Three ways young changemakers can have a greater impact globally

On a typical Friday afternoon most teenagers are in school, sitting at their desks writing a test or listening to their teacher, and perhaps glancing up at the clock, impatiently waiting for the bell to ring. But last month, on March 15, more than 1.4 million young people around the world, according to organizers, were in the streets of 2,233 cities in 128 countries demanding urgent action on climate change.

These young people were inspired to leave their classrooms by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish 16-year-old who in August of last year began holding a weekly school strike to raise awareness about climate change and has continued protesting outside the Swedish parliament every Friday since. Her solo strike has turned into a global movement, for which she was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

A global movement led by young people, like this one, is by no means a new phenomenon. Young people have often been at the forefront of social movements and social change throughout history, including the civil rights movement. Another recent powerful example is the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who continue to mobilize around gun reform in the United States and who organized March For Our Lives, bringing thousands of young people to Washington, DC, in March 2018 after 17 of their classmates were gunned down.