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
Funding for the organisation comes in from various parties, in order for it to maintain its massive worldwide network and communities. Major contributors include both the UK and U.S governments, with Hilary Clinton vocally giving her, and the states, support and endorsement of the second Alliance for Youth movements annual summit[7],held on the 14 - 16 October 2009 in Mexico City. The Alliance for Youth movements also makes the most of its corporate sponsorships in generating funds with numerous corporate organisations supporting and sponsoring the movement. Named on the movements website are all of its partners, which include;Howcast, Edelman, Google, MTV, MeetUp, Pepsi, CBS News, MobileAccord, YouTube, Facebook, MSNBC, National Geographic, Omnicom and Access 360 Media.[8]
Activities
Digital Diplomacy
In it's simpliest terms, Digital Diplomacy is "solving foreign policy through the internet" [9]. Digital Diplomacy is being driven by the increase in new social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other such sites. In a speech called "Britain's Foreign Policy in a Networked World", British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that he was an avoid follower of Bahrain's Foreign Minister on Twitter [10]! This is an indictation that the new social networking experience is playing a crucial role in the diplomatic efforts of governments. In the United States, this has been a crucial function of the foreign policy of the Obama Adminstration and led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The US State Department has a term from digital diplomacy and have called this "21st Century Statecraft" [11] and this is central to the diplomatic strategy of the State Department. One crucial part of the digital diplomacy strategy is the freedom of the internet around the world. In a speech on internet freedom, Secretary Clinton said that "freedom to connect" was important to stop governments from preventing citizens from viewing websites [12]. The State Department in implementing this policy are harnassing the knowledge of leaders in the internet and social networking arena such as Eric Schmidt, Google CEO as well as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Jason Liebman of Howcast and the Alliance for Youth Movements as well as many others [13]. One of the crucial underpinnings of 21st Century Statecraft is the idea that through these networking opportunties, the indvidual at street level will be empowered. We have seen examples of this when Oscar Morales started a Facebook campaign against Colombian terrorist organisation FARC [14]. This is an example of digital diplomacy in action as Morales is using Facebook to be able to harness anti-FARC sentiment and sent a message towards that organisation. Senator Richard Lugar has pointed out that governments theoretically will not be able to control the messages the people will hear if the internet is open and accessible to all fully which means people will become "empowered" by this type of interaction [15]. Through the "empowerment" of people through the internet it is possible that alternate histories to the ones which are the officially governmentally sanctioned accounts [16] will empower people through the interent as they should be able to make a balanced judgement of what has happened in the history of their nation. This type of diplomacy it is hoped will lead to, in the words of Secretary Clinton, "advance democracy and human rights, fight climate change and epidemics, build global support for President Obama's goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and encourage sustainable economic development" [17].
Criticisms
There are however many criticisms of the digital diplomacy idea. One of the most fundamental criticisms is one that is acknowledged by the supporters of this diplomatic technique. It is an acknowledged fact that through internet freedom, as well as empowering people to allow them more access and freedom to others, it also allows groups such as Al Qaeda the resources to plan attacks on the internet and proclaim extremist views and values to a much wider audience [18].
Contact
Alliance for Youth Movements Website[19]
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
- ↑ "[7]" US Department of State website, Hilary Clinton, accessed 24 October 2010
- ↑ "[8]" Alliance for Youth Movement, accessed 24 October 2010
- ↑ "[9]" British Foreign Office: What is digital diplomacy?, accessed on 19 October 2010
- ↑ "[10]" Speech by William Hague: Britain's Foreign Policy in a Networked World (1 July 2010), accessed on 19 October 2010
- ↑ "[11]" State Department: 21st Century Statecraft, accessed on 20 October 2010
- ↑ "[12]" Foreign Policy: Hillary Clinton on internet freedom (21 January 2010), accessed on 20 October 2010
- ↑ "[13]" Jason Liebman: Faceboo, Twitter and YouTube Are Tools for Diplomacy (8 January 2010), accessed on 26 October 2010
- ↑ "[14]" Oscar Morales: 'How I used Facebook to protest FARC' (Metro: 8 February 2010), accessed on 26 October 2010
- ↑ "[15]" Twitter vs Terror (6 January 2010), accessed on 26 October 2010
- ↑ "[16]" Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen: The Digital Distruption (Novemember/December 2010), accessed on 27 October 2010
- ↑ "[17]" Hillary Clinton on internet freedom, accessed on 27 Ocotber 2010
- ↑ "[18]" Hillary Clinton on internet freedom (21 January 2010), accessed on 27 October 2010
- ↑ "Movements Homapage", Alliance for Youth Movements, accessed 12 October 2010
