Category Archives: generation Y

In Case You Forgot: Young People Have ALWAYS been Social Justice Leaders


Posted by ajlovesya

Tim Wise, an anti racism activist, recently posted a picture of Dave Dennis, delivering the eulogy at the funeral of James Chaney (killed by cops/Klansmen) in 1964.  He shared this picture because he felt: “It is the face of justice. Of truth. Angry, yes, but for a reason. I own an original of this photo and it inspires me daily.”

I decided to click through the website and came across several collections of young people in the civil rights movement, from college students to children.

Prince Edward County, Virginia. Students demand re-opening of their schools which have been closed for years to prevent court-ordered integration. Closing the schools denied education to Blacks, but white children were given vouchers to attend segregated "private academies" taught by white public-school teachers.

http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgyoung.htm

"I was really, really involved. I didn't realize at the time how dangerous the situation was. The only thing I was concerned with was that I wanted my freedom, I wanted to be able to go where I wanted, like everyone else did." — Dannela Bryant, Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History

http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgbham.htm

Gasping for breath, James Bevel and John Lewis are trapped inside a Nashville restaurant filled with insecticide gas when the manager turns on a fumigating machine to disrupt a sit-in.

http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgcoll.htm

While looking through these photos I realized something: young people have always been leading.  It’s really not new to have young people taking the lead.  Aside from well known student and youth led justice powerhouses such as SNCC many of the people we admire, like Martin Luther King, began leading when they were young.

Sometimes we speak as if young people being leaders is a new idea that the world needs to prepare for; as if our presence is odd if we haven’t taken the right steps or gained the right credentials. When I look at these photos I see in them what I see today among my peers:  young people moved by a need for justice and taking collective action based on the skills and passion they had, not waiting for the right person or moment.

Our involvement and impact didn’t start or stop with the civil rights movement and has taken different shapes throughout history.  From child laborers in the early 1900s going on strike to people like Adam Werbach, who at the age of 23 became the youngest president of the Sierra Club in its history, we’ve always been leading.

When it comes to  young people in social change, our questions shouldn’t focus on if we can lead or when, but how we lead and what we bring to social justice movements.


Stopping Unemployment in Rural Ohio and Starting a Movement for Rural America


Posted by ajlovesya

A few months ago I attended the DoSomething.org awards show at the Apollo and was surprised to learn that Mark Rembert, a fellow graduate of my alma mater Haverford College, was a finalist for a $100,000 grant for his organization Energize Clinton County (If you like him, go vote for him!).  Energize Clinton County is a nonprofit that seeks to strengthen Clinton County, a small town in a rural part of Ohio that was devastated by the closure of the town’s largest employer.  I was excited when Mark offered to share his thoughts and experiences on social change, philanthropy, and supporting rural towns and found the interview to be incredibly rewarding.

Tell us about yourself:

As a person who loves places, its nearly impossible for to talk about who I am without talking about where I am. I am proud to say I live in my hometown of Wilmington, a small rural town in southwest Ohio. As a kid, Wilmington was a pretty ideal small town to grow up in. It provided a quiet and peaceful environment, I had good friends, I had fruitful experiences in school, and I generally enjoyed life. But after I graduated from Wilmington High School in 2003, I did what I was supposed to do: I left. I ended up leaving the mid-West for the East Coast, and spent about six years in and around Philadelphia attending Haverford College and living in West Philadelphia. I loved Philadelphia and learned a great deal and community and place while living there. But I ended up deciding that I want to try out a new place, so I enrolled in the Peace Corps to expand upon the training in economics that I had received at Haverford.

As I was awaiting to ship off to Ecuador to begin my service, I was drawn home by a crisis that had struck Wilmington. In May of 2008, DHL Express announced that it would be closing its US overnight shipping hub at the Wilmington Air Park, laying off the 8,000 people employed at the Wilmington facility. Realizing the magnitude of the economic shock of this decision, I decided to spend my time waiting to leave for the Peace Corps in Wilmington. I came home knowing that the town I would come back to after the Peace Corps would be completely different the town I grew up in. Within just a few weeks of returning home in August 2008, I began to realize that my calling to serve was not in Ecuador, it was in my own hometown.

