WHAT IS THIS????? Alliance of Youth Movement
U.S. Will Ask Youth To Fight Crime and Terrorism Online
November 26, 2008 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
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The US State Department announced plans on Monday to promote online youth groups as a new and powerful way to fight crime, political oppression and terrorism.
Drawing inspiration from a movement against FARC rebels in Colombia, the State Department is joining forces with Facebook, Google, MTV, Howcast and others in New York City next week to get the “ball rolling.”
It said 17 groups from South Africa, Britain and the Middle East which have an online presence like the “Million Voices Against the FARC” will attend a conference at Columbia University Law School from December 3-5.
Observers from seven organizations that do not have an online presence such as groups from Iraq and Afghanistan will attend. There will also be remote participants from Cuba.
They will forge an “ALLIANCE of YOUTH MOVEMENT,” said James Glassman, under secretary of state for public diplomacy.
“The idea is put all these people together, share best practices, produce a manual that will be accessible online and in print to any group that wants to build a youth empowerment organization to push back against violence and oppression around the world,” he told reporters.
The conference will be streamed by MTV and Howcast, he said.
The list of organizations due to attend include the Burma Global Action Network, a human rights movement spurred into action by the ruling junta’s crackdown on monks and other pro-democracy protestors last year.
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/tag/alliance-of-youth-movement/
Wearing a new hat:
James K. Glassman
Journalist, economic analyst, entrepreneur, speaker, financial columnist and book author, and diplomat. He is president of the World Growth Institute, which promotes global economic development
14 May 2009
Three Hopeful Words
For those who despair of the future of public diplomacy, I have three hopeful words: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The new Secretary of State is a great public diplomat herself. She understands the importance of connecting ordinary Americans with ordinary foreigners. She brims with enthusiasm. And, unlike others in this administration, she is not reluctant to adopt and extend programs begun in the Bush Administration. A good example is the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) – the organization that came out of the meeting we convened in New York last December that brought together young representatives of global online anti-violence and pro-social-change groups with top technologists from U.S. firms like Google, Facebook, AT&T, and Howcast.
In a superb speech yesterday at NYU’s commencement exercises (in Yankee Stadium!), she alluded to the original group that got the AYM ball rolling: the Million Voices Against the FARC movement, founded in 2007 in Colombia by an unemployed computer technician named Oscar Morales. It was an applause line.
Her point was that diplomacy is changing, and she urged the young graduates to participate.
“When I was graduating so many years ago,” she said, “diplomacy was the domain of privileged men working behind closed doors. Today, our diplomats are not limited, and our diplomacy is no longer confined to the State Department or our embassies. We are laying the foundation for 21st century statecraft. Where? In the classrooms of NYU, in the board rooms of the businesses of this great city, in the halls of academia, in the operating rooms of our great hospitals. We are looking for those personal commitments and connections, and that is where all of you come in.”
This was not just rhetoric. Secretary Clinton announced that “over the next year the State Department will be creating Virtual Student Foreign Service Internships to harness the energy of a rising generation of citizen diplomats. Working from college and university campuses, American students will partner with our embassies abroad to conduct digital diplomacy that reflects the realities of the networked world.”
You can learn more about the program on the State Department website, right here. The write-up, as you’ll see, is a bit sketchy. But it’s actually a good sign that the Secretary is willing to launch a fine idea and fill in details later. She did tell graduates that they “don’t have to wait for us to create a new program,” and referred them to Kiva, the website that links microcredit borrowers with lenders around the world.
http://www.jameskglassman.com/?p=138#more-138