BE THE CHANGE
WE DAY HARNESSES A NEW KIND OF YOUTH POWER
Their Baby Boom parents pushed for change loudly, going to protests with placards in hand. Their Gen-X parents were more likely to kvetch about injustices over beer, then go home and write a snarky article for their zine.
Today’s young people, on the other hand, are the most cheerful and empowered bunch of malcontents. Just check out the teens carrying signs that read “Think Positive” or “Shameless Idealist” at National We Day on April 29 in Gatineau.
“Every kid in this school from Grade 4 and up knows who the Kielburgers are. Kids like to hear about other kids,” says Suzanne Stewart, a teacher at Berrigan Elementary School in Barrhaven, where Grade 6 students have raised $5,000 each year for the past two years for UNICEF.
The Kielburger reference is to brothers Craig and Marc, who co-founded Free the Children in 1995 to draw attention to the plight of child labourers when they were just 12 and 18. The first We Day was held in Toronto in 2007.
The Kielburgers’ story is part of the school curriculum in Ontario. The message to students is this: you don’t have to be powerful — or even an adult — to make a difference.
Rebecca Wong, a Grade 11 student at Hillcrest High School, says she started out passionate about the environment but learned that these issues were always intertwined with social justice issues.
Her involvement with a school group called IMPACT, which raises funds and awareness, has only made her more passionate, and she now wants to be a human rights lawyer.
“It gives you a sense of belonging and purpose in life,” says Wong. “The biggest thing is seeing change happen.”
Educators have seen very broad shifts in what interests kids, says Donna Frame, a teacher at Hillcrest who is one of the IMPACT supervisors.
High school students are disengaged by the tone and negativity of politics and they don’t see role models who inspire them, she says. And that’s where programs like We Act come into play. Students today have a more global perspective and a desire to travel.
Even the provincial curriculum is changed to reflect this, Frame says. Next September, two new courses, one in social justice and inequality and another in world cultures, will be available on high schools across Ontario.
The movement harnesses the social networking power of thousands of young people with Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.
“Social media has made it much more grassroots. It’s more organic and spontaneous,” says Frame, who has been a teacher since 2006.
“We didn’t have this kind of movement when we were in high school. I’ve never seen students engaged on this kind of scale. It’s amazing.”
The focus on positive engagement has made it cool to be involved. Four years ago, when Hillcrest had one of its first coffee houses, it attracted only two participants. This year, the coffee house attracted about one-quarter of the school’s 670 students.
For a teen or university-age student today, civic engagement can mean volunteering in an orphanage in Africa, commenting about a social justice issue on Facebook, or tweeting about a canned food drive.
They are more likely to think of individual ways to aid a cause and are less likely to make long-term commitments to organizations and campaigns — although they will remain committed to the underlying issue.
“This generation is about instant gratification and immediate impact,” says Ilona Dougherty, co-founder and executive director of Apathy is Boring, a nine-year-old charity devoted to encouraging young people to vote.
“But they’re frustrated when their voice is taken away.”
And this points to the paradox of civic engagement and youth: they might be volunteering, tweeting and Facebooking, but they’re also shunning the electoral process.
In the 2011 federal election, only 38.8 per cent of young people between 18 and 35 voted. Figures for provincial and municipal elections are even lower.
“We see the issue of young people being disconnected to traditional institutions where decisions are taking place,” says Dougherty. “It’s a very big problem for our democracy.”
Voting is a habit. If a young voter doesn’t cast a ballot in their first two elections, chances are good they won’t start voting after, she says. Lifespan milestones are different now. For most young people, there is a 10-year gap between the time they graduate and when they have children. Habits form in this time.
At the same time, young people see volunteerism as a different thing from voting, she says.
“We’re talking about two different pieces of what it means to be an active citizen.”
Apathy is Boring’s research has underlined this. Between 2008 and 2011, its “street team” surveyed 4,837 young people at concerts and festivals. About half the respondents were under 24.
Almost two-thirds said they engaged in volunteering (a word, by the way, that youth also shun, says Dougherty. They prefer to think of it as “community engagement” or “helping out.”)