Tell us about Energize Clinton County

Energize Clinton County is a non-profit community economic development organization that I co-founded with my childhood friend Taylor Stuckert. We have a pretty simple mission: we want to make our hometown a vibrant place in the world again, and we want to demonstrate a new vision of possibility for small towns and rural places across America. Working in a small town setting, we’ve adopted an approach which acknowledges the uniqueness of any community and works to strengthen the rootedness of communities.

Our efforts to facilitate change begin with assisting community organizations, institutions, or individuals to clearly visualize new opportunities through planning and design. As projects move from planning to action, we provide support in assembling the tools, knowledge, and resources required for bringing about sustainable changes that improve the economic, social, and environmental life in our community.

What motivated you to start this organization?

Although our community’s economic crisis played a major role in bringing Taylor and I home, we did not set out to create 8,000 jobs to replace those lost at the Air Park. Instead, we were inspired to get involved by the energy and creativity of our friends and neighbors that wanted to fight to preserve their home by inventing the community from the ground up with new ideas. We were particularly motivated by a problem that many of people who were excited and ready to get to work rebuilding the community lacked a way visualize and communicate their ideas so that action and resources could mobilize behind seizing new opportunities. With our backgrounds in communications and international development, we felt like we had an opportunity to provide some the tools needed by the community to realize a new vision for its future, and move it towards achieving its goals.

We are also motivated by a pressing need in our country to reinvent rural America. For decades, rural places have dealt with chronic economic and social challenges, and as a result continue to lose population and decline. Yet, we still hold the belief that small towns and rural places are not only important to preserve, but that in doing so they will be capable of greatly contributing to the new innovations and ideas that will help drive the country through the 21st Century.

What do you find most rewarding about your work?

Without a doubt, the best thing about doing the work we do in our own community is that we are the direct beneficiaries of our own successes. Service is so often framed in terms of sacrifice, or about the good feeling you get for helping other people. But for us, we’re actually the direct recipients of our work, which is pretty great. As the community improves, it actually improves the quality of our own daily lives.

Another especially rewarding aspect of our work is the creative opportunity it provides. There are no instruction manuals for revitalizing small towns, and when resources are scarce there is an every great demand on the creative design process. There is a lot of excitement around feeling like we are on the frontier of developing innovative solutions that can benefit small towns across the country.

What do you find most challenging? How do you work around those challenges?

One of our greatest challenges is overcoming the stereotypes of small towns. Having both lived on the East Coast for extended periods, we are keenly aware of the perceptions that small towns are backward, boring, culture-less places, where uneducated, non-worldly people live. If as a country we’re going to seriously work to revitalize rural areas, we have to first dispel the myth that places that attract people looking for a more humble, community focused lifestyle lack creativity, innovation, or a desirable quality life. We have experienced the exact opposite, and value greatly the innovation that we have seen take from and grow very quickly in tight-knit communities that are experienced in working together.

We are also greatly concerned by what we see as a systematic failure in addressing the serious economic and social challenges of rural areas.

Rural places are home 19 percent of the population, and 20 percent of America’s poor, yet rural places receive less than 7% of all grants distributed by the top 1,000 U.S. Foundations, less than 2% of all philanthropic grants made by Fortune 500 companies, and receive between $401 and $648 less per capita in Federal government funding than urban areas. Even more worrisome are policies that address rural poverty by moving the rural poor to urban areas instead of investing in small towns and providing them with tools to address poverty locally through community economic development.

If we are to preserve our country’s small towns and rural places, and address the serious social, economic, and health crises facing our rural communities, we must begin to change our perception, and begin re-investing in rural America.

What advice or resources do you have for young people wanting to launch social change organizations?

