Project: Pilot Regions new to Youth Leadership
Do your local youth change lives and land near and far?
If not, it is time to become a Pilot Region.
Youth Leadership is new to Berlin, Europe and most parts of the world. At RCE-Berlin we understand our work not as limited to Berlin, but to florish in international collaboration with global Project Partners, and with student club-powered school partnerships in Europe. Our connected planetary future, however, depends on able active caring citizens in every town in the world. Hence, we seek to serve RCEs, educators and stakeholders all over Earth in sparking and evolving Youth Leadership en masse at schools and beyond using the 5 Youth Leadership Essentials.
We seek to study and document needs, steps and success in doing so in different regions, different settings, urban and rural, different cultures, different challenges.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?
Any caring person with the passion to see youth leadership spark and thrive in their region is welcome to join this program. Individuals can do it – teen hero*ines, social entrepreneurs and youth leadership coaches operate as individuals; there is no need for permission, funding, titles or charitable status; none of those have enabled youth leadership in your region. But with our competent community, you can do it.
Current Pilot Regions
Berlin-Brandenburg
We embed the work of RCE Berlin in our surroundings. That is our rural environment with hundreds of lakes, small towns still marked by the socio-economic turmoil caused by Germany’s reunification.
Contact : Eric Schneider
East Lower Saxony, Germany
This region of towns and villages near the former West-East German border is coined by deconstruction of coal mining industry, bordering on larger cities with alternative culture and green, sustainable districts, and swaths of land circumvened by canals.
Contact : Dr. Sina Schreier
Lucknow, India
This city faces several SDG challenges like sexual abuse and violence of girls and women, poverty, hunger etc. The Red Brigade Trust that has trained 30,000 girls in self-defense seeks to build an academy and nurture Youth Leadership in town.
Contact : Ajay Patel
Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa
Skhumbuzo Dlamini is a traditional dance trainer and community organizer determined to nurture youth-led projects in his region marked by post-Apartheid challenges, 80% unemployment, crime, violence, lack of opportunity and climate change, with a community centre, school based projects, globally connected by peer-to-peer learning, youth exchange and more.
Contact : Skhumbuzo Dlamini
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
This city embedded in an extraordinary natural environment of mountains and rivers, with extraordinary history, a still complicated post-civil war situation, socio-economic challenges driving many highly qualified youth out of the country, and a closed school system has great needs and exciting potentials for Youth Leadership and pan-European collaboration, also for school partnerships, exchanges, family travel and summer camps.
Contacts : Eric Schneider
Who's next?
The young generation is yearning for responsible adults to help them unfold the skills required to make it through this extraordinary time of shifting from an Unsustainable to a Renegerative Civilization.
PRACTITIONERS MOVE THROUGH 3 STAGES
Scouting stage : listing potential users interested in seeing youth-led projects, such as teachers, principals, youth centres, citizen groups, councillors, public librarians, community centres, mayors, social entrepreneurs … and familiarize oneself with youth leadership, through self-study of available tools, action programs, partners for inspired youth and adults, completing our short surveys, joining weekly video meetings for open conversation with our community of Pilot Region practitioners in different regions of Earth.
Timeframe : 5+ hours over 2 week
>> FOLLOWED BY QUICK SIMPLE ACTIVITIES
Pioneer stage : using / seeding story sets to adults (citizens, teachers …) and youth, spark a conversation, observe response, collect feedback, mention opportunity of follow-up activities. Mapping friendly partners, coaches and learnspaces in the region, adding to the “enabling ecosystem” of value for inspired youth and adults to self-organize impactful activities for people and planet. Video-meetings with our Pilor Regions community to observe the process and formulate challenges, needs, achievements, potentials and envisioned next steps.
Timeframe : 20+ hours over 4+ weeks
>> IF LOCAL YOUTH AND ADULTS ARE INSPIRED IT LEADS TO
Pilot stage : initiate first activities with inspired youth and adults, making intangible and tangible impact, using their choice of simple, swift activities, vivid media documentation, sharing with social and news media, with YL Magazine and inspiring more people to take part. Join recorded video-meetings to report observations, involving also new local practitioners to celebrate common achievements and nurture awareness and bonding with a global like-hearted changemaker community and spark further follow-up actions.
Timeframe : approx. 12+ weeks
Definition of success : In a region where youth leadership is to-date not even heard of, whatever will happen will be the best that can happen right there right now, and it may be the best that ever happend for young people and their passionate adult allies.
Expectations : We do not expect that you reach Pilot stage. Whether the seeds of inspiration grow depends on how fertile the ground is, i.e. whether local youth and adults have the heart to take action.
Requirements : Love for people and planet, the wish that youth and caring adults get enabled to make relevant tangible changes, readiness to work through the stage’s activities listed above and a feeling of joy to meet other caring brilliant people like you in video meetings for open conversation on experiences, needs, dreams, breakdowns, breakthrough, what’s dear to the heart and whats next.
SIMPLE STEPS TO INITIATE THE PROCESS
Inviting key people to tell of (their) Good Practices is an easy step to initiate the process
- Survey on outstanding student / club activities
- Survey / Call for interviews with teenage hero*ines
- Mapping LearnSpaces and Participation-Places
Offering quality resources and activities wins users, partners, friends and generates first activities
- Teen Hero*ine story sets (also poster exhibits, presentations)
- Project partners, speakers and coaches
- Global SDG School Challenge
Conversation with our staff and community members sparks surprise opportunities!
- We all share love and priorities
- We are equipped with tools and offers of unprecedented value for many caring people in the communities we serve
- We have more resources and relations in our global network than we can present online
- All our inspired pioneers and pilots have invisible, untapped resources, relations and potentials
- Occasions like UN Theme Days, local fests, online events and travelling people appear along the way
If you care for it, you cannot fail. You will live your values, follow your dreams, learn a lot in the process, get to know people of value for your future, give hope and new perspectives to lovely, caring and active people like you, add to our endeavors of RCE Berlin and our extraordinary partners.