Stick Your Neck Out — A Street-Smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond, and its Teaching Guide, are a superb civic engagement training tool for upper level high school kids.

You can buy it here.

"If you are not happy with the way things are in your life, in your organization, in your family, in your country or in the world, maybe you can be a catalyst for making things better. Here are practical suggestions on how you can use your talents and ideas to help create the changes you desire."

—Millard Fuller, Founder, Habitat for Humanity International

Filled with practical tips and inspiring examples of real people, this book provides the missing link between ideals and action.

Topics covered include choosing an issue, mapping out a plan, creating a vision of success, organizing a team, building trust, resolving conflicts, working with the media, moving through bureaucracies, setting legal strategies and more.

The book is anchored in three key ideas:

1. Courageous and compassionate people can solve any problems and meet any challenges in their communities and in the world.

2. The surest path to a meaningful life is service — acting for the common good.

3. The key to success on this path is balance — head and heart, trust and street-smarts, passion and professionalism, reflection and action.

Author John Graham draws on his own extensive experiences as an activist and negotiator, as well as on the experiences of many others who have brought about positive change.

The book includes inspiring stories of Giraffe Heroes — the people honored for taking on problems like poverty, racism, gang violence, environmental pollution, and many others.