100 Students, 5 Days, 1 Goal: Grow As Movement Leaders and Organizers
When 20 college students come together to train 80 high school leaders on how to make a difference, incredible things can happen. And that’s exactly what Students Demand Action did at our 2025 Summer Organizing Institute.
For the first time since 2019, we brought together high school student leaders for in-depth, in-person training. Students leveled up their organizing and leadership skills. And they are ready to apply them to the gun violence prevention movement and beyond.
Our Summer Organizing Institute had it all:
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Conversations with state and local lawmakers (including First Lady Gwen Walz!)
Students Demand Action National Training Team member Andres Cubillos facilitated a state and local lawmaker panel, featuring electeds from both Minnesota and Colorado.
Later in the week, Minnesota First Lady Gwen Walz gave remarks to the students. And she even made time to snap a selfie with the crew!
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The inside scoop on movement building, including a guest appearance from Angela Ferrell-Zabala
Students Demand Action National Organizing Board Member Stella Kaye had a fireside chat with Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive Director of Moms Demand Action. Gavin Bendross, another National Organizing Board Member, facilitated a panel with staff members from Everytown Law. Students learned about the state of gun violence prevention work in the courts.
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Skills workshops that were built and led by college leaders of our National Training Team
At Students Demand Action, we know that student-led movements have the power to make real change. That’s why our National Training Team leaders put together skills workshops to help them make change in their classrooms, communities, and beyond. Topics included:
- Legacy planning and leadership development. The training emphasized how to build sustainable groups that last, even once the first leader(s) have graduated.
- SMARTIE goals + choice points. Movement-builders left the training equipped to make intentional choices toward equity of voices, diversity of perspectives, and intention toward an anti-racist and anti-oppressive worldview.
- Building and maintaining a strong base. We’re fired up and ready to grow a membership base of committed and knowledgeable members by using various recruitment tactics.
- Advocacy 101: We all need a reminder to get back to the basics! The course taught what advocacy is and how organizers at Everytown for Gun Safety advocate against gun violence.
- Legislative advocacy, including what it is and how to hold an effective meeting with your lawmakers.
- Advocacy and social media: Platforms like TikTok and Instagram can take our activism, and our reach, to the next level.
- Media advocacy: Here’s how earned media (psst: that means “getting other people to talk about you”) can be used as a tool to further your advocacy efforts.
- Facilitation skills. Leading a movement starts with a great meeting. The leaders of this meeting taught us about how to lead an engaging meeting (meta, right?). Less boredom = more energy, more action, and more people in your movement!
- Public speaking: Our voices have power. Thanks to this training, our students are ready to use theirs for public advocacy.
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Electives focused on cutting-edge policy and research
“Electives” might sound like a classroom experience, but we’re confident these topics met the moment. We focused on:
- Which federal policies are top priority in Congress right now
- Stopping deadly DIY machine guns (D-I-Don’t, anyone?)
- @ Me Next Time: The Gun Industry and Social Media
- How fighting the gun industry is anti-racism in action
- Firearms 101, led by the person who, quite literally, wrote the book Safe Gun Ownership for Dummies
- Understanding the deadly intersections of hate, extremism, and gun violence
- How to talk about guns without losing the room (it’s possible—and we proved it!)
- How changing gun owner demographics are changing the conversation
- Building partnerships: How to find allies in unexpected places
One key focus of the week was giving students time to dig into specific gun violence prevention topics. Students opted into four tracks with 20 participants each to learn about some of the most pressing issues in the gun safety space.
These tracks were designed for students, by students. Because if you’ve ever been asked to write a paper with no rubric, no instructions, and no example of what to do, you know it’s nearly impossible to put together something good. (Yeah, we’ve been there, too.) So why would organizing be any different?
Each track of students spent 12 hours learning about one of our four topic areas. Then, they had a chance to apply the skills trainings from the week to their advocacy work. Then, track members broke into small groups, where students worked together to complete a capstone project.
More About Our Tracks
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Demand a Seat
Students were assigned campaign scenarios, where they worked as a team (candidate, campaign manager, finance director, and more) to build a cohesive campaign plan. Students also:
- Developed field plans, budget and finance plans, and creative pieces like campaign mailers or digital ads
- Walked away with an engaging and effective Story of Self
- Understood the value of teamwork and trusting their group partners
- Provided insight on what is needed to run a campaign
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Secure Storage: Loaded Truths
Students learned how to grapple with problems caused by all the guns already in circulation (unintentional shootings, guns stolen from cars, firearm suicide, etc.) By the end of the track, students:
- Understood the problems, the policy solutions, and the “people” solutions
- Created PSAs, public education campaign-in-a-box, and other resources
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Industry Accountability
Students learned about the inner workings of the gun industry, equipping them to identify pressure points for advocacy and reform. They completed four projects, each with its own focus:
- How social media platforms could better address gun content
- Research into a large gun manufacturer and its ties to extremism
- Investigating gun dealers in their communities and their role in gun trafficking
- Glock and the company’s failure to address its firearms’ susceptibility to being converted into illegal machine guns with switches.
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Social Media for the Movement
Students tackled four campaigns centered around four of our organizational priorities:
- Secure Gun Storage
- DIY Machine Guns
- Assault Weapons Ban
- Gun Industry Accountability
Students also created social media posts across a variety of mediums that promoted their campaigns’ calls to action. They learned:
- How to use social media skills for advocacy and design graphics in Students Demand Action branding
- How to create engaging TikTok videos
- How to write messaging in Students Demand Action’s powerful, engaging voice
Yes, students left with an impressive project to apply to their work to end gun violence. But our Summer Organizing Institute members didn’t just leave with important information about growing the movement. They left with skills that will serve them wherever they go next:
- Assigned a group project in class? Thanks to our Demand a Seat track, students know how to make sure everyone has a role, and how to get others excited about playing their part. (No more “I stayed up until 2 a.m. because I was the only person who did any work on our presentation” stress required.)
- Asked to fix a problem? Our Secure Storage track gave students the tools to work with both policy and people to find solutions. Even better, they know how to go beyond a quick fix to address the reason why something is going wrong in the first place.
- Time to sum up a 500-page book in a three-page paper? The Industry Accountability crew knows how to take challenging, technical topics and turn them into catchy, digestible presentations. (I mean, come on—if you didn’t make a slide deck, did you even go to organizing training?)
- Told to “just make a post about it” during an internship? Our Social Media track trained students on how to use Canva, stay up to date on how social media is changing, and stay aligned with a brand’s style or voice.
“It is a great opportunity to grow as a member of Students Demand Action and develop leadership skills outside of the organization.”
—Summer Organizing Institute 2025 Participant
Of course, you can’t put in that much work without having a lot of fun! Students spent time bowling, playing lawn games, and singing karaoke.
They also had designated time to connect with other people in their regions to:
- Build deeper relationships with the staff there to support them
- Learn about priority work in their state and how they can use different tools from Everytown for Gun Safety to support these efforts (psst: Did you know we have a gun violence prevention chatbot? Yes, really!)
- Connect with other students in their state and region
“I had an amazing time, I learned a lot, and I made a ton of new friends in a respectful, cultivating environment.”
—Summer Organizing Institute 2025 Participant
We wouldn’t have wanted to spend our summer anywhere other than at the Students Demand Action Organizing Institute. And now, we’re ready to take what we learned back to our classrooms, communities, and Students Demand Action groups.
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