Part 1. YouthMovements.org Strategy version 2.1, updated March 25th, 2001
Part 2. YouthMovements.org Technology Collaboration

On December 7th 2000, the Global Youth ACTION Network and Make Our World in cooperation with several groups brought together 30 international youth organizations and allies.

We developed several ideas for collaboration with the purpose to "do something together that none of us can do alone."

Background

The strategy for youthMovements.org described in the previous chapter outlines a process for supporting collaboration between people based communities of young people. 

As demonstrated by the open source software movement, technology is a leader and teacher of international collaboration.  Correspondingly collaboration between Internet-based organizations can be a leader and teacher of collaboration to global people-based organizations. 

There are many sites on the Internet that offer great resources to youth activists.  Unfortunately many of them duplicate effort and as a result the e-traffic is diluted.  Critical mass is necessary to create real communities and to provoke change.  Shine.com and ThinkPop.org are two examples of online communities that offer online resources to support youth activism but neither site receives adequate traffic or provides access to comprehensive information.  The backends of both web sites should connect with the same information source so that the data is shared, supporting the content and strength of all sites involved. 

In 1997 Carnegie Mellon University published research linking frequent Internet usage with depression.  The International Education And Resource Network responded with a letter to the New York Times describing the results of their work: when Internet usage is oriented towards solving world problems and is supplemented with face to face gatherings it causes happiness - a powerful antidote to the CMU findings.  Online communities are incomplete without face to face communities.  

The previous chapter presents a strategy for organizations to collaborate.  Internet groups can help people based groups to collaborate but there is a need for Internet groups to collaborate first. Moreover, Internet communities need to supplement their virtual work with face to face work through people based communities.

1. Online Niches

Over the past few years I have developed relationships with most organizers of the following sites.  Each fills a specific niche in youth activism and deserves to participate in an online collaboration system.

www.nation1.net - An online community for youth offering resources to support organizing.  They will soon debut news for/by youth, multi-lingual chats, forums and more.

www.iyoco.org - Offers lists of organizations and resources in addition to research papers relevant to youth leadership.

www.youthlink.org - Offers a survey to build the voice of young people, awards to support youth action, and databases of organizations and events.

www.takingITglobal.org - Offers databases of organizations and events, news and profiles of youth activists, and a discussion forum.  The vision is to improve IT access and opportunities for youth around the world. 

www.idealist.org - A database or organizations, jobs, internships, events, and other resources.  A new database of individuals. A newsletter for non-profits and many links to support non-profit organizing.

www.iearn.org - A community of schools in dozens of countries around the world.  They collaborate through the Internet (both web and news groups) on projects to show young people they can make a difference.

www.indymedia.org - A progressive news site.  Article publishing is open to anyone as is commentary.  Forty local Independent Media Centers report on local news and events.  Front page content is democratically prioritized.

www.oneworld.org - A daily collection of peace and justice articles written by syndicated columnists.  Simultaneously a community of several hundred partner organizations that share ideas and resources.

www.ideaFund.org & www.globalIdeasBank.org - People post ideas that can help make a difference in the world.  The best ideas may receive funding to support them.

www.favors.org - A system of individuals who network with each other, invite others into their network, and may exchange goods and services - tracking the exchange online in an alternative currency.

www.actionnetwork.org - Online tools for campaigns.  Offering web pages to host data and web to fax/web to email broadcast facilities.  Permits delivery of custom messages from individuals to campaign targets.  Participant information is captured in a database permitting follow up education about the campaign and opportunities for new campaigns on the shoulders of wider networks.

www.e-teen.net - An e-magazine for youth focused on community, issue education, volunteerism, and activism.

www.CraigsList.org - Online forums dedicated to matching needs with resources.  Categories range from roommate boards to car pools.

A group of less explicitly socially minded online communities of youth that may wish to participate in the collaboration include: www.bolt.com, www.yack.com, www.snowball.com and www.blackplanet.com  And finally, many mailing lists of youth groups have been created on the sites www.yahoogroups.com and www.topica.net

VISION FOR INTEGRATING NICHE SITES

Action plan towards collaboration

a. Prioritize sites and groups to build youthmovements.org and contribute to the strategy
b. Educate each group about the others.
c. Organize a series of conference calls.
d. Develop a joint strategy for developing standards, opening databases and sharing backend data - preserving site identity while strengthening the content and the community. 
e. Continue to collectively build the youthmovements.org portal while introducing international communities to the resources of these groups.
f. Ensure multi-lingual content and accessibility of each site.
g. Partner this content-rich community with initiatives to extend its resources beyond the reach of the Internet through paper newsletters, computer education programs, conferences, student exchanges etc.
h. Parallel to steps a - g, invite interested groups to attend the gathering of youthmovements.org from June 4th to June 10th in Mexico. 

