Go Teenagers!

It’s hard to find literature that will be appropriate, helpful and motivating for kids who are looking to participate in the non-profit world.  A lot of teenagers have strong and complex feelings about issues within the community or on a larger scale, but don’t have a lot of practical ideas as to where to outlet their energies.  In middle and high school, I often fantasized about starting up a shelter for battered women/bookstore/cafe/free lending library- I had a lot of big ideas and I knew which causes really struck a chord in my heart, but as far as activism went, I mostly bounced around youth groups in my area, like S.Y.P.P. and E.Y.E.S. (Empowered Youth Educating Society, now defunct).  So much of young life is about imagination, about dreaming big (I planned to open the hybrid shelter/cafe as soon as I’d won my screenwriting Oscar and, of course, the Pulitzer) and that kind of energy can be a bracing and welcome force in the activist community.

My DonationPay counterpart, Noah, started an organization in Berkeley, in his teens: Project Great Outdoors.  His non-profit has gone onto a long and successful life and was originally born of an intelligent, engaged teenagers’ grand imagination, social conscience and infectious energy (which has certainly been a boon around the office).  One of these days, I’m going to rope him into writing a fabulous post about his experience as the young helmer of Project GO, but sadly, this is not that day.  My point, really, is that with some support, resources and adequate information, teenagers can get a lot done, out there in the non-profit sector.

Here are some resources and inspirational tales to help them get started:

1.) The Teen Guide to Global Action

2.) Generation Change: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Change The World

3.) Be The Change, Change The World

4.) Volunteering: The Ultimate Teen Guide

5.) Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories

6.) It’s Your World- If You Don’t Like It, Change It

7.) Future 500: Youth Activism and Organizing in the United States

8.) Youth-Led Community Organizing: Theory and Practice

9.) Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie

10.) The Journey Is The Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon

All these books are available on Amazon for very reasonable prices.

The last two on this list won’t apply to everyone, but they certainly provide models of how to be a proactive person in a complicated society.  I received the last book, The Journey is The Destination, as a gift on my 18th birthday from a dear friend and it has continued to inspire and motivate me for the last twelve years.  If you are lucky enough to be the parent or friend of a budding teenage activist, help them get out there in the community and give them all the support you can.  They’re going to need it.

Happy Monday.

A.J.