Contributing to a healthy democracy means more than just voting. What are today’s youth doing to engage their peers in civic life? How are online media and social networks amplifying youth voices and participation? We invited four young leaders to share their views.

Participants:

Ahmad Alhindawi, Co-founder, Youth for Democracy Initiative, Jordan

Tom Dawkins, Founder, VibeWire, Australia

Rajeeb Dey, Founder, English Secondary Students’ Association, United Kingdom

Maya Enista, Chief Executive Officer, Mobilize.org, United States

Q: What role have you played in supporting young people’s active participation in the democratic process?

Tom: I've founded three organizations that focused on creating opportunities for younger people, my peers, to express themselves creatively and politically, to participate in conversations about our shared future.

These organizations were all based on the belief that democracy is, and must be, so much more than simply voting. At its heart, democracy is a conversation and voting the administrative mechanism whereby we appoint the managers of our democracy. But just as Annual General Meetings are not the core activity of an organization or company, voting is not the core activity of a democracy. It is necessary, but insufficient, to constitute a healthy democracy. The heart of democracy is conversation, debate, and the ability of citizens to use their voice.

The first two organizations focused almost exclusively on hosting events, forums, debates, mock parliaments, film screenings, and art exhibitions. Over time, our focus became less political and more about expression in all its forms, exploring the connection between the arts and politics, the need to empower young people to find and use their voice, and to provide them with the information and diverse perspectives to make judgments on what they believed.

After five years of relentlessly organizing events, I began to feel burned out and frustrated. Where were all these events going? How were they linking together to create a wider conversation? How effectively were we supporting new voices and perspectives?

I realized that the media is the marketplace of ideas in western society, the place where our democracy truly plays out and where choices about which voices and ideas are included or excluded are made. To have a more democratic society we needed a more democratic media. Based on this understanding I founded Vibewire Youth Media and Arts (www.vibewire.org), an organization dedicated to supporting young people’s expression needs by providing them with the skills and platforms to share their perspectives, initially in the form of a website, www.vibewire.net, but later through film festivals, anthologies, and a youth social enterprise incubator in Sydney called sQuareOne (www.s1.org.au).

Ahmad: I’ve been actively involved in a number of local and regional youth initiatives and worked to establish a Jordanian youth movement called Youth for Democracy (YFD) in 2004. YFD promotes a democratic culture among Jordanian youth through running projects, including the YFD magazine, monthly camps where youth talk about political and development issues, and training courses where youth develop skills in project management, budgeting, teambuilding, media outreach, and how to run a university election campaigns. YFD also formed the Arab Youth for Democracy Initiative (YFDI) in collaboration with youth in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco.

Maya: Over the past seven years, I have played a number of roles supporting young people’s active engagement in the democratic process. My first job was with Rock The Vote as the East Coast Coordinator in 2002. During that time, I worked on voter registration and voter empowerment while enrolled at Rutgers University. In 2004, I moved to the National Hip Hop Civic Engagement Project where I oversaw a 13 state voter registration effort that registered over 300,000 voters in the hip hop generation. I woke up on November 3, 2004 and was devastated when the AP reported that the youth vote had not turned out – when we knew it had. The stories were later corrected, but the damage was done and I realized that it was important to not only tell young people to register to vote, but to give them a reason to vote and to work with them to understand what pressing issues were facing them in their communities and on their campuses.

In July 2005 I became Chief Operating Officer of Mobilize.org, an all-partisan youth organization that works to educate, empower, and energize young people to increase our civic engagement and political participation. We work to show young people how public policy impacts our lives and more importantly, how we can impact public policy.

Rajeeb: At 17, I founded the English Secondary Students’ Association (ESSA) – www.studentvoice.co.uk - the first national youth-run organization working to give students, ages 11-19, a voice in education in England. Using peer-led training, we have worked with thousands of young people in delivering communication, leadership, and campaigning skills training, and worked in schools across the country to demonstrate the value of engaging students in decision making. We are working to transform education from a system where students are passive recipients of knowledge to one where they are active co-creators of their educational experience.

Q: Why is this an issue you are passionate about?

Tom: When I was 16, I spent a year in the U.S. on an exchange. This was a hugely influential experience, which exposed me to a range of new opinions and forced me to really reflect on my beliefs and purpose in life.

As part of this, I was selected to represent young Australians at the State of the World Forum in San Francisco. I can assure you that I did not deserve the honor. While I was engaged by politics and it was what we largely discussed around the dinner table in my family I had not done anything. The Forum was a phenomenal experience. We met with four Nobel Peace Prize winners and other dignitaries. We were asked to develop a statement of purpose on behalf of the world’s youth. We were given unbelievable respect from senior leaders across a range of sectors. We had the opportunity to share our hopes and ideas with young people from 31 countries. We were told we represented the two billion young people on the planet, and that by being there their voices were being heard.