INTEGRATION STRATEGIES IN DETAIL

1. Mailing lists and databases

yahoogroups.com and Topica.net host many e-mailing lists of youth activists (some are hosted by different systems such as those on university campuses).  Many are e-newsletters while others are ongoing e-conversations.  Two problems limit their success: 1) information overload and 2) operating in isolation.  List owners recognize a need to network, consolidate, organize, and summarize the lists while sites like idealist.org offer a database solution.

Individuals can register with idealist.org and chose to receive announcements about jobs, events, internships, and other resources via email.  The site also presents a database with information about thousands of organizations all over the world.  Kindred youth sites that offer similar resources and online communities include youthlink.org, iyoco.org, takingITglobal.org and nation1.net

Idealist.org and favors.org offer databases of individuals.  Idealist.org also offers a database of organizations.  Nation1.net offers community.  Youthlink.org offers awards and a survey to build youth voice.  TakingITglobal.org offers youth activist profiles, ideas, and resources.  Iyoco.org offers research, analysis, and strategy for cooperation.  All sites offer databases.  E-teen.net offers an e-zine.

There are many opportunities for these groups to partner without losing their niches and identity.  Backend databases can connect them all and make them collectively more powerful.  An initial strategy for connecting databases and offering them to other groups is described in detail in step 6 below.

A suggested integration strategy follows for the sites listed here.

2. News

One unmet niche in the online youth activism community is a for youth/by youth news center.  The IndyMedia.org system enables democratic and open media.  The oneWorld.org site offers syndicated media.  YouthMovements.org can offer a site that supports both. 

Steps to create a for youth/by youth news center.

a. Review existing available news systems such as Goofy by Cataweb.It (which has been donated to Nation1.net), Slashdot.com, IndyMedia.org, and NewsPro.cgi
b. Review licensing challenges and technologies of existing, relevant syndicated news services such as Children's Express, AlterNet, and OneWorld.net
c. Develop a design and structure to integrate syndicated media, democratically prioritized media and a raw news feed.
d. Connect the news system with mailing lists, bulletin boards, and databases of all the partner organizations.

3. Funding, resource matching, finances, and demanding responsibility

Traditional philanthropy is often bureaucratic, undemocratic, nepotistic and in need of transparency.  Many financial challenges are met simply by matching needs with resources and bypassing costs altogether.  At the same time our existing global financial system does not demand responsibility but instead requires public advocacy, activism and legal systems to maintain justice.  A few online organizations offer solutions to each of these issues.

IdeaFund.org and GlobalIDeasBank.org offer financial awards for good ideas that will make a difference in the world.  The ideas are publicly visible and invite commentary.  This is the seed of democratically controlled transparent philanthropy free of red tape.

CraigsList.org matches needs with resources.  People wishing to catch a ride between two cities can find someone to car pool with.  This cuts costs, reduces wastes and introduces strangers to each other.

Favors.org offers an online system for connecting with people, to network, to exchange goods and services and to pay each other with a virtual currency: ThankYous.  Like Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) this system localizes resources, reinforces community wealth, and through direct connection with community members demands responsibility.  It presents an alternative to our standing economy and can be implemented on a local as well as a global level.

ActionNetwork.org provides online campaign tools that allow activists to provide feedback to corporations and government representatives through emails and faxes.  The data of the activists is captured in a database permitting follow up education, new campaigns, and coalitions.  Dozens of groups run campaigns through the site enabling the possibility of a collective lobby and strength in numbers.  The system creates a new way to demand responsibility and justice from Corporations and government leaders.

Funding, resource matching, finances, and campaign tools together create a cocktail for breaking the cycle of power that prevents change in our existing unsustainable system.

4. Integrating all features into online communities

The cure for AIDS is a cocktail of more than a dozen different drugs.  The cure of youth leadership to solve global problems, supported by the Internet, is a cocktail of more than a dozen web sites. 

YouthMovements.org seeks to integrate these sites into a package and to make the technology available to dozens of youth communities (and allies) around the world.  The global community of United World Colleges alumni pursues social responsibility and justice.  With these tools integrated and available for their collective action they will usher social change and environmental sustainability into their communities.  Together with the global communities named in this document they will make the global youth net work - creating a world that works for all.

5. Joint search engine

Collectively, the sites listed above offer comprehensive content for youth activism.  Some are linked to each other but it is still a challenge to locate specific information.  The solution is to create a search engine to catalogue the public content of each site in addition to the web content of the international youth organizations mentioned in Part 1.  Perhaps this site could become youth.google.com?

PROPOSED INITIAL TECHNICAL COLLABORATIONS IN DETAIL

6.1 Mailing Lists and Discussions

There are many listservs/mailing lists that are dedicated to international youth activism.  Following each international conference a new one is created.  The two most well known are y-int@egroups.com (The Young Internationalist hosted by Rick Ponzio) and millenniumyouthforum@egroups.com (created following the United Nations NGO Millennium Forum).  There also exist many mailing lists for the alumni communities of global organizations such as the United World Colleges, AIESEC, and even the Boy Scouts. 

Our challenge is to map out these mailing lists, consolidate them where appropriate, and organize a team of people to summarize and archive them on the web.

