Recently I ran into the folks behind a new initiative called Youth Charge Now!, a group that focuses on encouraging and educating multi-cultural youth on using their power and right to vote. Here’s a little about them:

 

Youth Charge Now

 

In August 2010, a group of Asian leaders got together at a national conference in San Francisco.  They discussed how important it was to mobilize and support our Asian American youth to become the next generation of leaders.  We believed it was critical to get the APIA youth to band together, get involved in civic engagement activities like voting in the midterm elections and show our collective clout.  While we’re the fastest growing percentage of multicultural communities, we’re often ignored by mainstream media and other groups. We need to fight for our issues and take a stance on them by demonstrating our leadership and presence on a national scale.

This marked the birth of our campaign.  We would serve APIA youth by getting them involved in leadership and civic engagement issues.  We wanted to offer a contest and incentives for people who were marginally sitting on the bench to stand up and get involved. A new twist is that a couple of us who cooked up this idea had the ability to create this campaign and bring technology, corporate support and resources to make this happen quickly and on a national basis. We had extensive connections within the business, media and non-profit worlds. We also wanted to bring together the experienced APIA leaders to help the up and coming APIA youth. We would provide technology, sponsors, funding and experienced leaders and the youth would provide the directions, ideas and leadership within their own peer networks. We believed it was critical for us to bridge the generational gap and leverage our collective strengths.

We contacted some youth leaders and pulled together a council to advise us on how the youth would want to be approached and pulled in to help run and promote this campaign. In fact, they believed that this could become a sustainable youth movement supported by technology to connect us all through social media like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and text messaging that would last far beyond the midterm elections. Something that would grow big quickly and allow the youth nationally to self organize and mobilize using social media.

Thus the idea of Youth Charge Now! was born.

So now that you know about the organization, you should also know that they are running a little contest for those who register to join the cause. If you register w/ YCN, you can win a Kollaboration concert at your College campus, or 500$, or a free round trip Airfare ticket. Click here to see how to win those prizes. Or you can submit a Youtube video for a chance to win $500 as well. You can find out more about the organization at their website.