Initiatives Started by Students

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Delegates at the IYVS Conference 2006. Photo by Thomas Lee

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
—Margaret Mead

 

 

 

 

Environmental Issues

Billy Parish took time off from Yale University to launch The Climate Campaign, an organization that seeks to unite student networks to lobby their schools to adopt a range of environmentally friendly policies including using renewable energy, instituting green building and working for energy conservation.

Global Action

JON MARINO and NATHANIEL WHITTEMORE founded the International Youth Volunteerism Summit as part of the Just Naïve Enough Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University. IYVS serves as a place for young people who care deeply about global progress to come together to understand the challenges and opportunities for their engagement; to hone the skills and mindsets that will enable them to better plan, execute, and participate in change-focused projects, and connect with like-minded peer communities from around the world.

Free The Children is the largest network of children helping children through education in the world, with more than one million youth involved in our innovative education and development programs in 45 countries. Founded by international child rights activist Craig Kielburger, Free The Children has an established track-record of success, with three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and partnerships with the United Nations and Oprah’s Angel Network.Unlike any other children's charity in the world, Free The Children is both funded and driven by children and youth. Our mission is to free young people from the idea that they are powerless to bring about positive social change, and encourage them to act now to improve the lives of young people everywhere.

Jessica Rimington created One World Youth Project (www.oneworldyouthproject.org), an organization linking schools around the world to help foster international understanding and cooperation.

Human Rights

Cambodia
Tobias Rose-Stockwell earned a major in art in 2004 from Allegheny College, PA. Thereafter he was working on a humanitarian project that he had started in southeast Asia while traveling. To benefit humanitarian causes abroad, he developed the website www.HumanTranslation.org and is selling his artwork. Read his article: A Cambodian Story

Sudan
Mark Hanis and Andrew Sniderman worked from a basement office at Swarthmore College to establish the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF), an organization that calls on private citizens and government officials to support African Union peacekeeping forces in Darfur. Read about their commitment to ending genocide.

Peace

100 Projects for Peace
Internationalist and philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis invited undergraduates at any of the 76 American colleges and universities in the Davis United World College Scholars Program to design grassroots peace projects to implement during the summer of 2007. The 100 projects judged to be the most promising and do-able were funded at $10,000 each. The objective was to encourage and support today’s motivated youth to create and tryout their own ideas for building peace in the 21st century.
 
You can read about students' projects for peace here.

Regions

Uganda
Advocates for Grassroots Development in Uganda (AGRADU) is a University of North Carolina student initiative aiming to support indigenous grassroots efforts at community building and economic development in Uganda. AGRADU helps to educate and to raise awareness about international development from a grassroots standpoint by giving students the opportunity to participate directly in such efforts!
Read the AGRADU summer internship blog.