Summer 2026 cohort in session · America250 public showcase August 7 · Get involved →
Summer 2026 · Inaugural Youth Fellowship · Washington DC

Six weeks. One river. A gift to Washington DC.

Civics Remix is a free, six-week summer fellowship (June 29 to August 7, 2026) for DC teenagers ages 14 to 18. It brings together local history, AI ethics, and hands-on science to help kids take real action in their neighborhoods. Based right along the Anacostia River, the program trains students to become community storytellers and researchers. The core of the project tackles a major tech gap: satellites cannot look through concrete to see when trash is blocking storm drains and causing local flooding. To help, fellows hit the streets to record and mark 200 drains using official DC DOEE markers. They then compare their real-world findings with what AI chatbots and computer models claim about those same neighborhoods. By finding the gaps between real life and AI assumptions, these youth expose algorithmic bias, publish their public datasets to Open Data DC, and rewrite the story of their river.

50+
DC youth
all 8 wards
6
Weeks of field science
and AI ethics
200
Storm drains stamped
entering Open Data DC
100%
Pilot completion rate
Spring 2026
Aug 7
America250
public showcase
$0
Cost to
every student
Why the Anacostia

The most neglected river in DC runs through the communities that need answers most.

The Anacostia flows through DC's most underserved neighborhoods. When young people ask AI about their river, the answers are vague, outdated, and stripped of local context. That is not an accident. It is a data problem, and these students are not visitors to this story. They are stakeholders.

17,000

Residents near the Anacostia estimated to be consuming contaminated fish despite health warnings.

National Geographic · NOAA
95%

Of Anacostia stream miles rated poor or very poor for aquatic life while AI describes the river as recovering.

USGS · Anacostia Watershed Society
The Program

Three principles. Six weeks. One river.

01 · Humanities as Methodology

The Four-Filter Protocol asks every session: what bias does this carry, whose story is absent, would a civic institution rely on this, and what decision gets made wrong?

02 · Field Science as Counter-Narrative

Students collect original water quality and soil data along the Anacostia, then compare it to AI output. Their data is the counter-narrative. The gap is the finding.

03 · Civic Action, Not Awareness

Every student submits a real FOIA request, writes a public comment, and presents a Civic Research Finding to DC city government on August 7.

Six-Week Flow

Every week builds toward one student-built gift to the city.

Week 1

AI and the River. Ask AI about the Anacostia, map the response, overlay the redlining data. The gap is the lesson.

Week 2

The Gap in the Data. Water quality and soil science with EarthEcho protocols and Anacostia Watershed Society. First original field data.

Week 3

On the River. Anacostia River Explorer with Trey Sherard of Anacostia Riverkeeper. Drain audits begin.

Week 4

Green Finance and RAG/LLM. Ages 16+ build Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipelines on their own field data. Watershed economics.

Week 5

Civic Action. All 200 drains stamped and logged. FOIA requests submitted. StoryMaps finalized. RAG chatbot tested.

Week 6

America250 Showcase. Anacostia Groundsource: The Street-Level AI Audit, presented to DC city government on August 7, 2026.

Schedule: Monday through Thursday, 10:30am to 2:30pm, in person. Every Friday is Field Day: marking 200 storm drains and auditing the 50 most flood-critical.
Civic Gift to DC

200 drains. 50 audits. One dataset. Permanent.

Flood forecasting tools like Google Flood Hub have a street-level blind spot: no satellite can see which curb inlets are choked with debris. Civics Remix fellows close that gap by hand, then hand DC two deliverables on August 7: a peer-verified drainage dataset published to Open Data DC and formatted so any flood model can ingest it, and a public AI tool built on that dataset and nothing else. The dataset lives on, the drains stay marked, and the next cohort adds the next layer. This is civic infrastructure, not a summer project.

A volunteer installs a storm drain marker on a curb inlet
Storm drain marking in action. Source: community storm drain marking programs.
Official DC DOEE storm drain marker reading This Drain Flows to Rock Creek, Do Not Pollute
The official DC DOEE marker fellows stamp on every drain: This Drain Flows to Rock Creek. Do Not Pollute.
1
Field LoggingMobile GIS · NASA GLOBE protocols · EarthEcho water profiles · 200 drains stamped, 50 audited
2
Open Data DCPeer-verified records submitted to the city's official portal
3
Algorithmic AuditStudent ground truth vs. open-source hydrology model predictions
4
AI Truth MapThe Civic Research Finding presented August 7
Where AI predicts safety and student ground truth proves flood risk, that gap is the finding.
The Founder

Isabella Getahun · Age 17 · Washington DC

Civics Remix fellows working on laptops during a summer 2026 session in Washington DC
Summer 2026 fellows in session, Washington DC.
"If AI learns from humanity as it is, who is building AI for humanity as it should be? I built Civics Remix as my answer. I am giving back to the city that raised me."
Isabella Getahun
Founder, Civics Remix and RockStars4Impact
"Wow. I have to double check everything."
Student Participant
First Civics Remix Session · Spring 2026
There is a place for you in this program.
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