Our Space: Online Civic Engagement Tools for Youth

Part of the Volume on Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage YouthThe popularity of Facebook, MySpace, IM, and email with youth in developed countries demonstrates how second nature the online world has become for youth. People behind youth civic engagement initiatives are starting to see that the best way to engage youth is on their own terms and in the way they expect -- that is, online. With this in mind, this chapter examines the emerging world of online civic engagement sites for youth and by youth. Through a close examination of TakingITGlobal, an global online civic engagement site, combined with a landscape survey of sites with a mandate to civically engage youth, we present some initial findings on how youth are civically engaged and what it is they are actually doing on these sites

Distributing Leadership

{Excerpt} The prevailing view of leadership is that it is concentrated or focused. In organizations, this makes it an input to business processes and performance—dependent on the attributes, behaviors, experience, knowledge, skills, and potential of the individuals chosen to impact these. The theory of distributed leadership thinks it best considered as an outcome. Leadership is defined by what one does, not who one is. Leadership at all levels matters and must be drawn from, not just be added to, individuals and groups in organizations

"It's Hands-On...": Cultivating Mentors and Emerging Social Justice Leaders through Shared Project Development: Documenting the Intergenerational and Community Dialogues: A Leadership for a Changing World Initiative

The Leadership for a Changing World (LCW) program seeks to transform the public perception that the U.S. is facing a shortage of leaders to address social, environmental, and economic issues within communities. The program asserts that leadership does exist, albeit in a form that is different from traditional understandings of leadership. LCW shifts the conversation about leadership to include leaders known in their own communities, but not known broadly. Over five years (2001-2005), the LCW program recognized 92 individual leaders and leadership teams based in organizations across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. As the program began to come to a close in 2005, the partners developed the idea of a regional forum, the Intergenerational and Community Dialogues, to address recurring concerns that award recipients identified: leadership development, succession, and the creation of sustainable community collaborations. The forum brought together LCW award recipients and emerging leaders from the Pacific Northwest to investigate and explore the challenges and opportunities of intergenerational leadership and community collaboration. This report documents the main ideas that emerged from the conversations of forum participants who explored their experiences cultivating mentors, leaders, and collaborative relationships. It is our hope that this document captures the perspectives, concerns, significant accomplishments, and energetic spirit of the initiative's participants

The Crescent Student Newspaper, March 14, 2017

Student newspaper of George Fox University.https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/the_crescent/2476/thumbnail.jp

A Community\u27s Collective Courage: A Local Food Cooperative\u27s Impact on Food Insecurity, Community and Economic Development, and Local Food Systems

According to the USDA’s “Food Security Status of U.S. Households” in 2014, 48.1 million people live in food insecure households. In Indiana, more than 1 million people suffer from food insecurity with rates as high as 19.2% of Marion County’s population according to the Map the Meal Gap 2014 report. The Community Controlled Food Initiative (CCFI) is a local food cooperative operated by the Kheprw Institute and neighborhood residents in the Mid-North Indianapolis Community. The cooperative formed to address food insecurity in August 2015 in response to the closing on the local Double 8 Foods grocery stores. CCFI hosts a monthly food share distribution where residents buy into the program and receive a share of locally sourced fruits and vegetables. The cooperative model is a long tradition of people coming together to address a need in their community or society through a communal business structure. The community lived with food insecurity long before the closing of the grocery stores and decided to take action. This research is a case study using participatory observation testing CCFI’s cooperative model to Jessica Nemhard’s research in Collective Courage: An African American Cooperative History and through the three pillars of impact: addressing food insecurity, community and economic development, and climate change. CCFI’s work shows that food is not only a necessity for life, but also a catalyst for social change

