Amber Goodwin is the Director of Network Initiatives for Mobilize.org, and non-profit that empowers and invests in Millennials to create and implement solutions to social problems. To date, Mobilize.org has convened 1,700 Millennials in person, and over 22,000 people online in 11 Summits, on issues ranging from the lack of financial literacy for our generation, the need to increase community college completion rates, and the challenges facing our returning Millennial veterans.
Ideas to Change the World
In just a few weeks, Mobilize.org will kick off the Millennial Civic Engagement Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The summit will bring together members of our generation to share ideas about ways we can get more members of our generation effectively engaged in building a better America for everyone. Participants range from college students and local elected officials to Millennial rockstars like Jose Antonio Vargas, the 31 year-old Pulitzer Prize winning journalist whose writings on life as an undocumented immigrant have changed the national conversation.
In advance of the summit, we issued a challenge to Millennials in five states: California, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan - tell us what you would do to get more members of our generation civically engaged for the 2012 election and beyond. Then we asked the general public to vote on their favorite project ideas. The projects that received the most votes were selected as semi-finalists and have won a free trip to Charlotte, where they will compete at the summit for a share of $25,000 and a year of mentorship to implement their idea.
The semi-finalists are:
Active Citizenship Training - Michigan
Project Summary: With a student population of nearly thirty thousand, the city of Flint has begun to look toward Millennials as not only the civic leaders of the future, but as powerful agents of progress in the present. However, the true potential of millennial leadership has yet to be shown in this city that desperately needs it. In partnership with a local university, community organizations, and other area stakeholders, I plan to organize a one-day event that combines social justice training, direct community service, personal reflection, and issue education to increase the active citizenship of Flint’s (and mid-Michigan’s) millennial leaders.
Express Yourself Project - Michigan
Project Summary: The Express Yourself Project’s goal is to turn the week prior to the Election into a celebration and reflection of our political system. Through education, inspiration, engagement, and events we will expand the civic involvement of Detroit residents through a collaborative effort with popular local businesses and a dedicated corps of millennial volunteers.
Activate Good: Use Social Capital to Boost Local Volunteerism - North Carolina
Project Summary: Less than 1 in 4 citizens in Raleigh volunteer. We want to help transform Raleigh, NC, into an engaged volunteer network using our innovative online platform as the basis of our efforts. In doing so, the Activate Good team aims to make volunteerism “viral,” engaging 25,000+ Raleigh citizens by 2017.
The Artist Spring: When Art Sparks a Revolution - North Carolina
Project Summary: The best way to engage millennials and get them excited about voting and civic engagement is merge those efforts with the arts. Most revolutions and movements that have had an impact on our world had a component that allowed moving artistic expression. My project would encourage all types of performance artists to utilize their medium to make a difference.
The Co.Space - Pennsylvania
Project Summary: The co.space is a program where university students and experienced change-makers live together for two years. The purpose of the project is to grow and nurture future world-changers. Through the program, students are given opportunities to apply sustainability innovation and social entrepreneurship to local community projects and global internships. The co.space is particularly important to the millennial generation because more and more young people are passionate about becoming a global changemaker but are unsure of where to start.
Restoring Agency to Citizenship - Pennsylvania
Project Summary: We focus on combatting the lack of relatability to politics. People should be politically aware, but voter turnout shouldn’t be the only focus. We will create welcoming, supportive, “nonpolitical” public spaces that would encourage young people to share their thoughts on life in their communities openly. By having open discussions with others their age, young people might see that some feelings, experiences, and problems are shared. We expect the supportive atmosphere and open discussion to create a collective consciousness that would spur service projects, in which young people would enact their own social change and feel its benefits themselves.
Mobile Political and Technological Engagement - Florida
Project Summary: The Mobile Political and Technological Engagement (MPTE) project plans to develop a socially interactive mobile application where users can compete about their knowledge of political topics. The application can be pre-loaded with national and major-market political content to start, like: which senate/house seats are up for election this year, which specific issues will be voted on, and trivia relating to current events. The idea is to make a fun, stylish mobile app that can enable users to quickly become familiar with a topic, test their knowledge of political trivia and current events, and even contribute content that’s relevant locally.
Social Sciences + Service Learning + Cooperative Teaching Strategies - Florida
Project Summary: Our idea is to implement service learning and social sciences throughout primary and secondary education. We believe that by combining service learning with an education that promotes learning about ourselves and others (e.g. civics, psychology, sociology), students will have a higher tendency to care about one another. If students care for each other, then they will have a higher chance of being civically engaged because they will want to make a positive difference in each other’s lives.
Millennial Trains Project - California
Project Summary: In 2013, the Millennial Trains Project (MTP) will orchestrate three transcontinental train journeys for 300 of America’s most promising Millennial entrepreneurs and civic leaders. At whistlestops across the country, we will organize site visits, discussion forums and community workshops to highlight examples of local challenges and solutions that can be used as a lens to demonstrate where our country is today and what opportunity there exists to help get it back on track. The overall goals are 1. to give our participants the inspiration, understanding and resources they need to tackle local and national problems in collaborative, innovative and effective ways, and 2. to leverage the power of public spectacle inherent in our train journey to secure similar “commitments of action” from our public and virtual audiences.
Mobilizing California: Campus Organizing Trainings - California
Project Summary: The California Student Sustainability Coalition (CSSC) is a student run non-profit made up college campuses ranging from the CCC, CSU, UC and the private system. To further the student sustainability movement, the CSSC wants to mobilize and educate our student leaders. In order to do this, our goal is to create Campus Organizing Trainings (COT’s). COT’s are created with the purpose of educating students on how to effectively organize on their campus, share skills, and to become empowered.
Learn more about the MCE Summit and our semi-finalists at http://mobilize.org/event/mcesummit/#about