In our experience, the easiest way to create lasting change is to do it in your own community. When we started ECC, we did so with little experience in community development, and almost zero resources, so our success has not been the result of years of experience, or a wealth of resources at our disposal. The change we’ve created has been the result of our ability to mobilize our friends, families, and neighbors to make changes in the they live, work, and spend money in our community.

We encourage young people to look for inspiration in the things that make your community special: history, local culture and traditions, the natural landscape and environment, unique local businesses, or the power of neighbors coming together to make their community better. Tapping into the energy, experience, and knowledge of your community is the best starting point for getting an idea of the ground.

How can people support you or get involved?

We’re working to expanding our efforts to surrounding small towns in our region, and are always looking for resources to assist us in that effort. We’re currently raising $6,000 to hire a Co-Op from the planning department at University of Cincinnati for the fall quarter to assist in our community economic development planning efforts. If you would like to donate, you can do so here: http://bit.ly/donate-ecc

We’re also always looking for new ideas. If you live in a small town tell us about why you love it, and share your stories about innovative efforts that have improved the quality of life in your community.

The most important thing rural communities and small towns can do is share ideas, experiences, and what works. If you’re trying to get new ideas off the ground in your community, let us know how we can help.

You can share your ideas with us by e-mailing mytown@energizecc.com.


America’s Best Cities for Young Nonprofit Professionals


Posted by ajlovesya

This weekend Forbes.com released their list of America’s best cities for young professionals. To determine which cities made the cut Forbes.com measured unemployment rate, predicted job growth, cost of living, number of high profile companies, and concentration of graduates from elite schools (which indicates concentration of talent and career minded people).

While reading the list I couldn’t help but wonder what makes a city attractive to young nonprofit professionals. On the one hand, these measurements are important for all young professionals regardless of sector. For example, nonprofiteers especially want their money to stretch far–since we tend to make less of it compared to our for-profit peers–and are anxious to thrive while supporting their cause.

Yet I think the measurements offered by Forbes are incomplete when it comes to careers in the nonprofit sector. I find nonprofit work to be an after thought, not really included as a serious career choice or its employees having unique employment needs. Beyond money though, a culture where nonprofit work is valued results in a stronger professional and personal network, a sense of being part of the city, and opportunities to grow. Therefore, I wanted to brainstorm some measurements that might be important to young nonprofit professionals:

Size, job growth, and types of positions in the nonprofit sector: Essentially a snap shot of employment trends in nonprofit work in each city. These kinds of statistics show how sustainable the sector is in that particular city and if I can grow there.

Vocal nonprofits and partnerships with for profit and government: This indicates that the nonprofit sector has a strong presence in that city and that they are equal players in shaping the city.

Rate of volunteering: A city with a culture that fosters giving back, keeping nonprofits and public service at the forefront of city life.

Number of active young professionals groups or opportunities for meeting: To me, more important than the presence of graduates of elite schools is whether or not they are connecting around causes that are important to them. How easy will it be to find my peers, especially if I am new to the city or the sector?

I want a city where public service isn’t seen as an afterthought or nice idea–it is seen as a critical component of city life and its sustainability is viewed as crucial.

New York City would make the cut for me. In New York City, employment in the nonprofit sector grew in 2009 while it shrank in all other sectors. The nonprofit sector also increased employment of people between the ages of 16-24 by 17%. I’ve been able to connect with tons of people and organizations through YNPN-NYC and various other young professionals groups–not to mention all of the conferences that are held here each year. I’ve seen nonprofits–from grassroots to large institutions–mobilize to protest budget cuts and work with Mayor Bloomberg in launching new initiatives to support the nonprofit sector. We making progress in terms of volunteering but that cost of living still gets under my skin!

What do you look for when choosing a city for your nonprofit career? Any cities stand out to you as being great places for a career in the nonprofit sector?

Other posts you may find interesting:

1.  Meeting Fellow Nonprofiteers in New York

2.  Finding and Landing Your First Nonprofit Job


Rethinking Social Media Internships


Posted by ajlovesya

During a presentation on technology, nonprofits, and free agents at the Personal Democracy Forum, Allison Fine commented that asking an intern to handle social media affairs is a poor use of the intern’s time and doesn’t encourage organizational buy in and capacity building when it comes to social media engagement.  Instead, interns should mentor executives on how to use tools instead of simply throwing up a facebook page.

