Pedal Power Nation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This October, the Panjshir Tour rolls into several cities – grassroots, community bike rides that supportMountain2Mountain’s work with women and children in conflict zones. This is the second year of the Tour, based off my experiences mountain biking in Panjshir province of Afghanistan. Yup, Afghanistan.

Countries like Afghanistan don’t culturally allow women on bikes right now, and while our project focus is targeted towards women and girls, its not about getting them on bikes, Rather, its about using the bike as a vehicle for social justice and change for women’s rights. It’s a subtle difference, but a powerful one. Mountain2Mountain’swork is advocacy, education, training, and cultural outreach. We aren’t trying to rashly push on cultural boundaries unnecessarily over there, but we can use the bike back here as a tool to affect change in increments that are sustainable.

Thus the Panjshir Tour was born when I rode across the Panjshir Valley last October, and riders in eight communities rode with me in solidarity for women’s rights, using their sweat equity to help raise awareness and funds for our projects. Rides like the one in Saratoga Springs, New York which was spearheaded by 11-year-old Reese Arthur around her neighborhood with her fellow students, or the one in Washington DC that started at ended at previously designated women’s prisons during the suffrage movement. The deaf university, Gallaudet University in Washington DC hosted a campus ride knowing it would benefit our work with the Afghan National Association for the deaf as we work to build a school, and cruiser bikes hit the beach path in LA in an impromptu ride.

Countries like Afghanistan don’t culturally allow women on bikes right now, yet my experience riding across the Panjshir Valley, as a foreign woman, on a bike was met with friendly curiosity and often incredulity, but never animosity. The interactions created by their curiosity led to endless conversations and questions about my purpose there and my work in the area, and often concluded with requests to visit their village, or offers to join their family for dinner. The gracious tradition of Muslim hospitality to travelers firmly in place even in a country enduring nearly forty years of conflict.

It was my goal to challenge perceptions and invite conversation on both sides of the equation. Challenging the stereotypes of women and Americans in Afghanistan, while challenging parallel stereotypes of Afghans as a people and as a nation in the United States. Bridging cultures and communities on two wheels.

Women that I know that lived and worked in Afghanistan in the 60’s as part of the Peace Corps rode their bikes daily to and from work – a far cry from the security lockdowns and convoys required today. Women like Dervla Murphy pedaled solo across the entire region prior to the Soviet’s invasion. We all know the power of the pedal. Connecting communities, reducing our carbon footprint, improving our health, exploring new cultures, and in third world countries the list grows to social issues like increasing access to education and healthcare, and decreasing violence against women. Pedal power indeed.

It is this pedal power that sparked the Panjshir Tour in cities like Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis, Saratoga Springs, Santa Rosa, Portland, and Washington DC.

Actor and bike advocate Matthew Modine expressed his support of the Panjshir Tour as honorary co-chair of this year’s event stating, “The women and girls of Afghanistan deserve our attention and support. This is not a women’s issue or an Afghanistan issue. Its a human rights issue. I want to encourage everyone with a bike to use it as a vehicle for social change by coming out and riding with us and showing your support for gender equity and opportunity for women and girls all over the world”

By coming together with our bikes, we can fight for justice, we can battle for change, and we can do it one pedal stroke at a time.

Come join us this October, or start your own grassroots ride in your community. Get pedaling and get involved!

(originally published in Huffington Post – September 9, 2011)

Afghan Elections – Holding our Breath

Election day  in Kabul with midnight earthquakes and rocket attacks at 7am, but the rest of the day passed without incident, in Kabul at least, and an afternoon walk around the city under bluebird skies found quiet streets and heavy police presence.

In total, an estimated 307 attacks occurred throughout the country in election related violence yesterday.   Election violence is notorious in Afghanistan, intimidation, kidnapping, and murder of candidates, campaign workers, and election officials makes campaigning a near impossibility in Taliban controlled provinces.  Two candidates and eighteen election officials and campaign workers were kidnapped in three separate incidents the day before the election.

Bodies of three of those kidnapped were found today.

Election related violence actually started as far back as July, when a shopkeeper in Logar province was killed when he put up a campaign poster in his window, and a warning was delivered to local residents not to participate in the upcoming elections.  In nearby Khost province, Sayedullah Sayed, a candidate for parliament, was fatally wounded – losing both his legs – when a bomb planted in the mosque he was attending exploded.

Amazingly, despite the risk, 2500 candidates ran for office.  More amazing still, an estimated 40% of voters turned out  yesterday, casting more than 3.5 million ballots, said Faizal Ahmad Manawi, chairman of the Independent Election Commission.  While many voters avoided the polls, it would seem that the increased violence was not enough of a deterrent to compete against a push towards a democracy.

