Welcome and thank you for your interest in our offers to young people, teachers and the world.

We all dream of empowering our young for leading a rich life and creating a good world for all.

So far, this has been difficult, but this is now changing as the resources, role models and partners empowering self-organized learning for gifted young changemakers have appeared and nurturing student-powered service learning and social entreprenuership at thousands of schools, with spectacular results on academic performance, personal development and our communities.

YL is building on this, giving you a wide range of tools, methods and live services for short and long-term intergration in your teaching practice.

We want you to benefit, without additional workload.

We know that those educators interested in our offers are already buzy. Hence, our focus is on giving you magical tools for making your work easier and more fun, mainly by boosting your students’ intrinsic motivation

• with inspirational media on global issues
• such as solution stories, teenage heroInes and their amazing authentic videos
• with action guides for instant action opportunities
• sparking student-led activities

also providing you with exciting partners bringing topics to life and enabling a tangible experience of shaping the world

• fun and dynamic
• meaningful projects
• generating media presence
• live on skype meetings with changemakers
• making a difference on lives, laws and industries
• mobilizing community involvement and positive feedback
• long-term field partnerships with young heroInes, seeing success unfold

and experiencing their own agency and power of shaping their lives, their path, our collective future. Once again – for inspiring them to make changemaking their lifestyle – at and beyond school :

• using our abundance of resources
• joining our youth leadership program
• organizing activities throughout the year
• aligned with United Nations Days, linking to subjects
• growing into the role of assistant teachers

Wouldn’t that be awesome?

It is already a reality for thousands of teachers involved in programs such as WE Schools. We help you make it part of your ife, as well as upgrade such programs beyond service learning and charity with additional dimensions of self-organization, social entrepreneurship and collabration with the most famous adult changemakers on the planet today.

Modular, occasional, year-round, open and closed curricula – you choose!

We know that every school, every class, teacher and setting are different, hence we design for flexibility, proposing ways of using the media and modules as add-ons to your subjects, for specific topics or occasion, such as United Nations Days. Always our aim is to inspire student-powered follow-up action, preferably as student and after school clubs.

Teachers are our ally and friends, not our workhorse

Your part in introducing youth leadership at schools is to

• use the media
• give time and space for student-led activities
• encourage clubs
• welcome their contributions, presentations
• give permission for exhibits, learnspaces, youth action days
• and days off for attending major events

– the same things that you grant to gifted musicians, athletes and chess players. View your empathic youth, budding social enteprenuers and cultural creatives like Our New Highly Gifted. Because that is what they are

The real action is in the hands of the youth. 

You are not expected to lead activities and drag and carry unmotivated youth. We don’t either! We have understood that changemaking is like a sport or music style, and not everyone is wired for it, and that’s okay. Likewise, as in sports and music, there are fans, there are amateur players and there are athletes. The amazing teen heroInes inspiring all of us today like like changemaking athletes.

Your priority role is to inspire and support the athletes

The ones with a natural passion for making changemaking their sport and priority

• with high end spirit uplifting their (younger) peers
• spending considerable time
• seriously going to “work”
• managing student club stands, projects, campaigns and learnscapes
• year-round

These are the ones cultivating youth leadership over years. Their impact on the school community unfolds over time. They are the most beautiful role models you can imagine. They will be new, break new ground, their ideas for healing a lame, broken society will at times challenge you, because it means uplifting the so far suboptimal learning culture are your school. And it will make you proud and a better educator, because they are your partner in

Reawakening the True Purpose of Schooling

School’s purpose is to qualify the young generation to become active, co-creative citizens in a democratic, libertarian society, which of course today also has to be a sustainable society, in a global, peacefully collaborating family of nations. Adult generations are totally failing at it (despite all the stuff they learned at their oh so great schools and universities) meaning that this young generation has to become entirely different and has the right to be so!

The Right to Learn to Be Great

Our societies are celebrating teenage heroInes as “how young people should be”, and rightfully so. However, this means that all our kids and youth have the right to BE like them, to all be such splendid citizens and human beings. At least those demanding permission for it, those on fire to work for being like it, because it means creative work and effort in self-development, standing uncompromising in one’s virtues, well established in one’s inner peace and abundance – to be doing good for other people and planet.

The United Nations and UNESCO, teachers’ vatican, have made it a priority. We have passed ten years of UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and where are we now in our schools? As long as we cannot offer it formally in the classroom, young people have the right to learn it informally in student-powered learning environments – such as their public YL student club Headquarter – benefitting the entire school community, in friendly collaboration with the greatest youth and adult changemakers of our time.

This “Right to Be Great” is a magic spell that young people in our program learn by heart, for their self-understanding, their responsibility for making the most of their forming years at school, and being the drivers in this innovation for humanity and all kids who come after them.

The pertaining learning culture is proven. A mix of informal, formal, powered by students, with real action.

A Dream Come True for every Good Teacher.

Teachers have never been as important as today. You are our young generation’s most important ally for

• getting connected with their generation’s Einsteins and Gandhis
• recognizing that they are not a “lost generation” of unemployed worried narcisists”
• having everything in their hearts and hands to be the Change Generation
• learning to grow up as co-creators and inhabitants of a global, peaceful, just, thriving and sustainable, a sacred civilization
• with inner and outer peace and abundance for all

You won’t hear this often, but this is our mission, and this vision may gently guide and carry you in your life as you observe things unfold. We are all at the beginning, but every step evokes grand cascading changes – as you see in the stories of our teen heroInes, fellow teachers and YL members.

We all find us in that grand adventure on this planet. It can be hard at times.

Here’s for finding more fun and fulfillment. 

As a trained teacher, I know of discrepancy between our aspirations and our daily lives. This is why I design YOUTH-LEADER with my teacher friends in mind, and as a gift to you as a the person.

I hope that you will also join our Global Circle of Colleagues for exchanging on our experiences, improve tools, form partnerships, inspire one another and celebrate our achievements – since reason to celebrate we have!

With my best wishes for success and heartfelt thanks again for caring.

Eric Schneider, YL Founder