Are Today's Young People Policital Game-changers?

by Kristen Cambell on 18 Nov 2008

By now, we’ve all seen the numbers about the incredible youth vote turn out—23 million young people voted, representing about 52 percent of the under-30 population, and 18 percent of the total electorate. But what does that mean? It means the question du jour is no longer “Will they turn out?” but “Will they stay out?”

So as I see it, the real question is, was the youth vote ever about the election, or something larger?

Enter, a November 6 panel discussion at the Center for American Progress titled “Are Today’s Young People Political Game-Changers?”, where many participants stated that election or not, young people are organically creating a movement that challenges status-quo power structures, requires transparency, and demands accountability in the government and across institutions. Read more »

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Be Extraordinary - In Less than 20 Minutes

by Kari Dunn Saratovsky on 17 Nov 2008

This past weekend, I sat down with Ben Rigby and Jacob Colker in between sessions at the Net Impact Conference in Philly. Ben and Jacob are co-founders of the Extraordinaries, and they want to turn your spare time into social good by delivering on-demand opportunities to volunteer. Sounds simple enough, but the real kicker, is that they are building a platform to enable all of this volunteer activity to take place on your mobile phone. Read more »

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Spoofing Our Way to Social Change

by Allison Fine on 13 Nov 2008

There was much aflutter in New York City yesterday when a group of volunteer activists released and distributed a fake copy of The New York Times with a banner headline announcing the end of the Iraq War. Upon further examination, readers saw that the paper was postdated July 4, 2009. 

I spoke this morning to two organizers of the effort, Beka Economopoulos and Andy Bichlbaum, about how this massive effort (it took over a year to organize and hundreds of volunteers to pull off) was organized and successfully managed. (And it wasn't free.)

The effort was organized similarly to other networked activism efforts in that it had the following key components: Read more »

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RU A Social Citizen? Find Out and Win!

by Kari Dunn Saratovsky on 12 Nov 2008 4

Have you always wondered what kind of social citizen you are? Chances are, you've probably never thought about it - but now you have no excuse not to. Take our new Social Citizens Quiz and reveal your true social citizen savviness in just eight quick questions. 

Plus, as a bonus, you can enter to win a Social Citizens Makeover complete with all of the tools to help you promote your cause and spread social good. Five lucky winners will receive a Flip video camera, a $100 Apple gift certificate, and a suite of tools including a WordPress PremiumAccount,  Flickr ProAccount, and two hours of consulting time with a social media expert. Read more »

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Corporate Social Responsibility Has Mixed Results

by Allison Fine on 11 Nov 2008

Cone Research released a report on November 5 called The BSR/Cone 2008 Corporate Responsibility in a New World Survey of corporate responsibility officers that showed mixed results for the immediate future of coprorate responsibility. The sample population is comprised of 424 representatives from business, NGOs, government, and academia, representing 28 countries.

Some of the key findings include:

* Leaders are optimistic that global businesses will embrace corporate responsibility as part of their core strategies and operations in the next five years:

- Somewhat optimistic 66%
- Somewhat pessimistic 12%
- Neither pessimistic nor optimistic 11%
- Very optimistic 11%
- Very pessimistic 1%

* However, the current economic crisis may affect the budget for future CR initiatives:

- Budget will not decrease. 43%
- Budget will decrease. 31%
- Too early to determine. 26% Read more »

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Making Our Own Transition Plans

by Allison Fine on 7 Nov 2008

On Wednesday, Jonathan Wolfe wrote a terrific piece on this blog called Remembering the "We" in Yes We Can about the continued engagement of the Millennials who were so instrumental in Obama's victory continuing to be engaged in helping to develop the priorites and policies of the new administration.

Lisa Stone, the co-founder of Blogher, makes a slightly different call to action,  She encourages everyone to come up with our own transition plan. We need to ask ourselves, she writes, "What will YOU do to help resolve the nation's problems?"

Good question!  And a particularly poignant one for us to ask in a bleak economy because the jobs in the social sector that may have been available a year or two ago may not be there this year and next. So, what's a social citizen to do? Read more »

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Remembering the “We” in Yes We Can

by Jonathan Wolfe on 5 Nov 2008 1

i votedThe results are in, and we have a new president-elect – a man who for many represents the promise of real change. Certainly, Barack Obama has roused the hopes of youth, who turned out in record numbers to support the candidate. Preliminary projections from the nonpartisan Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) indicate that voter turnout for Americans aged 18-29 is higher than in 2004, a year of significant increase, and is much higher than it was in 2000 and 1996. Read more »

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