Even women ran for office in record numbers, a total of 413 overall, and a significant increase from the 2005 election total of 335.  Under President Karzai’s amendments to the electoral law made earlier this year, 68 seats are reserved for female candidates.   Yet female candidates are often accused of being prostitutes and Un-Islamic, their campaign workers kidnapped, and their families threatened.   A quirk of the ‘reserved seat’ provision in the Constitution is that seats in provinces that do not have a female candidate will fill the seat with a man, thereby increasing threats against female candidates country wide.

These increased threats didn’t deter women like Naheed Ahmedia Farid, a 24-year-old in Herat.  “I want to be a voice for women,” she says when asked why she is running for office by an ABC reporter yesterday. “Because there was about 30 years, 31 years that women didn’t have any voice. I think we have to change the situation for women and I want to be a member for that reason.”

Low voter turnout and corruption were touted as major ‘fails’ of the election.  Yet, the highest voter turnout in US midterm elections since 1962 has been 48% and the initial turnout in Afghanistan is 40%.  Incredible when you compare the security situations between the two countries.  In the US low voter turnout is due to apathy not security.  How many US voters feel strongly enough their right to vote to risk death just to cast it?

Corruption occurs, as it does in many countries with better security than Afghanistan.  It doesn’t make it right, but it also doesn’t make these elections worthless.   Continued steps must occur to fight against corruption and voter fraud, but as with everything in Afghanistan, its a journey.  Any journey worth taking begins with the first step.

According to journalist, Alexander Lobov, “As long as both corruption and violence are kept in relative check, the elections will still serve as a moderate PR victory and the country will continue on its present course.”

It’s a lot of risk to take for a so-called moderate PR victory, but in Afghanistan, continuing on its present course is actually a step forward, especially for women’s rights.  Afghans risk their lives to represent their country and cast their votes – proving once again how resilient and determined they are to take those first steps forward.

Simple Solutions to Save Women’s Lives

You would think there would be more of an uproar in a country with the highest maternal death rates.  No other country in the world loses more women in childbirth than Afghanistan.  None.   Rarely has being first at something meant so much loss.

It’s not just the women either, lest you callously chalk it up to the inevitable argument over women’s oppression in a country like Afghanistan where women set themselves on fire to escape arranged marriages, rapist go free, victims go to jail, and women die in childbirth when a male doctor lives just 10 minutes down the road, because he is unable to view her naked or worse yet, touch her.

The children too are dying at alarming rates.  Skirting at the top of the heap, currently in the second position when I last checked, of the highest infant death rates in the world.  Babies die from suffocation when they a nasal suction would clear out their mouth and nose post delivery.  Babies die of dehydration when they are given dirty water instead of breast milk.  Babies die common colds due to harsh winters with little to keep them warm.

All three causes are easily rectified.  As are many of the major causes of the mother’s deaths.  Dirty knives that cut the umbilical cord and cause infection.  Inability to deliver the placenta causes the woman to bleed out.

Lack of a few simple medicines, lack of pre or post natal care, lack of female doctors equal death on a large-scale in a country already suffering from something akin to country-wide post traumatic stress disorder due to nearly four decades of war and incredible loss of life that has affected every family.   In short, many of these deaths are preventable, and families crave midwives even areas that they won’t yet education girls.

Midwife training schools exist in nearly every province to address this situation and the Afghan Minister of Public Health touts its success.  Successful for cities and larger communities, yes.  But this 2 year program rarely spreads far.

Lack of education makes a trickle down effect nearly impossible.  A unique village-to-village approach is needed to save lives in rural communities.   The reason?   Girls must have a 9th grade education to attend midwife training.  Those that have the education, must then have the permission from their father or husband to leave their community for 2 years to attend training.  In the rare case that education, permission and scholarship is available, and the girl attends school, she will return to her community to live.  A wonderful solution for THAT village and she will do much for her community’s welfare, but what about the communities that do have educated girls to send?

It is extremely rare that a girl would return from school to a village other than her own.  So the villages that don’t have girls educated to 9th grade, a rarity in many regions, have no hope to train girls from within their own village.

So, the solution?  Train women and girls with low levels of education, to be skilled birth attendants.  Teach them the simple solutions that save lives that you or I could learn in 4 short weeks.  Teach them basic sanitation and have them educate their village.  Teach them how to administer basic medicines and vaccinations.  Pay them a small stipend to work in their village.   As the village thrives, and the women earn money for their family, the value of women increases and deaths decrease.

A great example of this cultural shift occurred in a remote mountain village in the Panjshir.  We had ongoing discussions about building a girls primary school, and the elders were reticent.  When we shared our other program, rural midwife training, their eyes lit up and questions and stories flew around the room as I struggled to keep up with their pace.  Upon realizing that we couldn’t train illiterate women, and the knowledge that there wasn’t one single literate woman or girl in the village, we ended the discussion.  The next morning, fifteen men met me with green tea and said they would like to pursue the original discussion of a girls school.

