Many young immigrants are eager to become successful Americans. They value family, faith, and hard work and are eager to get involved in civic life. But the path to thriving as an American integrated into society can be long and includes obstacles along the way. And that’s where Liberty’s Promise comes in.

Since 2005, Liberty’s Promise has supported low-income immigrant youth ages 15–21 as they have pursued higher education, planned their careers, and engaged civically. Working with partner schools in and around Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md., the organization currently runs 29 programs at 24 locations across eight jurisdictions. Its Civics and Citizenship after-school programs teach students how the country functions and why it is important to contribute to its preservation. So far, it has served 7,000 immigrant students.

“They learn about their community and American civil life so they can feel like they fit in, they feel like they belong,” Robert Ponichtera, the founder of Liberty’s Promise, tells National Review. “It’s always been our assumption that once young people feel like they understand how the system works, then they succeed. They go on to be responsible members of society and contribute to the maintenance of the republic and keep it going after we’re gone.”

The four pillars of Liberty’s Promise are civic education, community engagement, college access, and employment skills. Twice a week for ten weeks, students head to a program after school for an activity in one of these categories. They learn how to write a résumé or professional email or how to network with others (all the way down to small details such as offering a firm handshake and making eye contact — in many cultures, Ponichtera explains, it’s a mark of deference not to look somebody in the eye). On another day, Liberty’s Promise might bring in a representative to speak to the kids about postsecondary scholarship opportunities.

When visiting the United States in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville was amazed by Americans’ interest in organizing. “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite,” he observes in the first volume of Democracy in America.

Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general, and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner, they create hospitals, prisons, schools.

Investing in one’s community has been, and should remain, a basic expectation of calling America home. Liberty’s Promise prepares students to perform that role by helping them find opportunities to volunteer or further understand their home. Activities might include making sandwiches for the homeless, touring historic sites, and immersing themselves in arts and culture.

Last spring, for instance, the middle-school contingent of the Civics and Citizenship program went on a field trip to a local arts center and outdoor park. There they learned about the importance of nurturing and preserving the natural environment. Supervised by park rangers, the kids removed invasive weeds, planted trees and other local species, and watered the gardens. This spring, high schoolers with Liberty’s Promise visited a fire station and a web-services skills center, where they explored careers such as robotics, space exploration, machine learning, online gaming, and smart-homes development. About 50 kids from Montgomery County in Maryland visited New York City to see the Statue of Liberty in May. Also that month, students from Prince George’s County in Maryland visited museums on the National Mall. In July, the youth of Liberty’s Promise volunteered at organizations such as Kits to Heart, the Salvation Army, and Habitat for Humanity. At local libraries, students handwrote notes and distributed them to cancer patients.

Liberty’s Promise also tries to show students the institutions and individuals that make America safe, productive, and flourishing — namely, local government and first responders. “In a lot of countries around the world, the police are there to beat you up and take your money,” Ponichtera says. “We try our best to show that law enforcement is there to serve you and protect you. And your local elected officials are accountable to you.”

While it also offers programs in Spanish, Liberty’s Promise tries to ensure that enrollees master English. “Being part of Liberty’s Promise allowed me to be around non-Spanish-speakers, helping me lose my fear of speaking English,” Ayline Deras, an alumna of the high-school program, says in a statement on the website. Choudelie, from Haiti, gives similar testimony: “I could never have imagined myself, someone who was struggling to pronounce words in ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] class, now being placed in advanced classes.”

In many ways, Liberty’s Promise programs are more like the Scouts than courses at a school, Ponichtera says. He believes sit-down sessions would deter students, so the programs stick to the interactive and experiential. The organization considered bringing guest speakers to talk to students about political issues. But the staff thought the kids would stop coming if the program gave presentations on contentious subjects.

“Our youth, and immigrant youth in general, put quite a bit of value on family, hard work, and finding a path to success in this country for the betterment of their families and themselves,” Ponichtera says. “I would also say that they believe the American dream is alive and well, and can be attained through hard work and perseverance.”

When Ponichtera launched Liberty’s Promise, someone commented that it lacked “the p-word,” he says. This comment stumped him, so the commenter clarified: “Patriotism.”

To offer a supplement to that feedback: Liberty’s Promise might expand its programs to teach about the Founding of America and the framing of the Constitution. The group currently introduces students to the Bill of Rights, which is a good start. But there is a plethora of foundational documents that young immigrants should become familiar with so that they understand how the Bill of Rights came to be. They should also understand that the U.S. is not a mere democracy but a democratic republic. In our system, the masses have significant influence. That popular power is, however, tempered by institutional checks and balances installed by the Framers to prevent tyranny.

Students of Liberty’s Promise should also come to understand the miraculous story of America’s birth: the time when a group of scrappy and enlightened colonists upended the monarchical status quo and staked their lives on the world’s first successful experiment in self-government. And they would benefit from a sense of the costs that were paid — in the Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond — to make the experiment possible and extend its blessings to all citizens.

But however its programs might be improved, Liberty’s Promise already does an admirable job of helping students take advantage of America’s many opportunities and privileges, the better to serve the country they love. The United States would be better off if every major city had an organization just like it.