But many also said they didn’t feel elected officials represented their values. About 69 per cent said they were dissatisfied with the integrity of elected officials, six out of 10 were unhappy with equality and accountability, and 45 per cent said they were dissatisfied with the way officials represented diversity.
The survey suggested that there was not a direct causal relationship between volunteering and voting.
The upshot: even though there are good things happening on a community level, in 30 or 40 years, less than 40 per cent of the population will be voters.
“If you want youth to cast a ballot, they need to know what’s going on in the world,” says Craig Kielburger, who is now 30.
Homelessness, aboriginal issues and global issues such as clean water and child soldiers bring in critical thinking skills, he says.
So far, 131 school boards are education partners with Me to We. The goal is to create engaged local and global citizens through giving, volunteering and voting.
Kielburger points out that 79 per cent of We Act alumni of voting age report going to the polls in the federal election, double the rate of their peers, and 80 per cent of alumni report volunteering more than 150 hours a year.
The three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) are still the foundation of education, but schools have to go beyond these subjects in order to be relevant, he says.
“The end goal isn’t measured in funds raised. It’s measured in our alumni stats.”
What do young people want? Transparency, says Kielburger. They want to track their donation and make sure it’s doing what they intended.
They might want to go overseas and see their donation in action, or take a leadership role to create their own fundraiser.
And they want to be able to shift their spending patterns so they know the products they consume are ethically-sourced and have a sustainable impact.
“That journey begins by engaging youth,” he says. “I hope kids will be both philanthropists and social entrepreneurs.”
Suzanne Stewart believes adults often don’t give young people enough credit.
“They’re capable of looking beyond their community,” says Stewart, who teaches English and math to early French immersion students at Berrigan Elementary School in Barrhaven, which was commended as the top school in Ontario for raising funds and awareness for UNICEF.
She points out that the project, which included setting up a haunted library for Halloween to raise funds, is growing. It attracted 32 student volunteers in 2011 and 50 in 2012.
The UNICEF project tied to the curriculum in a multitude of ways, says Stewart. The students counted money, made charts and studied the UN Rights of the Child, fair trade and child labour.
The things they learned have been “sticky.” Later in the year, when some students read a novel about the Underground Railroad, they related it to what they had learned months earlier.
For many students, the project has brought a new appreciation and gratitude for their lives in Canada, says Stewart.
“The world is a smaller place than when I went to school. I have four kids myself. The youngest is 19. I see the difference in what they know about the world. We’re all in this together.”
When it’s all put together, the networked fundraising muscle of youth is significant. The Ottawa Catholic School Board, for example, did an audit of school fundraising for charity in 2010-2011 and found that its 35,000 students had raised more than $500,000.
But the end result isn’t as important as the process, says Catholic board superintendent Tom D’Amico. The message of Me to We fits into the Catholic social teaching and a desire that students graduate with a sense of what it is to be a “discerning believer,” he says.
The concepts also fit into leadership opportunities. At Immaculata High School, for example, aboriginal and aboriginal students created a “sacred circle” to help eliminate stereotypes.
Social media has changed the meaning of making a difference. It no longer means putting up a lemonade stand and hoping people will come. It can mean raising awareness, or sending a tweet to get more people to buy lemonade, says D’Amico.
“Ten or 15 years ago, you raised funds because it was the right thing to do. Now, young people know they have a huge impact, and their voice makes a difference.”
Why send a 17-year-old on to Africa to volunteer at an orphanage? Wouldn’t it be more effective to send the money directly to the orphanage?
Kielburger says for young people, these kinds of experiences have a lasting impact. They are part cultural immersion, part volunteerism and partly a discussion about development issues.
Young volunteers return determined to raise more funds. The experience might help the student choose a career, or it might simply encourage them to read more articles about Africa in the newspaper.
“We are not seeking to change Africa, but to change the participant,” says Kielburger.
“People look at the work we do and often assume that we build schools or inspire kids. It’s shifting people’s belief systems. Actually, it’s helping kids here,” he says.
“The greatest thing you can do for your sons and daughters is to get them to help someone else.”