Giving Compass' Take:

• The author offers eight lessons for youth-led movements based on his own experiences participating in climate activism. 

• The eighth lesson in the article is "Youth need mentors, not sages." Why are mentors important to youth organizing and movements in general? 

• Read about why philanthropy must be involved in youth-led social change movements. 

On March 24, I stood in the rain in front of City Hall in Bellingham, Washington with some 3,000 people for the local March for Our Lives demonstration. It was one of 800 similar events happening nationwide that day, with about two million people participating coast to coast.

For almost exactly a decade, I identified as a youth climate activist. After graduating from Pacific University in 2009 I volunteered for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, focusing on involving college students in the effort to close Oregon’s only coal-fired power plant

Like all large movements, youth climate activism has had its successes and setbacks, its enormously inspiring moments and others when it failed to live up to its ideals. What follows are some reflections on lessons from the movement, necessarily limited by my own experience and position as a white male organizer from a middle-class background. Despite this bias, I hope these reflections may be of use to people involved in today’s fast-growing youth-led movements.

  1. Trust in students’ abilities.
  2. Follow-up is hugely important. 
  3. Teach transferrable skills. 
  4.  Be specific about movement goals. 
  5. Partner with frontline communities. 
  6. Partner with older activists. 
  7. Have hard conversations about equity and inclusion. 
  8. Youth need mentors, not sages. 

Read the full article about youth organizing by Nick Engelfried at Waging Nonviolence