This starter kit contains resources for youth who want to affect change in their communities and the world through a virtual project or platform. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing requirements have forced youth changemakers to go about their goals in innovative ways, including through virtual engagement. This starter kit aims to help youth effectively advocate for change virtually by focusing on the basics of virtual engagement, how to do digital advocacy, and how to attract and maintain an audience for a virtual project.
Why Focus on Virtual Engagement?
Youth engagement on digital platforms has dramatically increased over the last few decades, and a new kind of youth citizenship has emerged: digital citizenship. As a result, the potential to affect change in our societies through digital platforms has grown. These resources focus on the growth of digital citizenship and the ways virtual engagement can help make youth voices heard.
- Civic Engagement Goes Viral When Young Voices Turn to Social Media – This article discusses the rise of digital citizenship and the transformational power of digital engagement in making youth voices heard.
- Empowering Youth: Use of Technology in Advocacy to Affect Social Change – This paper provides a conceptual framework for integrating technology with youth advocacy efforts to affect social change.
- How Youth Groups Can Claim Power Digitally During COVID-19 – This article urges young people to raise their voices in digital decision-making spaces in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Webinars:
These webinars are an excellent place to start learning about virtual changemaking and gaining skills for a successful virtual project. Watch the recordings to learn about digital tools (including social media platforms and Zoom) for virtual engagement, how you can leverage digital campaigns, and examples of how technology can enable young people to lead their communities towards a COVID-19 recovery.
- YouthLead Webinar: How to Use Digital Tools to Run Effective Digital Activism Campaigns – This 50-minute webinar includes a training from a YP2LE Youth Advisory Group Member on digital activism and campaigning.
- YouthLead Webinar: Social Media for Advocacy: An Introduction for Young Changemakers – This one hour webinar, hosted by YouthLead and The Creative Development Lab, teaches participants key concepts and strategies that are useful for young digital changemakers.
- Young, Brave, Digital: The Power of Networked Youth Leaders in Online Activism – This one hour webinar — part of a breakout session at the Global Digital Development Forum — features a panel of speakers from IREX, Tech Tribes, YP2LE, and more that focuses on the opportunities of youth-led digital networks to advance social impact at scale.
- Social Media Advocacy 2020 — This 30-minute webinar shows you how you can effectively advocate for causes you care about on social media. You will learn 10 ways to utilize social media to spread a message, how to create powerful content, and how to create a successful social media plan.
How to conduct digital advocacy projects:
These resources provide an overview of digital advocacy and how to use digital tools to wage a successful campaign in a virtual space.
- How to Do Digital Advocacy – This article provides 6 steps to a successful digital advocacy campaign.
- Virtual Volunteering Toolkit – This toolkit helps youth design, implement, and reflect on volunteer projects that can be done at home.
- 4 Tested Digital Advocacy Campaign Strategies – This article discusses four ways to leverage online advocacy softwares to take action for a cause.
- Technology for Social Action Toolbox – This resource includes tools to help youth understand how to use technology to support a project or organization.
- Using Social Media for Digital Advocacy – This toolkit teaches about how to use different social media platforms to help achieve your organizational goals.
How to build community in a virtual project:
One of the most important components of any project is engaging the community you seek to serve or other changemakers also working to make a difference. These resources highlight the ways you can attract, maintain, and engage an audience in a virtual sphere.
- Community Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond – This guide details tools that can be used to facilitate remote community engagement activities.
- Guide: How to Approach Digital-First Community Engagement – This guide contains resources to help get the best out of digital-first engagement, community engagement designed with technology at the forefront.
- 8 Ways to Create a Digital Strategy that Attracts & Engages Students – This article discusses 8 ways to use digital technologies to attract and engage an audience.
- How to Keep Your Audience Engaged During a Virtual Event – This article discusses 11 ways to keep attendees engaged during virtual events.
- How to Nurture and Engage your Virtual Community – This article provides advice on how to nurture and engage a community in a virtual project.
How to volunteer with other global projects virtually:
Are you hoping to engage in a virtual project, but unsure of what you want to do? If so, these resources might be a good place to start! These resources discuss virtual engagement with projects that have already been started by other changemakers. By reading through, you might gain a better idea of what you want to do or simply engage in virtual volunteerism by helping out with one of the projects listed!
- E-Volunteering: Contribute to Global Development from Home – This article provides an overview of “e-volunteering” and action steps for getting involved in virtual volunteering projects.
- United Planet: Virtual Internships and Virtual Volunteer Opportunities – This website contains virtual internship and virtual volunteering projects for youth around the world.
- Points of Light Virtual Volunteering Opportunities – This resource highlights virtual volunteering opportunities aggregated from nonprofits around the world.
Get Inspired: Examples of Youth Success in Virtual Engagement:
Now that you’ve learned all about virtual engagement strategies, read these stories of success of other youth activists working in the digital space to get inspiration for your project!
- Demonstrating Youth Leadership with COVID-19 Youth-Led Digital Engagement – This article discusses how Said Issa in Palestine has adapted his advocacy efforts to virtual engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Youth Activist Uses Social Media to Advocate for Peace in Somalia – This blog post highlights the effective efforts of a social media peace ambassador in Somalia.
- Youth-led Solutions during COVID-19: Harnessing Social Media – This World Bank article discusses the importance of maximizing use of social media as a platform to adapt to the COVID-19 crisis and examples of successful social media use by youth.
Now what? Putting the Starter Kit into Action:
- Read through the resources to gain a better understanding of virtual engagement opportunities and strategies. You can also look over the resources from YouthLead’s Youth and Advocacy starter kit and think about how you can adapt these resources for advocacy in a virtual space.
- Now that you have a handle on what virtual engagement is, think about the project you want to do. Are you already engaged in an in-person project that you could transition or build on virtually?
- If so, what would be the best technologies to use to move this project online? Could you utilize social media tools to advocate for a cause you care about and make your voice heard?
- Once you have an idea for your project, create social media accounts to market the project.
- Once you develop a plan for the content you hope to circulate online, you can focus on gaining and maintaining an audience. Using the knowledge you have gained from this starter kit, start to think about how you can build a following for your online project.
- How can you best engage with your community virtually? Are you seeking to reach your local community, or a broader, more global community? In the meantime, find a way you can engage with a virtual project that already exists and needs virtual volunteers from one of the resources in this starter kit. Many of the projects listed are things you could get involved in right away today!
- Provide your feedback on the site! Which tools are working and what is missing? How else can we support you?