Alliance for Youth Movements
Ross Holland Kashif Riaz Kevin Harkins Gavin Ross
Contents
History
Alliance for Youth Movement (AYM) was formed in 2008 with a summit held in New York City. The event was organised by the US State Department partnered with MTV, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Howcast, AT&T, Jet Blue, Gen-Next, Access360Media and Columbia Law School. The aim was to encourage young people from around the world to use various digital mediums to voice their concerns over global issues such as oppression and censorship.
The AYM Summit is now an annual event, most recently being held in London on March 2010, after Mexico City hosted in 2009.
New York City 2008 Summit
The founding AYM Summit took place in New York City on December 3-5 2008.
There were seventeen leaders in attendance from their respective organisations;
Burma Global Action Network;
CAMBIO/Día de Solidaridad con Cuba;
Fight-Back;
Genocide Intervention Network;
Illuminemos México;
Invisible Children;
No Más Chávez;
One Million People Against Crime in South Africa;
One Million Voices Against the FARC;
The People's March Against Knife Crime;
Raíces de Esperanza;
Saudi Women Petitioning the Government for Driving Rights;
Save Darfur Coalition;
To Write Love on Her Arms;
Genç Siviller- Young Civilians;
Youth for Tolerance.
The Summit featured a variety of high-profile keynote speakers, including two of the AYM co-founders, Jason Liebman and Roman Tsunder. Also present were Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, James K. Glassman, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs,and Actress Whoopi Goldberg.
Among the topics and issues raised were "Building a Movement Against Terrorism", "Building a Global Movement", "How to Be an Effective Dissident", " Addressing Violence at Home" and "Mobilizing in a Challenging Environment".[1]
Mexico City 2009 Summit
Due to the success of the original AYM Summit, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, organised a second AYM summit to be held in Mexico City the following year.[2]
Clinton gave her support in Mexico City just six months prior to the Summit: "Young people around the world are poised to lead this kind of innovative citizen empowerment, which is why the United States is supporting a summit here in Mexico of Alliance of Youth Movements, to connect up young people working to end to end violence throughout Latin America, whether it’s domestic violence or dating violence or lawlessness in the streets of your community, we must all take a stand against violence. And this is a new tool that will help."[3]
The event raised awareness to humanitarian issues present in Mexico, as well as highlighting success stories from the previous AYM Summit.
However, the main goal of this conference was to encourage the use of Social Networking to "Effect Change", with particular emphasis put on Twitter, Facebook and viral video websites such as Howcast. [4]
London 2010 Summit
AYM held its third annual Summit in Lonndon, UK between March 9-11 2010.
Just like the two previous Summits, several high-profile supporters from the private-sector attended, such as "Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, Scott Heiferman of MeetUp, as well as top people from Google, YouTube and the World Bank." [5]
Some of the most striking topics discussed in London were issues such as "Tech Solutions to Repressive Regimes", "Turning Video into Tangible Action", "Turning Social Networks into Real Community" and "How to Create Content and Conversation that Drives Action".
AYM Website Launch
Movements.org is AYM's official website, launching over two years after the corganisation's formation, having previously used the HowCast website as their webpage.. The website is still in testing mode with parts of the site still being developed.
Users are given access to news stories and blogs relevant to digital activism straight from the home page.
People
Team
Jason Liebman Co-Founder and Board Member
Roman Tsunder Co-Founder and Board Member
Jared Cohen Co-Founder and Board Member
Susannah Vila Director of Content and Outreach
Rachel Silver Development and Corporate Partnership Manager
Funding
Activities
Digital Diplomacy and it's critics
Contact
Alliance for Youth Movements Website[7]
Notes
- ↑ "[1]", Alliance for Youth Movement - New York City 2008, accessed 15 October 2010
- ↑ [2]", HowCast Website - About AYM, accessed 16 October 2010
- ↑ "[3]", HowCast Website - Mexico City 2009, accessed 16 October 2010
- ↑ "[4]", Alliance for Youth Movements - Mexico City 2009, accessed 16 October 2010
- ↑ "[5]", Wired.co.uk - Meet the World's Youth Activists, accessed 16 October 2010
- ↑ "[6]" Alliance for Youth Movements: Team
- ↑ "Movements Homapage", Alliance for Youth Movements, accessed 12 October 2010
