We’ve all heard the saying “children are our future.” At DoSomething.org we ask “why wait for the future?” We believe that young people can have an impact today.
We hate apathy and we want it crushed. That’s why DoSomething.org creates programs that give people 25 and under the ability to take action in their community around causes they care about. While a lot of organizations focus on one cause, ¬we are actually cause-agnostic. We focus on a wide variety of causes that young people care about – everything from the environment and animal welfare, to poverty and homelessness.
While young people might not always know how to take action around causes that matter to them, it’s clear that they know what in our world pisses them off. We constantly talk to our members to find out what is important to them and what they want to change. We use that information to create cause campaigns that allow them to take action in their community without a car, an adult or money. The best part about the campaigns is they live wherever teens are – on their cell phones and online. If you have a cell phone or an internet connection, you can take part right now.
Last year, over 2.4 million young people took action through a DoSomething.org campaign. Last January, for our annual ‘Teens for Jeans’ campaign, teens collected gently-used jeans at school to donate to homeless shelters in their communities through local Aeropostale stores. In little more than a month, over 1 million pairs of jeans were collected – providing clothing to two-thirds of homeless teens in America.
Clearly young people are doing things right now to save the world. We’re just giving them a platform to do so. ‘Teens for Jeans’ is just one of 26 campaigns this year.
We believe in young people, that’s why we are giving away almost a quarter of a million dollars in grants this year to people 25 and under that are creating a positive impact in their community.
Next time someone tells you that young people are lazy, tell them to check out the Do Something Awards on Vh1 in August. I guarantee they’ll walk away questioning what they were able to accomplish before their 26th birthday.
The Change You Want to See Series is simple. We pick a leader from a world changing organization and give them a blank slate to share what change they want to create.
