Youth Activism - Forms

Forms

There are three main forms of youth activism. The first is youth involvement in social activism. This is the predominant form of youth activism today, as millions of young people around the world participate in social activism that is organized, informed, led, and assessed by adults. Many efforts, including education reform, children's rights, and government reform call on youth to participate this way, often called youth voice. Youth councils are an example of this.

The second type is youth-driven activism requires young people to be the primary movers within an adult-led movement. Such is the case with the Sierra Club, where youth compel their peers to join and become active in the environmental movement. This is also true of many organizations that were founded by youth who became adults, such as SEAC and National Youth Rights Association.

The third type is the increasingly common youth-led community organizing. This title encompasses action which is conceived of, designed, enacted, challenged, redesigned, and driven entirely by young people. There is now global initiative by youth in international movements, such as in the International Youth Rights, the first entirely student-run, non-profit, non-political, international movement organization, which was founded in 2009 by Seung Woo Son, a South Korean youth living in China. Working closely with Ms. Kim, the Director for Education Development at UNICEF Korea, the organization strives to make the youth’s opinions, experiences and their suggested solutions to the world issues be heard across the world and to actualize their solutions in real life, for all to realize what youth can do to make an impact in the world. The World Federation of Democratic Youth is also another international movement, which has UN NGO status. I final example is the iMatter Movement, an entirely youth-lead environmental advocacy organization.