The Challenge
Young people are increasingly experiencing a sense of helplessness and anxiety as they witness powerful systems become more active in harming their communities. They seek civic empowerment—ways to help their communities and participate in politics meaningfully—but often do not know where to begin. As a result, they turn to cultural influencers—the guiding voices on their screens and in their ears—for community and support. Influencers recognize the power of their platforms to inspire young people who look up to them, but they often lack the knowledge and tools needed to leverage youth interest into organized civic action.
The Project
Andre Simms will partner with DayOneNotDayTwo to identify, recruit, and train cultural influencers—artists, writers, storytellers, and other leaders who are skilled in messaging, gathering followers, and developing community—to organize youth around civic issues that impact their lives. Specifically, he will lead the influencers through the development and launch of incubation hubs, nonprofit-hosted spaces where they can collaborate to design and deploy rapid-response information campaigns. These hubs, which will be piloted in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Chicago, will serve as sustainable, physical headquarters for community learning and campaign design. Influencer campaigns will provide young people with timely knowledge and tools to respond safely and productively to evolving issues in their communities.
This Stoneleigh Fellowship is enabling Andre to:
- Increase influencer capacity for organizing young people around civic action.
- Increase youth capacity to respond responsibly to urgent issues impacting their lives and communities.
- Build a sustainable network of community-led hubs capable of adapting to evolving issues and expanding to new jurisdictions.
