Title:
Action Plan for Creating a LCYR - "Local Calendar of Youth Resources"
Introduction
In 1998, Amy Wagner, of
Youth Activist & Youth Allies (YAYA - a project of the Wagner Foundation),
hired a group of five high school age activists. They made site visits to dozens of youth
organizations in New York City, gathered email addresses, and collected event
announcements. To provide a service to
the community of organizations and youth they decided to broadcast the events-list
every Monday via email and fax. Now,
three years later more than 7000 people participate in the mailing list. Young activists, teachers and community
leaders refer to it as one of the top resources for engaging young people in
the city. The YAYA staff is also one of
the most networked and active groups of young people in the city.
The YAYA weekly calendar is a
success story. It depends on a simple,
yet smart technology of filtering information and emailing. This document describes the program model of
the project. It will be referred to here
as a Local Calendar of Youth Resources or LCYR.
The document also seeks to help replicate it in various cities all
around the world.
Mission
The mission of the project is
to build a stronger voice for young people in the movement for social and
economic justice by:
1) connecting groups and
individuals,
2) sharing information and
resources, and
3) helping organizations
collaborate on projects and issues.
Staff
The LCYR of New York City,
better known as the YAYA Bulletin, is managed from an office in the center of
the city. One person, a Project Manager
is dedicated to running the project with a support staff of 5 additional
younger organizers. The full time staff
member dedicates about 10 hours per week to building the calendar. The part time supporters help contribute
content to the calendar but have many other responsibilities in the
organization. The calendar is simply a
tool to supplement their organizing activities.
The organization hosting the LCYR
of New York City has an annual program. Each summer half of the young organizers leave
the program and are replaced by new younger organizers. The only permanent position is that of the
Project Manager. This cycling or
organizers in addition to the permanence of a Project Manager both provides
continuity to the calendar and diversity.
New young-organizers are
selected from a large pool of applicants.
Candidates are selected by following criteria: honesty, exposure to/experience
with youth activism, ability to work in a team, ability to manage projects,
under 20-years-old, and ability to write well.
The Project Manager organizes the recruiting and hiring process with
participation from the rest of the project organizers. The team should maintain a balance of
diversity and attempt to employ people of different sexual orientations as well
as different racial, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds.
The Project Manager has many
years of experience working with young people.
Ideal Managers may be young or old as long as they work well with young
people and believe in "power-with" instead "power-over"
leadership.
Infrastructure
The LCYR office of New York
City has four phone lines and five computers with high-speed Internet
access. The computers are leading edge
PCs (or Macintosh) from 1999 and do not require multimedia capabilities. Besides a database no specialized software is
required other than the ability to review Microsoft Word and Powerpoint files.
A database will be essential
for organizing contacts. A free database
system, with good features, that has been designed for non-profits is Ebase
2.0 It can be downloaded from the
Internet at http://www.ebase.org
Groups that are exploring the
idea of managing a LCYR can use the address book of Microsoft Outlook or
Outlook Express for organizing contacts.
Distributed teams that work together on a local level but do not have an
office could use the Address Book feature of an email account on http://mail.yahoo.com which allows users to
import and export large lists of contacts.
There are a number of options
for making the final email broadcast.
1) The simplest way is to
export the contacts of database and paste the email addresses into the BCC
field of an email program such as Outlook Express.
2) Another option is to send
many emails, each with a copy of the calendar, to small groups of email
addresses, for example all of those addresses that begin with A.
3) The most convenient quick
way to manage the email distribution of the calendar list is to use www.yahoogroups.com
4) The best long term method
of developing the contact-base of the calendar and distributing it every week
is to use a private system that was designed by the Global Youth ACTION
Network. It is a web application (written in /bin/sh and perl) that rests on
top of Communigate Pro 4.0 (a Unix based webmail application). Interested people should email jonah@youthlink.org
One strategy for substantially
increasing the number of email subscribers to the calendar is to add everyone
to the mailing list whose email address appears in the CC header of group
emails that are sent to you on the subject of activism or local youth organizing.
It may be fair to assume that anyone who
was emailed such information is likely to be interested in the calendar, and if
not, they will unsubscribe. It will be
important to track email addresses which have been previously subscribed so
that people are not continually re-subscribed after they unsubscribe
themselves. The system described in
number 4 above solves this problem automatically.
Program Routine
When new staff members join
the LCYR team in New York City they participate in a two week of training
program provided by a third-party institution.
The training has several goals: 1) to help young people build tolerance
and appreciate diverse races and religions, 2) to develop sensitivity and
respect for people of other genders and sexual orientations, 3) and to
strengthen self esteem and motivate participation and leadership in all
communities. This training is important
for LCYR organizers who will not only assemble content for the calendar but
also be active networkers in the process.
Most LCYR organizations will
not have the capacity to train their organizers in this way though it is
recommended.
The routine of LCYR
organizers is simple. After recommended
training, participants take a few weeks to visit a number of youth
organizations in their city to understand local challenges and the ways youth groups
respond to them. Organizers make simple
surveys to systematically understand the resources and needs of youth. During these visits they build personal
relationships with young activists and adult allies who run the institutions. This experience and these relationships help
the LCYR organizers become resourceful members of the community.
After the first few weeks the
whole team together prepares the first LCYR.
