The power of youth

How do I have impact?

Life seems so insular right now doesn't it? Barely 6 months ago I was trudging through Year 12. I had been attending the same school, seeing the same 100 people every day for six years. I held a very low amount of social power, restricted to my relatively small community of friends and acquaintances. How could I impact any issue of significance if I had little money, low societal clout and a complete lack of reputation? I was staring at a hurdle faced by passionate teenagers the world over, utter frustration borne out of an inability to change what I care about due to my age. But we – as the youth – do have assets at our disposal to affect change; access to technology, authenticity and passion.

National Issues 

 'oursay.com'

How many CEO’s, business leaders, politicians or global leaders do you know? If I contacted the Australian Prime Minister with my suggestions for the forthcoming budget, the responding silence would be almost deafening. It is this specific problem - the difficulty we as young people have impacting upon national issues - which a group of university graduates undertook in 2009. They founded  , a website designed to connect youth-driven ideas and ideologies with those in power.

How it works

 The site works based upon the conventions already established by popular social media, such as Facebook, whereby a particular topic (or in this case, question) is more visible to users if it is more popular. The most popular questions, as selected by the user ship, are then submitted to the specific leader who answers them in a video broadcast on the site. This coalesces all of the users into one force with a common goal, replacing a lack of individual power with the power of unified numbers. The concept of ‘oursay.com’ is an interesting one, a youth led initiative allowing for other youth led action, resulting in a project with limitless longevity which can impact limitless fields and issues.

Global issues 

 'Global Voices'

Whilst ‘oursay.com’ is a fantastic national project, its very nature prevents it from having significant effect on more global issues. This stems from the fact that despite a large portion of its success being due to online activity, the project still requires physical communication with individual leaders by the youthful founders, meaning they are merely circumnavigating the difficult relationship between youth and impact rather than eliminating it and as such cannot extend its reach overseas. ‘Global Voices’ seeks to fill this void by giving young people the credibility needed to enact change.

Kevin Rudd with 'Global Voices' delegates

How it functions

 Founded in 2011, this non-for profit organisation is run by a team no older than 25, but who are supported by an extremely respected and seasoned board, chaired by The Honourable Peter Lindsay.  This guiding hand of experience gave them access to much more powerful and universal leaders, such as Hilary Clinton, Vladimir Putin or Sir Richard Branson. The company then passes this access down to particular yound individuals by forming delegations for conferences, running workshops and research programs and spreading student’s vision through a newsletter which reaches 8,958 and enabling 247 news pieces on various delegates.

This allows ‘Global voices’ to have a polar effect to ‘mysay.com’, by giving youthful representatives the opportunity to deeply impact global affairs rather than giving the entire young demographic a voice. Yet both organisations allow the opinions, views and passions of a new generation to shape the world they inhabit quicker and more profoundly.






Sources 
http://www.globalvoices.org.au/about/
http://www.youthleadership.org.au/org/global-voices
http://www.youthleadership.org.au/org/oursayorg
http://oursay.org/?