Activities
This nonpartisan clearinghouse offers free information, resource-sharing and networking for young people who seek to pursue community change, for example, changing a school board or city council policy. Trainings and consulting with adult organizations that seek to partner as equals with young people is another area of activity. Various publications include "Youth! The 26% Solution" and "Maximum Youth Involvement."
The Youth Activism Project also operates an international initiative called School Girls Unite. This youth-driven initiative based in the Washington, D.C. area collaborates with another group of high school and university students in Mali called Les Filles Unies pour l'Education. Together these African and American activists advocate for gender equity and universal education. They raise donations and currently are sending 70 girls in Mali to school. UNICEF identifies this West African country as one of the 25 nations in the world where "emergency action" is needed because the majority of girls do not complete even elementary school. Les Filles Unies makes regular trips to the schools to hold meetings with the village elders, teachers, parents and the younger students. This firsthand knowledge and youth-led evaluation increases their credibility when these young people--who are not yet old enough to vote--meet with government officials such as the Ministry of Education in Mali and Members of Congress. Ongoing participation with the Global Campaign for Education has seen an increase in the U.S. government's assistance for basic education for children in developing countries from $400 million in 2005 to $740 million in 2008. For the sake of comparison, Great Britain gives double that amount: $1.5 billion/per year.
Read more about this topic: Youth Activism Project
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still the most important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“When mundane, lowly activities are at stake, too much insight is detrimental—far-sightedness errs in immediate concerns.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)