I like the idea of rethinking the role of a social media intern to create meaningful opportunities for both the intern and the organization.  I’ve noticed a growing interest in social media with many organizations wanting to jump in to reach and expand their audience, and young people wanting to help out in a way that is familiar and fun.  Aside from social media providing new opportunities for organizations and their supporters to act, it also allows the development of important skills such as verbal and written communication skills and the ability to collect and analyze data.

But a concern that I have is if young people, while knowing about social media, know how to use social media for organizational purposes.  For example, personally I have done a decent job of using social media to connect with others and build my brand.  How does this experience enable me to launch a social media campaign for an organization wanting to mobilize its audience?  And when organizations want to get into social media, how much thought have they put into the goals they want to achieve beyond getting more fans and followers?

The current way many organizations craft social media internships speaks to how they view social media in general–something anyone can do with little commitment in terms of time or money.  What if we reshaped this to be a learning opportunity for both the intern and the organization, with an emphasis on building social media capacity and interest within the organization and outside of it?  What would some of the basic crucial aspects of social media internships be?

  • Interns would make a long term commitment and be involved in organization, executives would commit to learning about social media
  • Interns would provide support on technical aspects of social media, executives would share current marketing strategy and reasons for approach
  • Interns would help gather data on social media sites to contribute to social media strategy, executives would share goals for outreach online and offline
  • Interns and executives would pull in outside supporters to help grow social media engagement and opportunities for learning
  • Interns and executives would communicate ideas and challenges with entire staff
  • Interns and executives reflect on skills and lessons being learned

At the same time, is the idea of a social media internship itself outdated?  In their presentation of their upcoming book Networked Nonprofit, Allison Fine and Beth Kanter suggests that free agents–people who are not attached to an organization but rather attached to the idea of using social media for social change–can help move organizations forward when using social media.  Should we emphasize collaborating with other organizations and people instead of dwelling in house?  Is this approach more empowering to young people wanting to use social media for social change and does it make sense when trying to scale impact?

What do you think of social media internships?  Are there examples of well done internships?  What are challenges in crafting them?  Are they even worth it?


Want to Lead Your Own Social Change Project or Organization? Check Out the DoSomething.org Social Action Bootcamp


Posted by ajlovesya

One of the requests I often get is for information about launching a nonprofit or social change project.  While I know of several resources for this type of endeavor, I am super excited that DoSomething.org, an organization that empowers young people to take action, has teamed up with Justgood.tv to live stream their Social Action Boot Camp from San Francisco!  Beyond watching the boot camp, you’ll be able to interact with participants and ask questions.  So here’s a great chance to get more information on being a social change agent for a cause you care about.

I’m sharing the live stream here and more details about the event are below.  I hope you find this useful!

Produced by Justgood.tv

Here is more information:

The Details:
When: June 19th (9am to 4:30pm PST; noon to 7:30pm EST)
What: How-to sessions on starting and running your own community action projects or social enterprises

Streaming Schedule:

9:00-9:30: Morning Address from Aria Finger, Do Something, COO
9:40-10:35: Branding and Marketing: How to find your voice and tell your story
10:45-11:40: Becoming a Leader: Team structure and leadership strategies
12:50-1:20: Do Something Youth Panel (Learn from 3 young people running their social change projects)
1:30-2:25: Partnerships: How to effectively partner with both for-profits and not-for-profits
2:35-3:30: Creating a Great Website: How to build a new site or improve your existing one
3:40-4:30: Interviews with young social leaders

Throughout the live webcast programming, there will be opportunities to ask questions to guests and speakers. Just sign on via Twitter or Facebook chat or tweet your remarks to @justgoodtv with #dscamp and our producer will place your questions or comments in queue.

Another post you might like: First Steps in Doing Good for High School and College Students