Generation Engage

Generation Engage is a nonpartisan youth-civic-engagement initiative that connects young Americans to political leaders, to other civic organizations, and to meaningful debate about the future they will inherit. There was a good piece in the Politico that spotlights the organization and shows how it’s trying to bring political access to young people.

According to the organization’s website, Generation Engage partners with local HotSpots: social venues where young people in a given community congregate socially (pool halls, cyber cafes, community centers, places of worship, etc.) to provide a venue for members to gather and connect with civic leaders. These events allow political leaders to vie for young voters’ support as they should: face-to-face and not over the airwaves. Then the organization connects its local forums among multiple cities and local HotSpots, through videoconference technology, leveraging one event into many. Members, gathered at Engagement Forums can hear from and ask questions of prominent political figures, via Apple’s iChat video conference technology. For politicians, these forums open cost-effective channels of communication between politicians and young voters.

As founder Adrian Talbott puts it, “Young people suffer from a lack of access, not from a lack of information.”

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Rock the Vote Bio: Rock the Vote was founded in 1990 to organize artists and fight against censorship of musicians. Since then we've evolved to focus on empowering young people to get involved in the political process. We use pop culture, peer-to-peer organizing, and the latest technology to raise visibility of politics and demystify the process of registering to vote. @rockthevote Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 9:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.