Ashoka's Philosophy for Engaging with Young People

Young changemakers play a critical role in Ashoka’s global movement to tip society to an everyone a changemaker world — a world where each person can contribute fully to positive change.

As such, Ashoka engages with young people in particular ways to both empower their capacity for changemaking, while keeping them safe in the process.

Why Young Changemakers

Young Changemakers serve as examples to show our partners and larger community the new definition of success in growing up: having an idea, building a team, and changing your world. They also act as ambassadors and spokespeople to help organizations and institutions create and foster a culture that supports young changemaking.

Ashoka engages a wide variety of young people through our work with two general objectives in mind:

Enable young people to individually and as communities be powerful in a safe environment and
Promote through our partners a culture that enables young people to be powerful contributors to positive change, countering forces that increasingly disempower young people.

How We Create a Safe and Empowering Environment for Young People

Our approach represents a system that promotes powerfulness as a key element for supporting safety within Ashoka’s community. For this reason, we have put together safeguarding policies and systems to support young people in understanding risks to ensure an environment in which young people can learn, grow, and be changemakers.

Changemaker Strategies for Being Powerful and Safe

At Ashoka, we recognize that young people may be at different stages in their journey as changemakers, and as such may have varying levels of savviness around the kinds of risk inherently involved in changing the world for the better. Regardless of what stage they are at, we believe that young people should be empowered to understand and mitigate risk.

As young people progress in their journey as changemakers, they will encounter a variety of situations that bring varying levels of positive growth opportunities as well as risk. It is important to understand both.

Understanding Risk Toolkit

This toolkit, created for and by young changemakers in their teens, aims to help young people be savvier in addressing risks they will face throughout their changemaking journey. As a non-exhaustive go-to resource, the toolkit covers three main areas 1) digital privacy 2) wellbeing and 3) engaging with adults.

Find the Toolkit here