Young people who want to do some good in the world have a place of their own, thanks to DoSomething.org. George Weiner, Chief Technical Officer for the activist site says DoSomething has three key components that encourage youth involvement: their initiatives don’t require a car, money or an adult.
The site encourages youth to pick causes about which they feel passionate. The causes are organized under eleven major headings: animal welfare, disaster response and relief, discrimination, education, environment, health and fitness, HIV and sexuality, international human rights, poverty, violence and bullying, and war, peace and politics.
Each of those is subdivided into sub-topics. So someone concerned about violence and bullying can find out how to take action against such things as violence against women, cyber bullying, and dating abuse.
Choose a cause, then find links to resources about the issue and how to take action to make a difference. For example, if cyber bullying is your concern, you can learn how to create an online page to combat bullying, give a class presentation, or host a fundraiser.
For every cause there are dozens of ideas. Besides these, DoSomething sponsors training, grants, scholarships, and awards.
In the video below, George Weiner talks about one of the projects DoSomething organized with Better World Books. The Epic Book Drive gathered over 250,000 books to restock New Orleans school libraries.
DoSomething is an American site, but there’s no reason the same kind of program can’t exist in every country of the world. Youth with energy, initiative and compassion have a lot to give to the world.