Originally published on the CGS blog on August 13, 2013.
“OMG,” Samantha Power is excited about viral videos and social media as a lever of change. The youngest US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at age 42, gave her first speech as an Ambassador to the Fourth Estate Leadership Summit this weekend. The event was hosted by Invisible Children, an advocacy NGO with the goal of bringing members of the Lord’s Resistance Army to justice and ending child conscription in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Her speech was current and geared toward encouraging the world’s youth to take action in whatever creative or unconventional forms. She praised the work of Invisible Children in their “Stop Kony” campaign and the efforts they have taken since their viral video release last year. “Today ordinary citizens don’t just advocate for change and action, they force change and they take action themselves,” Powers remarked. She gave examples of how today’s youth don’t have to become Washington lobbyists to catalyze global change like Invisible Children’s effort to design fliers that encourage LRA fighters to defect, to distribute them to LRA-affected areas in DRC and the Central African Republic, and to build radio stations in areas of high LRA activity.
While Power embraces youth movements such as viral videos and social media, she also stressed the importance of result focused action saying, “everything else is just noise. But this new generation understands that the video is not what matters; the number of twitter followers is not what matters. These are just means to an end… What matters is the real world scoreboard.”
With her speech arriving only a few days before International Youth Day, August 12th, her message is particularly significant, now more than ever. A recent report by Population Action International estimated that over half the world’s population is under the age of 30. For the US, this means activists grew up in the age of globalization and 24-hour news networks, using cell phones and the internet. This generation grew up knowing about issues that affect people on the other side of the globe and had the capability to a difference from afar. Both Samantha Power and GlobalSolutions.org know what a wealth of potential this demographic holds for the future of our planet and want to know what matters to you.
Tweet what matters to you and remember to include the handle: @GlobalSolutions and the hashtag #WhatMatters. Power has vowed to respond to her favorite tweets on Thursday, August 15th. Ambassador Power concluded in her speech with, “It is the courage and creativity of those in this room and young people everywhere that gives me hope, that we too can accomplish great things, united.”