On the one hand it was heady, deeply empowering stuff. On the other hand, it wasn’t true. We didn’t represent those two billion voices. It was an amazing experience to be there. It was wonderful that they did include young people. But it was clearly not enough. We had to do better than this. We had to go beyond the token-young-person-invited-to-meet-important-adults dynamic of youth participation and build accessible pathways to youth engagement and platforms for youth expression.

Ahmad: What inspires me? The notion of democratizing the region’s countries and promoting a culture of acceptance and good governance; the building of institutional platforms for political participation; the growing of strong political parties with youth as partners in developing agendas; the modernization of laws; and increasing youth participation in decision making at the community level. I believe that development should encompass all sectors – political, economic, cultural, social, etc. – and that we should not shy away from addressing controversial issues.

Maya: I’m passionate about people’s rights to voice their views in the democratic process because I was lucky enough to have two parents who prioritized those rights above their own as they sought political asylum in the U.S. from the communist country of Romania. They left Romania so that their yet unborn children would have the right to free speech and freedom of religion, and ultimately most important to me, the right to vote. I understand and appreciate the struggles that my family went through in order to ensure that I have these rights and I am evermore appreciative of them because of that.

Rajeeb: Students are the ‘end-user’ of education, yet at the same time we rarely seek their views, either within schools or at a national level when making educational reforms. Just as businesses cannot ignore the views of their customers, why should we ignore those at the very heart of the education system? Every other ‘stakeholder’ in England (parents, teachers, governors etc.) has national bodies representing their views, but the students did not have such an organization. ESSA works to give students a voice – a voice they are entitled to – as enshrined in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that “children’s views must be considered and taken into account in all matters affecting them.” What greater matter affecting children than their own education?

Q: What difference do you see your work making in ten years?

Tom: First, in ten years all those who participated in Vibewire projects will be ten years older, and many of them I suspect will have risen to positions of some prominence in the media, government, and non-government sectors. They will, I hope and believe, carry much of the ethos of openness, debate, and democratic participation that Vibewire champions with them. Second, I will still be working on these issues and I hope that in ten years I’ll be a more effective organizer and activist than I am now, more capable of creating and sustaining change on a larger scale.

Ahmad: I live in a region that is very far from being stable due to the conflicts that are happening around, from the Palestinian-Israel conflict to Iraq and other potential crises. Jordan appears like a security oasis in the Middle East but it’s still affected by the instability in the region. This instability is affecting development efforts and the speed of achieving more progress. In light of the fact that Jordan is undergoing a transitional period, I believe we can achieve more in terms of spreading a democratic culture and supporting social and political change in the coming ten years. Our work will help foster an enabling environment for democratization.

Maya: I feel strongly that my generation, the Millennial Generation, is uniquely positioned to transform politics and our democracy. We are the most collaborative and diverse generation in history. We are also the first generation that is poised to be worse off economically, than previous generations. That unique position allows us to work with a sense of urgency to address some of the biggest issues our society is facing. I feel that members of our generation will lead the fight for environmental sustainability, affordable higher education, and further connecting our global community.

Rajeeb: I hope to see all students empowered to speak up on issues of concern within their schools and that the government will ensure that young people’s views are always taken into consideration when making changes to national level education policy. Through equipping students with communication skills and working with schools to ensure that they pay adequate attention to student voices, I hope that students will feel that school is something to be enjoyed (not merely endured), and that fewer students will drop out and more will be inspired to pursue higher education.

By enabling students to experience the benefits of being engaged in democratic processes at school, I envision more young people becoming active in their local communities and society in general, which will hopefully increase the numbers of young people voting in elections too.

Q: What are the opportunities — and challenges — young people face in becoming more engaged in democracy building?

Tom: Each generation must rethink democracy to suit their times. We sit on the verge of a potential democratic revolution that will reveal just how stale and predictable so much of what has passed for democracy has become over the past couple of decades.

Our generation can do better, must do better, harnessing the power of online media, social networks, and a belief in openness and participation to rethink democracy as going beyond voting, beyond winning and losing elections, beyond personal glory. It is only by allowing all citizens to be part of the conversation that we will be able to adapt to the huge challenges that this century will face, where the very future of our civilization will come into question.

Online, citizen-based media has given us a huge assist in building a more democratic society. Unlike all mediums that have come before, the Internet is inherently conversational, a many-to-many platform where any voice can, potentially, be heard. But technology is neutral and must be consciously harnessed to democratic ends. In many parts of the world young people are pioneering new tools and techniques for engaging their peers in democratic participation. Much of this is focused on electoral outcomes, especially in the United States, but much, especially around citizen journalism, also focuses on the quality of the process in-between elections, looking for ways to empower and promote new voices and perspectives. This is the key opportunity.

