The Power of Youth

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Young Leaders

Published October 12, 2009 @ 09:24AM PT

I believe that people will look back on the early 21st century and make note of the explosion of youth activism and engagement as a major turning point on solving issues from climate change to economic justice. From advocacy organizations like STAND to innovative companies like Better World Books to youth capacity building programs like StartingBloc and the Global Engagement Summit, today's young people are connected, smart, and mad as hell at the state of the world. The Alliance for Youth Movements Summit, happening later this week in Mexico City, is designed to take all that passionate energy and channel it towards real meaningful action.

The Alliance for Youth Movements came out of a conversation held between the US State Department and tech-savvy web2.0 companies and nonprofits about how technology can augment and unleash the power of young people around the world. This group looked around and saw young people organizing for their rights more creatively and more intelligently than ever before, but wondered how they could be the right type of supportive for these organizers.

AYM understands its role as helping the tech-savvy younger generation of 21st century activists understand the best practices of organizing from the last century, while at the same time, helping the old school better make use of the organizing technology so native to today's young people. Their second annual summit will feature some totally kick ass speakers, including diverse notables like Oscar Morales from Un Millón de Voces Contra Las FARC on the activism side and Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, on the new technology side of things.

I've been watching AYM for the last year and am thrilled about what they're putting together. I think that one of the things that my work in the social entrepreneurship has affirmed for me is that not all problems are reducible to shifting economic incentives. For those that, we social entrepreneurs can be amazing, disruptive actors. But often, that has to be just one part of a larger movement that defines it's goals in the context of rights and justice. Despite our field's quiet discomfort with that language, there is nothing irreconcilable. In fact, I would tend to agree with Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer, who has stated publicly that he believes that all of our innovative business models have to pass through the lens of economic and social justice.

I'm also excited about AYM simply from the standpoint of their use of technology. They will be live-streaming everything, which is great. Even more than that, they've made it super easy for bloggers like me to share information about the event. They have a whole page of high quality media assets like embedded media players and logos. I wish more events and organizations recognized that this makes it so much easier for distribution and media partners to create high quality content and spread the message.

Regular readers know that youth engagement is a major passion for me. From the time I was rocking out to straight edge youth hardcore like Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today to starting a magazine just after September 11th to understand how young people were shedding the banner of apathy to designing global engagement programs at Northwestern, I've been around the efforts of the smartest most passionate young people today. I continue to believe that there is no better investment for the future than in their efforts, and I'm glad to see AYM taking that to the next level.