The youthmovements.org mail server can host new mailing lists using Communigate Pro 3.3 by Stalker Software Inc. (a highly sophisticated and customizable program that will allow us to manage mailing lists and databases - without advertisements).  Youthmovements.org can serve as a central place for merging many of the Egroups and Topica based mailing lists.

Action steps:

Catalogue mailing lists
Identify list owners
Identify "Summarizers" for posting on web
Identify "niches" in mailing list networks
Consolidate mailing lists where appropriate - replacing many with a few
Create an online map of the lists, a system for posting summaries, and diagram of "niches"
Integrate online forums and mailing lists - each supplementing the other

6.2 Organizations' Databases

There are several sites on the web where organizations are listed in databases.  At some sites organizations "own" their data with logins and passwords - the best example is: www.idealist.org . On other sites organization data is "imported," and groups do own their data, e.g. www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/ (UN Youth Unit). 

Idealist.org and youthlink.org/takingITglobal.org (among others) currently duplicate some effort.  They list events, publications, organizations etc.  They also offer user accounts with usernames and passwords.  Idealist.org holds only "owned" records.  youhlink.org holds both "owned" and "imported" data. 

Proposed action steps with idealist.org and partners

a. Create a technology that permits a "shared" logins between idealist.org and other sites.  As a result an organization is registered (with a login and password) on one site it will become part of the idealist.org system as well. 

b. Continue "importing" organizations into the "imported" databases.  Consolidate and synchronize these data sources into a central database.  The import process must check if each organization is listed in the www.idealist.org - if so it will not be imported.

c. Create a tool for imported organizations to securely "claim" their database records by requesting and editing usernames and passwords  (like on the youthlink.org site).  When an organization is approved to "claim" its data it will receive a shared login/password from idealist.org and will graduate from the "imported" database to the "owned" database.

d. Ask registered organizations to market the database(s) and import contact information of other organizations.

6.3 Individuals' Databases expansion proposal for idealist.org and partners

The idealist.org Individuals' Database (Indiv. Db.) serves two purposes.  First it allows individuals to select pin point specific information that interests them (e.g. Fundraising jobs and events in Egypt etc.) and that will be emailed to them each night after it is entered into idealist.org.  Second, it permits people to publicly display information about themselves and their interests allowing volunteer seekers can contact them directly.

These two features meet a need in the community of youth organizing.  No other site offers them together.  They can be particularly valuable to conference organizers by helping to strengthen networks and follow up work.

Below is a strategy for opening this resource to other groups.

a. Identify a group that will be interested in the system such as the United World Colleges.

b. Create a "front end" to the Indiv. Db. Database on the United World Colleges alumni home page.

c. Modify the Indiv. Db. to record/ask "how" the individual arrived at the database.  This will allow individuals to search for community members and to "participate" in the database from their own online community. For example an individual could browse the UWC web site and explore information that is hosted by idealist.org on the back end.  Individuals should also be able to select several communities in their profiles.

d. Announce the new resources available to all UWC alumni (in partnership with idealist.org) via email providing each with a "clickable" URL inviting them to register in the Indiv. Db.  This permits UWC to track alumni involvement and to target their alumni for follow up activities.
 
e. Permit UWC to supplement the Indiv. Db. registration database with additional questions that are relevant to UWC organizers.

f. Repeat steps a. through f. with other groups.  Use MetaMerge Integrator software to facilitate the synchronization: http://www.metamerge.com - It can be made free for non-profit organizations.

6.4 Synchronize groups of individuals to a central location on the internet.

Many alumni groups and online communities want to participate in the Indiv. Db. system described above.  They also want to "own" some of their data privately within their own databases.  The best is to permit foreign databases to "synchronize" with the Indiv. Db. System.  For example, the UWC system might only upload new usernames and passwords to the Indiv. Db. but download new job information.

This synchronization will be vital for cohesion within the global community of youth activism.  Why?  In order to avoid duplicate effort and territoriality it is important to share information in one place vs. many places. 

At the same time this centralization of information will permit communication to all individuals in all groups simultaneously from a single source.  Who will control this communication?  Our charge is to develop a council, a decision making system, and a process for moving through that system.  The "council" will be populated by the groups that participate in this network.  Perhaps this will be the spark of the "World Youth Council" that we describe in our vision.

How will we synchronize systems?  Many groups do not have web accessible member/alumni databases.  They instead have desktop PC based Filemaker and Access databases.  With some minor modifications and configuration these databases can be synchronized through an Internet connection with a web based server.  Alternatively, the data can be exported periodically into a web based system.  Once the data is web accessible server it can be linked or synchronized with the Indiv. Db. 

The centralization of data, synchronization of databases, and creation of a shared communication system or newsletter will allow us to achieve CRITICAL MASS and "do something together that none of us can do alone."

Does the creation of a World Youth Council invite the creation of a World Youth Parliament?  Is a World Youth Parliament the seed for World Democracy?

Back to Part 1. YouthMovements.org Strategy version 2.1, updated March 25th, 2001