Rhizome

Year Founded: 2021

Rhizome is a space for action and ideas, a home for emerging leaders to create the world they want to live in. Rhizome’s purpose is to build collective power for young people to create the safer, happier, healthier world they want to live in. Their mission is to activate young people’s identities into action and help youth treat civic service as the work of a lifetime.

Rhizome is a nonpartisan nonprofit co-founded by 90 young people across the U.S. in August 2021. The key challenge we face is that young people hold untapped collective power to create the safer, happier, and healthier world they want to live in. We improve our communities, spread big ideas, and train leaders to increase civic participation. 

Rhizome is committed to power sharing, as students vote on all nominees to our Board of Directors, decide the unified actions they take, and vote to shape changes to Rhizome’s overall goals, vision, and shared work environment. By inviting students to gain leadership experience and build habits based on who they want to become, Rhizome promotes youth mental health, inspires responsibility, and creates paths to lifelong leadership.

Less than three years after launching with 90 co-founders, Rhizome is supporting Civic Service Fellows to lead actions in over 250 high schools throughout the U.S. Fellows experience greater civic efficacy, willingness to build bridges, and self-confidence as leaders – as well as improved determinants of mental health – while making an impact in their communities. Long-term, their goal is to make hyperlocal, student-led Chapters of the Civic Service Fellowship accessible to students in each high school across the country.