They review their email, mailing lists, and notebooks to make a
comprehensive listing of Youth Resources.
The material is compiled into one plain-text document and emailed to the
entire mailing list of local contacts in the project's database. After this first compilation and distribution the
responsibility of organizing the calendar, gathering content, and adding new
subscribers is shared but one person must be responsible to drive the process,
make the final edit to the weekly document and broadcast it.
After the first calendar is
prepared the following weekly routine of organizers improves the publication
and expands its outreach:
* Visit local events to learn
about new movements/resources and collect more contacts
* Put contacts into the LCYR
database
* Prepare text of new
events/resources for inclusion in the weekly broadcast
* Visit new organizations
* Promote the LCYR and
encourage more people to subscribe and multiply the resource
* Train groups to distribute
the calendar via fax and email to their own networks. This may include tutoring individuals in how
to use yahoogroups.com and the free email-to-fax service of www.tpc.int
Calendar Content and Format
Many different types of
information can be included in the calendar:
A. One-Time Events
B. Weekly/Ongoing Events and
Free/Low-Cost Programs
C. Opportunities for
Organizations
D. Scholarships and Awards
E. Internships and Volunteer
Opportunities
F. Jobs and Other Employment
Opportunities
G. Action Alerts
Event information should be published
in a routine format and distributed on a routine basis. Calendar formats should be adapted according
to the organization publishing the LCYR, the content of the calendar, the scope
of distribution, the method of distribution etc. The LCYR of New York City publishes two types
of calendars:
1) A Weekly - Bulletin of
Events - Which includes content of types A, C, D, E, F and G
2) A Monthly - Bulletin of
Weekly/Ongoing Events and Free/Low-Cost Programs - Which includes content of
types B, C, D, E, F, and G
Both calendars/bulletins
include scholarship information, jobs announcements and the other types of
information mentioned above.
The listing of One-Time Events
is published in plain text, one event per line, sorted in order of date, using
the following format:
Day of the week, Month, Day Number,
Starting Hour: Minute AM/PM NAME OF THE EVENT Description. Sponsoring Group.
Location (Cross Streets) Travel Directions. Cost. Info: Phone, Email, Website
Archives of the New York City
LCYR can be seen on the web at http://www.youthlink.org/yaya
To make the editing of the bulletin more manageable the LCYRs may
send out a brief form letter to all groups that send information to them
(including those send 6 page press releases).
SAMPLE FORM LETTER:
We would like to include the information you sent in our bulletin
but we have been overwhelmed with requests to post listings and have been
spending too much time editing the information instead of organizing our own
networks.
Please understand that we can ONLY post events that are sent to us
in the following format:
Day of the week, Date, Time, NAME
OF EVENT BRIEF description. Cost. Sponsoring group, Location, Travel
Directions (Cross Street), Contact person, Phone, Email, URL, Cost. Maximum 6
lines TOTAL.
Please type only the name of event in capitals otherwise we will have
to retype it all. Also, please use simple text, not html and DO NOT send as an
attachment.
The bulletin goes out Monday nights. All submissions must be
received by Saturday morning. We will run event listings the week of the event,
and if space allows, the week before the event as well.
Thank You,
Your Local Calendar of Youth
Resources Team
Outreach
The most difficult challenge
of operating the LCYR will be making sure that new young people are continually
exposed to the calendar. For this reason
it is important to reach an audience that is as diverse as possible. We recommend that organizers try to target
events and organizations of different races and religions as well as groups in
different sectors – labor unions, politics, economics, academia, etc.
The following listing of
global youth organizations can help introduce you to a wide diversity of
organizations in your city that would otherwise be difficult to find:
http://www.youthmovements.org/guide/globalguide.htm
Other Information
A well organized LCYR should
be developed in partnership with a local website. To our knowledge the best technical-model for
a local website for youth is http://boston.takingitglobal.org The website took off with a lot of
participation by an enthusiastic group of volunteers but then lost steam as
they graduated from high-school and became involved in other projects. For these reasons a year-round permanent
Project Manager is essential.
A LCYR should also be
developed in partnership with monthly, local informal gatherings that have no
purpose other than building relationships between young activists and allies in
a local region. One such successful
gathering is that of “Stone Soup” in Chicago, Illinois, USA (documented at http://comm-org.utoledo.edu/pipermail/colist/2001-August/001762.html
) Another is that of the “Primeira
Segundas” in Sao Paulo, Brazil (mailing list
http://br.groups.yahoo.com/group/primeira_segunda/ ) A
brief guide to organizing such gatherings can be found on the web at http://www.youthmovement.org/facilitate.htm
And lastly, a system for
participation of youth in local government should follow both of these other programs
in order to strengthen and perpetuate local youth networks and ensure youth
participation in decision-making. One
such example is the Vancouver, Canada based Vancouver District Student Council
- http://www.takingitglobal.org/action/yiaa-2002h.html
and naay_than@yahoo.ca
Conclusion
A LCYR will be a very useful
resource for mobilizing and organizing young people on local levels. However, other projects such as local
websites, local monthly meetings, local network alliances of organizations and
local structures for youth participation in local government will be necessary
as well. For these reasons the LCYR
project should be developed in partnership with other programs within the World
Youth Forum framework – described at http://www.youthmovements.org