Young People First: Crowdsourcing Political Advocacy
YPF will create an online community where young Americans can pitch their policy solutions to America’s chronic problems, and community members will vote on their ideas. The top proposals will constitute a Young People’s Agenda, around which the community will advocate on the national level.
Q1: What ideas do you have for how to maximize the effectiveness of the Young People First launch?
Idea Description
America has deep, chronic problems. But with no clear constituency to fight for solutions, they get ignored. We will build sustained political will to find solutions to America's most difficult problems.
Companies such as threadless.com have shown that if we tap the creativity of large groups, then we can collaboratively create high-quality products that consumers are invested in. We believe that this strategy will work for political advocacy.
Our community will submit their policy solutions in any format they choose (videos, comics, writing) in order to channel creativity of young people into political expression.
Please see our model at YOUNGPEOPLEFIRST.ORG/MODEL
What will you do if you win $10,000 for this idea?
$10K is exactly the kind of seed money we need to jumpstart our impact.
1. Launch partnership with Summerbridge Alumni Network
2. Build a pilot community in which to test hypotheses and build grassroots
3. Rebuild our website so that it is powerful enough to host the Agenda-building process
4. Ramp up public speaking to get the word out about mobilizing young people around entrenched, chronic problems
5. Fundraise for the broader launch
Check out the Young People First blog at www.youngpeoplefirst.org, and watch YPF on YouTube at www.youtube.com/youngpeoplefirst
Vote for it now.
Zach, I just saw your video talking about ideablob. Glad to hear you made some good contacts. I wanted to let you know that you are in third place for overall vote getters. Ideablob takes the top two vote getters to round out the finals, so although you didn't win a sprint, you could still make the finals this month. I was at BarCamp Philly today and mentioned what you were doing during a conversation about political crowdsourcing session. People were pretty into it. Good luck with everything.
Dear Sir, The phrase "produce amazing products" I find to be both vague and redundant. However, I think your overall intent is excellent.