PREPARATION 2 of 4
Discover Youth Leadership
THE DEFINITION & THE PHENOMENON
In North America, youth leadership,
“training youth as agents of change in their communities, to self-organize activities for people and planet and to pass on leadership to younger ones when they move on”
has been part of civic education for 50 years.
In today’s context of Global Learning, social media and escalating crisis, teen hero*ines are popping up all over the continent, also without training.
One crew has made “creating a good world for all” part of learning culture at over 16,000 schools, annually generating more than $100 million value in funds and service hours (7,437,784,861.93 Indian Rupees).
In practice, it means changing lives, land, learning, laws and industries with swift tangible results.
In many cases, single or groups of teens outperform adult organizations.
Here is what that looks and feels like.
Please read 6 stories or more
Pick your favorites by intuition
- view their faces, images
- pick a mix of topics
- from different continents
Click the image to open up large; if it is too small to read, right-click and “open in a new tab”, then click to enlarge.
Youth Leadership at school.
You’ve seen some examples above. Here are a few more.
Please browse these short texts
You need not memorize details, but remember the general idea and scope of actions and briefly think about their feasibility.
Ana
and her 7th grade biology classmates restored a watershed. Over 6 months, they set up a website, a National Park partnership, secured funding and organized field trips. At the celebrations, they decided it would be too sad to stop.
Over summer these 13 year olds sat down with cookies to design a curriculum by Virginia State 7th grade standards – and since teach it at 5 schools, involving hundreds of students, field trips, water and mud fights included.
Meghana
3D-prints prosthetic hands for children in Indian villages that have lost fingers, but cannot afford prosthetic hands, especially since as fast-growing kids they would need a new one every two years. Using a common 3D printer and templates from the internet, slightly adapted to client children, one can print a hand overnight for no more than $25 (1,858.8254 INR).
She encourages schools to get involved and add social purpose to their STEM classes and fablabs.
Chander
runs a school garden club and gifts micro gardens to people to put on their window sills and balconies
Duncan
builds butterfly gardens and nurseries. He does it outside school, but it can be done at school. How awesome to see hundreds of butterflies hatch, aye? How about you make this gift for kindergartens and elementary schools around you?
Mackenzie
has ended use of poison on her university campus, at dozens of others, at all schools on Hawaii, and trains hundreds of students to do the same at their unis and schools. The trick: they help groundskeepers pick wild plants (“weeds”) by hand, which keeps the often little seen or valued workers and students healthy, creates a human bond and raises awareness on wild plants with medicinal properties and crucial value to keep insect and bird populations high, keep soils wet and cool … on Weeds Appreciation Day they stick little signs with plants’ names and powers across campus. How about you do this, too, also in your neighborhood? Biology and primary school teachers will love it!
Xerxes
gives guided tours of his family farm and has built an educational path in the surrounding forest.
How about you do this as a school project in your district? How about combining it with restoring an ecosystem, add edible, pollinator and dyeing gardens and organize guided tours and family workshops? It generates plenty of fun, encounters, skills, photos and stories to share on YL, social and news media through the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration 2021-30.
Sophie
has built 27 edible gardens at pre-schools in “food desert” destricts for the little ones to grow up healthy with planting, harvesting, enjoying delights – and the skill, vision and confidence to grow a greener, healthier, happier future for their neighborhood.
Namaste Nepal
NN student club help develop the Himalayan village of Gati with kindergarten, library, school, teacher salaries, health camps, reforestation, new crops and annual work camp visits.
Namaste Nepal's Big Fat Magic FUNdraising Trick
… is a 48 hour sponsor run that gives everybody in town opportunity to join and contribute with ease and fun. Kindergartens, wheelchair drivers, schools, athletes, the mayor, companies come and each lap is sponsored. Some people run 3 marathons in these 48 hours!
The run now scores $40,000€!!
Best news is that faraway schools join in and score $10,000 in year one, $20,000 in year two, since also in small towns “where nothing ever happens” people care. What they needed is a rolling project, trustworthy people, swift fun action – and now they have found their mission!
Neat stuff?
Could you do such at your school?
Would it make life more awesome?