I’m preparing a talk for next week and thought I’d open up the proposal to all of you! After all, I definitely believe that the community is far smarter than me – and really appreciate any and all ideas you have to share!
Next week I will be speaking at and event Bebo is facilitating for members of Number 10 Downing St, local Councils, civic departments (police, etc.), social agencies and nonprofits, and so on focused on creating an integrated No to Knives campaign. This campaign is targeting youth at-risk of knife crime in the UK and plans to have a large portion of the messaging and calls to action embedded within social media tools/platforms used by local youth.
There are a few other speakers who will be presenting their ideas or personal case studies for this kind of campaigning.
I will be speaking last: tying together the previous speeches, and highlighting key case studies that show how young people have been empowered to shape the future they are a part of.
If you have case studies, either from the organization you are a part of or that you have come across outside of your organization’s work, please do share them! I have a growing list already but am looking to cover some unique and compelling stories for this integral speaking opportunity to influence a major campaign.
Please note: I will credit any and all contributions, of course. I will also share my speech and slides next week after the event.
Thanks in advance for your ideas and contributions!
Hey Amy
Not sure if this is what you are after but I manage the social media strategy for headspace: The National Youth Mental Health Foundation in Australia.
We use social media to educate, engage and empower young Aussie’s in mental health and wellbeing and I presented an overview of our work to date at the recent Connecting Up Australia conference.
If this is along the likes of what you are looking for, just shoot me an email and I can send you the preso file and supporting movies etc.
http://justanotherprblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/connecting-up-to-great-minds/
Cheers
Karalee
I think one of the more inspirational stories I know of is how youth around the world come together for each International AIDS Conference. Since the Barcelona International AIDS Conference in 2000, the YouthForce has been widely hailed as pivotal in keeping youth issues at the forefront of the international HIV/AIDS agenda. I was involved in the Mexico Youthforce which was established for the last conference.
A lot of the work that the Youthforce did prior to the conference and during the conference used technology and social media. If you look at the website which is still functioning you will see that there are videos, blogs, photos – a lot of this work was done by the team of youth journalists. What they were able to achieve was amazing.
Karalee-
Thanks so much for sharing this example! One of the other speakers is from the Inspire Foundation and will be talking about Reach Out (from Australia) that also focuses on youth and mental health. I would still love to learn more about the headspace strategy and success story!
If you have links or anything from your presentation, please do share 🙂
Thanks again
Kirsten-
This is a terrific example: I wasn’t aware of the strong use of youth citizen journalism in the YouthForce work and am about to dive into the site now!
If there are any specific examples, from Mexico or elsewhere, that you think would help tell this important story, please do let me know! I’d love to include your information in the presentation.
Thanks for joining in here
I can point you to a few cases that involved empowering youth to address violence…most recently one I love via Youth Radio on teen dating violence using social media outreach: http://bom411.com
There’s also been some huge forum success via virtual worlds (e.g. Habbo’s InfoBus re: curbing violence against gay teens; developing understanding via the Matthew Shepard Foundation visiting ‘in-world’ or the War Child Int’l foundation partnership to focus in-world on kids impacted by violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda etc. (they hosted a cool “virtual Global Peace” gathering inside their world to coincide w/last fall’s UN discussion of same: http://tinyurl.com/ngzfxm)
There’s also a good round-up here (in beta) on the human rights front: http://tinyurl.com/lkb8t5 but I think you could make a strong case for the success of pragmatic intervention widgets and such by tracking outcomes via mobile outreach for ISIS-Inc.org’s projects re: HIV/AIDS/STD/pregnancy prevention serving up vital info via mobile SMS…Not sure how the Virgin Mobile Teen homelessness project widget project went but I loved the concept being seeded…I’ll pull up my ‘Health 2.0’ file and see what else I can find on the specifics/outcomes of curbing BEHAVIOR rather than just championing change. (we’re testing a ‘virtual nutrition’ one right now to see if we can make some headway)
Won’t be a ‘blog hog’ in your comments here, but wanted to plop ’em out for all to know about and will deep dive it to send you more via email if I find some. Worthy topic; can’t wait to hear more!
Amy Jussel
Founder/Exec. Dir.
http://www.ShapingYouth.org