Background
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Virtual to Reality
In the past year we have watched unlikely leaders—mainly tech savvy youth—rise from virtually nowhere to achieve incredible, real world change in places like Colombia, Iran, and Moldova by using commonplace technologies among the next generation.This is just the beginning.
Twelve million people in Columbia marched the streets to protest against the FARC, yielding a sea change in public opinion. This was all organized in one month by an unemployed engineer on his computer. The protests in Iran are just the most recent example of how modern technologies help stimulate and catalyze mass protests against a dictatorial regime.
The Missing Link
We don’t always know their names, but we know their twitter hash tags, their Facebook profiles, and their YouTube videos. More consequently, we feel their impact. The individuals who create these 21st century movements rarely appreciate the scale of their influence and the real world impact of something they started on their cell phones or computers. These 21st century movements are the future of civil society, yet they do not have a mechanism to support, train and empower the kinds of leaders that have a url instead of an office, Facebook group officers instead of staff, and a twitter hash tag instead of a marketed brand name. Likewise, they do not have an entity that can train traditional 20th century movements and organizations in how to effectively use 21st century tools to achieve their objectives.
A Home for Digital Diplomacy
The Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) was a response to this need. It began with a summit in December 2008, where the State Department partnered with MTV, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Howcast, AT&T, Jet Blue, Gen-Next, Access360Media and Columbia Law School, to identify, convene and engage 21st century movements online for the first time in history.
The purpose was to assess how real these 21st century movements were, draw on and synthesize their best practices, and obtain their commitment to being part of a sustainable organization geared toward spreading these best practices to more traditional movements and organizations. In the same way that embassies would engage traditional organizations over coffee or by a visit to their offices, AYM saw the first ever initial outreach, engagement, and assessment take place through digital means. At the end of the December summit, the partner stakeholders announced the creation of AYM as a new 501c3 that would serve as the mechanism for engaging, convening, and connecting 21st century movements.
The Alliance of Youth Movements strives to be a vehicle to address both the needs of 21st and 20th century movements, the former with training in activism and the latter with training in integrating technology. The organization is in early stages and is comprised of leaders from the private sector, the NGO community, foundations, and some of the most successful digital movements around the world. AYM acts as a third party vehicle that empowers leaders to affect change in the world by using 21st century tools to safeguard human rights, promote good governance and foster unprecedented civic empowerment by connecting people to people. It is a tool for convening and connecting 21st century movements, synthesizing their best practices, supporting their efforts to affect real world change, and harnessing their expertise to support more traditional movements and organizations.
Secretary Clinton Announces Summit
Alliance of Youth Movements Summit 2008, hosted by Columbia University Law School and sponsored by Howcast, Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, the U.S. Department of State, and Access 360 Media, introduced the world to the concept of 21st century grassroots movements and organizations. By bringing together dynamic young leaders representing 15 countries from 5 continents, we not only gave these groups the opportunity to share their stories, but more importantly we took the first step towards building a coalition of private sector, NGO, academic, media, and government partners. Recognizing the importance of this mission, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced plans for a second Alliance of Youth Movements Summit from October 14-16th in Mexico City.
Virtual to Reality
In the past year we have watched unlikely leaders—mainly tech savvy youth—rise from virtually nowhere to achieve incredible, real world change in places like Colombia, Iran, and Moldova by using commonplace technologies among the next generation.This is just the beginning.
Twelve million people in Columbia marched the streets to protest against the FARC, yielding a sea change in public opinion. This was all organized in one month by an unemployed engineer on his computer. The protests in Iran are just the most recent example of how modern technologies help stimulate and catalyze mass protests against a dictatorial regime.
The Missing Link
We don’t always know their names, but we know their twitter hash tags, their Facebook profiles, and their YouTube videos. More consequently, we feel their impact. The individuals who create these 21st century movements rarely appreciate the scale of their influence and the real world impact of something they started on their cell phones or computers. These 21st century movements are the future of civil society, yet they do not have a mechanism to support, train and empower the kinds of leaders that have a url instead of an office, Facebook group officers instead of staff, and a twitter hash tag instead of a marketed brand name. Likewise, they do not have an entity that can train traditional 20th century movements and organizations in how to effectively use 21st century tools to achieve their objectives.
A Home for Digital Diplomacy
The Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) was a response to this need. It began with a summit in December 2008, where the State Department partnered with MTV, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Howcast, AT&T, Jet Blue, Gen-Next, Access360Media and Columbia Law School, to identify, convene and engage 21st century movements online for the first time in history.
The purpose was to assess how real these 21st century movements were, draw on and synthesize their best practices, and obtain their commitment to being part of a sustainable organization geared toward spreading these best practices to more traditional movements and organizations. In the same way that embassies would engage traditional organizations over coffee or by a visit to their offices, AYM saw the first ever initial outreach, engagement, and assessment take place through digital means. At the end of the December summit, the partner stakeholders announced the creation of AYM as a new 501c3 that would serve as the mechanism for engaging, convening, and connecting 21st century movements.
The Alliance of Youth Movements strives to be a vehicle to address both the needs of 21st and 20th century movements, the former with training in activism and the latter with training in integrating technology. The organization is in early stages and is comprised of leaders from the private sector, the NGO community, foundations, and some of the most successful digital movements around the world. AYM acts as a third party vehicle that empowers leaders to affect change in the world by using 21st century tools to safeguard human rights, promote good governance and foster unprecedented civic empowerment by connecting people to people. It is a tool for convening and connecting 21st century movements, synthesizing their best practices, supporting their efforts to affect real world change, and harnessing their expertise to support more traditional movements and organizations.
Secretary Clinton Announces Summit
Alliance of Youth Movements Summit 2008, hosted by Columbia University Law School and sponsored by Howcast, Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, the U.S. Department of State, and Access 360 Media, introduced the world to the concept of 21st century grassroots movements and organizations. By bringing together dynamic young leaders representing 15 countries from 5 continents, we not only gave these groups the opportunity to share their stories, but more importantly we took the first step towards building a coalition of private sector, NGO, academic, media, and government partners. Recognizing the importance of this mission, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced plans for a second Alliance of Youth Movements Summit from October 14-16th in Mexico City.
