaigns in the following eight states: Maine, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.

RELEVANCE
Now that we are beyond the 2008 Presidential election, we are shifting our focus from voter mobilization to training, issue education and advocacy. The 2008 election mobilized a record number of non-college youth, youth from low-income communities and communities of color. The League of Young Voters is uniquely positioned to continue to engage and mobilize this hard-to-reach constituency through programs through issue education, advocacy and leadership development activities that stress long-term, self-sustaining empowerment. We believe we can harness the excitement of the 2008 election cycle to increase civic involvement and build a base for organizing, empowerment, and activism in 2009 and beyond.

STRATEGY
Our 2009 strategy is to produce policy victories, influence the issue environment for 2010 and identify promising leaders. At the local, state and federal level we will work to produce meaningful legislative victories that will keep our core constituency engaged and involved. Additionally, we plan to influence the 2010 issue environment in our target states through advocacy and education to ensure that juvenile justice reform, investment green jobs, health care reform and making college more affordable are top priorities during the mid-term elections. Finally, we plan to identify strong, qualified leaders and place them through a leadership pipeline via campaigns and leadership development training to prepare them to run more sophisticated voter engagement programs in 2010. Finally, we plan to start engaging and educating our constituents about the importance of the 2010 census.

2009 GENERAL PROGRAMS
This years programs fall into five major program areas: Issue campaigns, leadership development and training, online organizing, nonpartisan civic engagement, and alliance building work. All of these programs address the problem of low civic participation among young people.
 
2009 ISSUE CAMPAIGNS
In 2009, we are focusing on building healthy communities, by working on a handful of issues that resonate with our core constituency groups. We will partner with key ally organizations to first build broad public support for policy initiatives that create viable opportunities and sustainable jobs in target areas, which then allows for meaningful community-based organizing efforts to revitalize local economies. The issues that we will highlight include: green jobs, college access, heath care and juvenile justice. These issues will be our focus for our national grassroots mobilization activities and federal policy work.