Next-Generation Media: The Global Shift

For over a decade the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program has convened its CEO-level Forum on Communications and Society (FOCAS) to address specific issues relating to the impact of communications media on societal institutions and values. These small, invitation-only roundtables have addressed educational, democratic, and international issues with the aim of making recommendations to policy-makers, businesses and other institutions to improve our society through policies and actions in the information and communications sectors.In the summer of 2006 the forum took a different turn. It is clear there is a revolution affecting every media business, every consumer or user of media, and every institution affected by media. In a word, everyone. FOCAS sought to define the paradigm changes underway in the media, and to identify some of the significant repercussions of those changes on society."Next Generation Media" was a three-day meeting among leaders from new media (e.g., Google, craigslist, and Second Life) and mainstream media (e.g., The New York Times and Time), from business, government, academia and the non-profit sector, all seeking a broad picture of where the digital revolution is taking us.This report of the meeting, concisely and deftly written by Richard Adler, a longtime consultant in the field, weaves insights and anecdotes from the roundtable into a coherent document supplemented with his own research and data to form an accessible, coherent treatment of this very topical subject.The specific goals of the 2006 forum were to examine the profound changes ahead for the media industries, advertisers, consumers and users in the new attention economy; to understand how the development and delivery of content are creating new business models for commercial and non-commercial media; and to assess the impact of these developments on global relations, citizenship and leadership.The report thus examines the growth of the Internet and its effect on a rapidly changing topic: the impact of new media on politics, business, society, culture, and governments the world over. The report also sheds light on how traditional media will need to adapt to face the competition of the next generation media.Beginning, as the Forum did, with data from Jeff Cole's Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, Adler documents the increasing popularity of the Internet for information, entertainment and communication. Users are increasingly generating and contributing content to the web and connecting to social networks. They are posting comments, uploading pictures, sharing videos, blogging and vlogging, chatting through instant messages or voice over Internet (VoIP), or emailing friends, business colleagues, neighbors and even strangers. As Cole observes, "Traditional media informed people but didn't empower them." New media do.The report describes three of the Internet's most successful ventures -- Wikipedia, Second Life, and craigslist. Wikipedia is a prime example of how an Internet platform allows its users to generate content and consume it. As a result of "wiki" software technology anyone can contribute or edit existing information free of cost. Second Life, a virtual world, sells virtual real estate where subscribers, in avatar form, can conduct conversations, go to lectures, even create a business. Craigslist, a predominantly free online classified site with listings in every major city in the United States, has become so popular that it is posing a significant threat to newspapers as it competes with their classified ad revenues.As a result of these and other new media phenomena, not the least being Google and Yahoo, print publications are wrestling with new business models that could entail fundamentally restructuring the way they operate. For instance, reporters are now expected to report a story on multiple media platforms and discuss them online with readers. Newspaper publisher Gannett is exploring the incorporation of usergenerated news or "citizen-journalism" into its news pages.In an era of abundant choices marketers have an even greater challenge to figure out how best to appeal to consumers. The report explores how marketers, e.g., of Hollywood movies or pomegranate juice, are moving from traditional or mainstream media to viral and other marketing techniques.For much of the world, the mobile phone rather than the computer is the most important communications device. Users depend on their phones to send and receive messages, pictures, and download information rather than just talk. In developing countries mobile phones are having an exceptional impact, penetrating regions which are not being serviced by land lines. Thus we are seeing new uses daily for this increased connectivity, from reporting election results in emerging democracies to opposing authoritarian governments in order to bring about new democracies.Meanwhile, the report discusses the need for the United States to develop a new form of public diplomacy rather than the traditional top-down approach to communicating to foreign citizens. This topic has been a recurring theme at FOCAS conferences the past few years, this year calling for more citizen diplomacy -- that is, more person-toperson contact across borders through uses of the new media. Indeed, Peter Hirshberg suggested that American leaders should listen more to the outside world to effectively manage what he called "Brand America."Finally, after acknowledging the detrimental effects that new technologies can bring about, the report discusses what role those technologies could play in expanding freedom and opportunity for the next generation. As a conclusion, FOCAS co-chair Marc Nathanson proposed adding a ninth goal to the United Nations Millennium Goals, namely, "to provide access to appropriate new technologies.

Circling the Cross: Bridging Native America, Education, and Digital Media

Part of the Volume on Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital MediaTo paraphrase a Native elder, any road will get you somewhere. The question for Native America is, where will the information highway take them? As Native Americans continue to face challenges from the legacy of colonialism, new media provide both an opportunity and crises in education. Standardized education policy such as No Child Left Behind and funding cuts in social services inadvertently impact Net access and Indian education, yet alternative programs and approaches exist. It is necessary that programs conceptualize new media learning strategies within a historical context by being sensitive to the political and cultural connotations of literacy and technology in Native American communities. By encouraging the use of new media as a tool for grassroots community media and locally relevant storytelling, this chapter asks educators to consider an alternative epistemology that incorporates non-Western approaches to ecology and knowledge

All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement

Each new generation must become active, informed, responsible, and effective citizens. As a teacher we surveyed for this report said, civic education "is essential if we are to continue as a free democratic society. Not to educate the next generation will ensure the destruction of our American way of life as we know it."Data show that many young Americans are reasonably well informed and active. For instance, 45% of citizens between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the 2012 election. In a national survey conducted for this Commission, 76% of people under the age of 25 who voted could correctly answer at least one (out of two) factual questions about where the presidential candidates stood on a campaign issue and state their own opinion on that issue.On the other hand, more than half of young people did not vote. And on some topics, most young people were misinformed. A majority (51.2%) of under 25-year olds believed that the federal government spends more on foreign aid than on Social Security, when in fact Social Security costs about 20 times more. (Older adults have also been found to be misinformed on similar topics.) Our research, like many other studies, finds that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are far less likely to be informed and to vote.These shortcomings cannot be attributed to the schools alone, since families, friends, political campaigns, election officials, the mass media, social media, and community-based organizations are among the other important influences on young people. In fact, our research shows that while schools matter, civic education must be a shared responsibility.The outcomes are acceptable only when all the relevant institutions invite, support, and educate young people to engage in politics and civic life. Improving the quality and quantity of youth participation will require new collaborations; for example, state election officials and schools should work together to make voting procedures understandable and to educate students about voting rules