Project Description
Through October and November 2008, I traveled to over 30 cities across the United States to meet, interview and report how young people are leveraging their social and political power. I'm reporting here about the people I met along the way and other millennial-aged (and minded) activists.
When I was a teenager, I was always inspired by interesting, accessible stories about what other young people were doing to better the world. Now I'm trying to contribute to that same narrative as a self-proclaimed Millennial activists. Millennial activists, also known as Social Citizens, are, according to social entrepreneur and writer Allison Fine, "young people ages 15-29 who practice a nascent model of civic participation that combines immersion in social causes, idealism, digital fluency."
Traveling from the East to the West Coast, visiting everywhere in between, and returning again, I aimed to convene the American youth, the next generation of this country's social and civic stewards. It is my intention to illustrate, from our collective testimony, why we engage.
About Me
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Alex Steed
- Boston, ME
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I took this project on because I am a self-described Millennial activist. In the past four years, I have:
- worked as an organizer for an office of civic engagement with a grant from Americorps
- worked for the Democratic Party as a field organizer during the 2006 Congressional elections
- in partnership with Northwestern University, co-organized a two-month collaborative research project in which I studied on-the-ground NGO organization in 25 different countries
- worked as an outreach director at Change.org and then as a full-time blogger with The Point, a website that promotes social action through offering cutting edge, tipping-point-based incentives for engagement
- written regularly for NetSquared, an organization geared towards enabling a better sense of non-profit Internet literacy