The main challenge is the inertia of the political process, the entrenchment of existing interests and the two-party system. This is especially true in Australia where compulsory voting (which I support), combined with undemocratic and inaccessible political party organizations and no public input into pre-selection, has resulted in a bland parade of technocrats of little ability and less vision occupying much of our parliaments.

Ahmad: Let me focus more about the Arab countries, where the challenges are many. Modern Arab states lack checks and balances for parliaments and the judiciary that are fundamental to democracy. Freedom of speech and rule of law has not been established in the vast majority of Arab states. Opposition movements are weak, vulnerable, and manipulated by ruling establishments. We were at more advanced stages in the 20s, 30s, and 40s than now. And just look at Greece and Chile, which have learned important lessons.

On the other hand, opportunities exist. There have been long periods of liberalization in our history. A recent survey held in several Arabic countries by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that a substantial majority of Arab citizens believe that the democratic system is the best way to govern their countries.

Maya: The opportunities include our diversity, collaborative nature, and pioneering spirit in the field of technology. We are creating new tools and networks that allow our generation (and others) to communicate across barriers and in a more transparent way than ever before. I occasionally fear what our dependency on technology will do to our grassroots organizing, but I’ve been pleased to see that the younger generations understand that technology cannot replace face-to-face interaction and that it’s a complimentary method.

Rajeeb: Developing positive attitudes toward active participation while young people are in school is critical. The ages of 11-19 are some of the most formative in young people’s lives. If they are not engaged in decision-making and are not given the experience of democracy and its effects, then how can we expect young people to vote when they reach the age of 18? What experience will they have of affecting change and having a say? If we don’t demonstrate the value and outcomes of active participation to young people, efforts to teach citizenship and democracy in the classroom will be fruitless. We should model schools just as we would want society to be – as places where students are actively engaged and exercise choice. It is important to remember that students are not merely ‘citizens in waiting.’ It is our duty to ensure that we give students the chance to be engaged in democracy building from a young age, if we are serious about building a robust, democratic society.

Q: What impact, if any, will the outcome of the U.S. Presidential elections have on your work?

Tom: If Barack Obama is elected to be the next President of the United States, and I very much hope he is, it will represent the triumph of a new type of politics, one which has focused on leadership-building and participation – in other words, on bringing as many new people into the process as possible in order to win. This philosophy has propelled his record-breaking fundraising operation with its unprecedented flows of small-dollar donations, his approach to online campaigning with his website in-building a highly-innovative social network of his supporters (my.barackobama.com, known as MyBo), and even the most traditional element of electioneering, canvassing or door-knocking, which has been built around neighborhood-by-neighborhood teams of volunteers, themselves led by volunteers (for more on this revolutionary approach see this article by Zach Exley.

This is all very exciting and has brought huge numbers of new people, especially new young people, into the process. But the real test will be how these principles of inclusion and diffusion of leadership get carried through from campaigning to governing. If Obama can remain committed to these ideas we may see a very different kind of President and a new way of governing. He has already proposed some reforms to improve transparency but I hope he will go much further in creating opportunities for community input and participation.

But we shouldn’t get carried away with this notion of the President allowing us to engage. While government has a vital role to play in managing our democracy in a way that is transparent and accountable and there is enormous potential for internet-enabled innovation (see, for instance, the work of Open Society in the UK), we cannot expect them to do our job for us. That is the role of the citizen, to stand up and be counted, to defend the common good.

And the role of those of us who care about the quality of our democracy is to look beyond winning elections and always ask ourselves: how can we involve more voices in the process of democratic conversation every single day?

Ahmad: Both of the presidential candidates visited Jordan in the last few months and both said that they will work at making progress in the peace process in the region. After all the pressure that the region has experienced over the last eight years, we think that new leadership in the United States could help rebuild the image of U.S and promote a spirit of cooperation.

We are looking for an administration in the U.S. that understands that democracy is not only about what happens on elections day. Democracy is a whole culture. Elections are the way we chose our representatives, but democracy doesn’t stop there. There is a saying: “Democracy is not a destination, but a journey.”

Maya: Our work will not be greatly impacted by the outcome of the US Presidential election as we focus on public policy impacting young people, regardless of the administration. We are thrilled to see that both Presidential candidates are engaging in discussions around the issues most important to the younger generation and working to genuinely engage young people in their campaigns. Personally, I am excited to participate in this election as it has mobilized such as huge group of my peers. It’s wonderful to see that the youth vote surge that began in 2004 will continue to grow moving past the 2008 Election.

Rajeeb: I do not envisage the US Presidential elections having a direct impact on our work. However, given the pomp and ceremony surrounding it, it may have the effect of getting more young people interested in politics. With Hollywood endorsements, Paris Hilton spoofs, and character assassinations of candidates in the press, it is certainly more ‘glitzy’ and entertaining than UK politics!