Look, famous changemakers are not found in bureaucrat. It has reasons. We tick different, also from Green or Left Parties. So … as a well-meaning politician, you’ll have to learn to understand how young change-makers feel, tick and act, so you do not ignore or sabotage them, but can gently support them. We are not a threat, nor a pet. Learn to trust us, let us do, be actively aware, commu-nicate. with us, be 100% honorable.

We encourage you to also take off the mayor’s hat, and, as ordinary human, do the Adult Crash Course, to experience your fellow citizen’s roles, and better activate their powers.

One can weave Youth Leadership into Public Life …

with simple steps – perfectly aligned with your aspirations for a peaceful, vibrant, collaborative citizenry.

Teenage changemakers operate independent of adult organizations. They act like individual social entrepreneurs. Some found their own organizations. Some spark chapters at schools. WE AIM AT sparking multi-focus changemaker student clubs at schools. They don’t take on one but 100+ issues modeled existing model solutions, enabling year-round fireworks of activities, cascading across schools, public spaces and media, like you have seen in the brochures. Through online communication with outstanding changemakers and local allies, they develop considerable expertise, skills and willingness to mentor peers and uplift the greater community.

They address environmental and social issues hands-on, decreasing violence, poverty and neglect. As they experience safe and vibrant public spaces, recognition by adults, pleasant encounters, and liberty to co-create life in public spaces, they develop a sense of belonging with their home city and region. As they detect needs and fix them, and explore natural and cultural heritage, they also develop a sense of stewardship, and it spreads to the citizenry, which re-discovers and enjoys their city through the youth.

Their actions constantly produce solution stories in vivid uplifting imagery, ‘positive news’, which studies show do produce the most “clicks, likes and shares”, and have positive effect on readers’ mental health, an active citizenry. That’s what you want, and your occasional presence in those stories is wanted, too.

Like every Adult Ally, you support on-demand. Yet, since there is not to spark youth leadership in the first place, your role is also help inspire it.

So, let’s connect your superpowers to the change-maker community, to unlock potentials. Your role is brief. Activities are run by caring citizens at schools, libraries, in media, civil society, and by YL volunteers.

Let’s put on the Magical Spectacles of Youth Leadership

and have a look at what mayors and city councillors can spark for their people.

You are used to envisioning, planning and observing measures unfold effects over years. So, you can tell how many small steps add up to cultivating awareness, good spirits, involvement, support and considerable tangible impacts en masse.

It gradually grows and evolves, like a tree. Can you activate each branch of “your tree”? Look at the splendid results!

The Crash Course Campaign is a big step for sparking Youth Leadership in general. We have cause-focussed visions for you, too. View below. Changemaker Student Clubs at all your schools, with hundreds of rocking youth uniting their time and talents over years, for free are great help for achieving them. They may also be the missing piece. In any case, they much amplify the reach, impact and far-reaching results for and on your current and future citizenry.

Climate Crisis Resilient Regions

Cities and communes are issueing Climate Emergency Declarations, but they are limited to decreasing CO2 emissions a little bit, while leaving citizens sit idle.

We enourage you to take a complementary approach that is already necessary : make your region climate crisis resilient using 70+ already implemented policy approaches – restoring water, food, energy and peace sovereignity to protect what you have. If done the right way, it strongly activates youth, key professionals, the citizenry, so we don’t just survive and thrive and live. And that is what’s really needed, climate crisis or not.

From this unexpected angle we can create a framework for re-dreaming your region, and creating the city we all want to live in. You can even call it this, and not mention climate.

We all want these things.

We know the geniuses leading these initiatives.
Their example and knowhow can help others achieve, adapted to context and culture.

Bart Somers, ‘World’s Best Mayor’

turned Mechelen, Belgium’s worst town, into its most vibrant.

As an independent, with common sense, he did things different from polarized parties. In response to escalating theft and violence, he established zero tolerance on crime, police presence, CCTV surveillance. He also started social programs in neighborhoods, and a rich cultural calendar of no less than 200 fests in town!

Somers combined ‘right’ and ‘left’ approaches for something holistic. No more split-brain, and the results are more than the sum of its parts. One result : from all Belgian cities, fanatics streamed to Syria to commit genocide. From Mechelen, not one.

His creative, no nonsense approach works. The other one-dimensional ones, fail. Then again, that’s only the basics for a merely surviving unsustainable society. A basis on which one can build the real thing.

Two complementary approaches.

1. Mechelen would benefit from youth leadership
2. Youth leaders will benefit from teaming up with city councillors. And teachers, journalists and librarians

So far, teen hero*ines get in friendly touch with them during their campaigns … but they do not sit down to join ranks and consciously combine their superpowers. Also, they are not aware of each other’s superpowers.

That is why we encourage our youth crews, and each of you caring citizens to browse the pages of other Adult Allies, and key professionals.

It’s not about designing campaigns together. YOU MUST NOT, except on demand. Teen change-makers must stay 100% independent, and 100% free from narrow, rigid roadmaps, timemaps, goals, obligations or expectations. Free to play so to say.