The Challenge: The Facebook Education team along with a team of supporting partners wanted to increase youth activism as a driver of change in schools around the country. They asked, what if we could create a shared identity that would expand the reach of youth activism in school districts around the country?  

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The Idea: At a Youth Activation Summit that brought together youth activists, school administrators, and nonprofits, I facilitated three sessions to define an identity and co-create campaigns for reaching new audiences. I decided that orienting the workshops around storytelling would allow the youth participants to find commonalities in their experiences and build relationships needed to take action after the Summit.

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The Design: Leading up to the Summit I created a Facebook group for attendees with weekly prompts that would help me to seed ‘identity statements’ to be validated by the participants, while also helping the participants get to know each other better before the workshop. For inspiration for the design of the workshop, I looked to a seasoned social activist. Using Marshall Ganz’s Public Narrative framework that emphasized storytelling, we generated three campaign concepts, aligned with a shared identity, to reach new youth activists. Not only were the youth excited to carry the ideas forward, but they also gained a new method and set of tools to seed social movements. 

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The Result: ​The Facebook group I started before Summit continued to grow after its conclusion.  What really stuck with me was a comment from one of the youth activists about how important it was that he found a community of peers: “I worried, am I thinking too big for my age? Now, that I realized I’m not alone. And now that I’m no longer alone, I feel more empowered than ever. I’m going to go out and find more youth like me.”

 

For a public summary of the event, see here: http://blog.newprofit.org/amplify/the-future-is-now-reflections-on-the-2018-youth-activation-summit

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Sample Work: I created a set of materials to go along with the storytelling framework, including a foldable "Story of Self" template that youth participants could keep with them for the Summit.  Participants co-created identity statements and used a "future cover story" to describe the brainstorm future campaigns to reach new activists.