Often it’s illustrating the way girls and women can contribute to the general welfare of the community that makes the rational argument for their health, worth, and their education.

Our first training begins with women from two Taliban-controlled provinces.  Where women have long suffered under oppression, but where even there, the lives of women and their offspring have value enough to save, but no one to save them.

Until now.

Women’s rights will be the first casualty of surrender in Afghanistan

So said the headline of the Vancouver Sun this weekend.  ”Women’s rights will be the first casualty of surrender in Afghanistan.”  The article discusses Canada’s role in Afghanistan and makes the argument that those involved in the international conflict need to look beyond the desire to find the quickest exit strategy and instead take a stand for human rights.   This article was written from the Canadian perspective, but you could easily substitute the United States, Sweden, Germany, or England, among the many involved in Afghanistan.

“Arguments surface today when we raise our voices about violence against women in other countries. We are told that violations of women’s rights are part of someone else’s culture, and that we have no business interfering. We should just mind our own affairs.

In fact, it is those of us inclined to believe that human rights are a Western invention who are most vulnerable to this argument. If the right to food and dignity is as cultural as casual Fridays at the office, it may indeed seem offensive to criticize others for alternative practices. But this is like suggesting that the need to eat is a peculiarly Canadian characteristic. The right to equal treatment, education, and freedom from violence are not specific to one culture. They are universal entitlements that are valued as ardently among Afghan women as our own.”

The words sent a chill through my spine.  This is why I founded Mountain2Mountain.  This is why I believe we can all be catalysts for change.  Its why I believe that the women and girls of Afghanistan are the solutions, not the just the victims.

We CAN be the change we wish to see in the world.  We can insist upon human rights and gender equity for all, regardless of culture or geographic boundary.  Not only CAN we.  We MUST.

photo by Di Zinno

GOAL0 – Partner in Power

You know that feeling between close friends of being truly understood, supported, and valued?  Hard to find, and when you do, you realize how much it matters.

Even harder to find in a business partner or sponsor.  Yet, Mountain2Mountain has just that in our partner, GOAL0.  If you haven’t heard of them, you should.  They launched this year and are set to be THE source in power source.  “GOAL0 delivers dependable access to renewable electric power where there is none.”  In short, need power at base camp?  Need to keep phones, computers, and cameras charged in war zones?  Need to light a medical clinic in a remote Afghan village?  Done and done.  Oh, and you need to carry it in on your back, bike, or horse?  Piece of cake.

In short, GOAL0 solved some of our potential security concerns when we are working off the grid in remote areas of Afghanistan.  By providing us power and light in areas where there is no access to electricity.  They also are providing solutions to light sourcing off the grid for our midwife program.

Several months ago, they connected with us, and made me a member of their adventure team, giving M2M an avenue for exposure through their website, blog, packaging, and media outreach.  They provided me with equipment to take over to deal with the above power source issues.

What more could you ask for in a partner and sponsor?

And that’s the difference.  GOAL0 was founded by Robert Workman whose own non profit, Tiefe, works in the Congo and was the inspiration and testing ground for portable, renewable, power source equipment.  They dream of day with 0 illiteracy, 0 poverty, and 0 hunger.   We couldn’t agree more.

Thus, a partnership with soul, with on the ground knowledge similar to what we face in Afghanistan, and with the commitment to make use their ‘power’ for good, was born.  We are truly honored to be working with GOAL0 and look forward to a bright future, lit by the light of education and the help of the Sherpa Adventure Kit!

Crowdrise – social networking for philanthropy

The last thing I need is a another social networking site to join.  I manage the M2M Facebook page, Twitter, blog, and website in addition to my own personal posts, tweets, blogs, and a profile on LinkedIn.  But Crowdrise is different, worth it, and totally harnesses the power for good, the energy of social networking, with a healthy dose of lowball humor thanks to founders Wil Ferrell, Ed Norton, and a whole slew of celebrities.

Their tagline captures the spirit:  If you don’t give back, no one will like you.

In their own words, “Crowdrise is about volunteering, raising money for Charity and having the most fun in the world while doing it. Crowdrise is way more fun than anything else aside from being all nervous about trying to kiss a girl for the first time and her not saying something like ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.'”

So I sat down with Megan and Corinne, two of our Development Board members to figure out what its all about.  I paid them each $20 to create profiles and post donations so we could see how it worked.

You can support a charity itself (hopefully us!) or a specific project that a charity is raising money for.  You can become a team member, recruit others, and the best part?  The unique aspect of earning points for each donation you make.  Points earn you cool prizes from Crowdrise’s sponsors, like Patagonia messenger bags, ipads, and more.

This won’t replace traditional donations through our website directly or snail mail checks in the mail from the old school contingent that still don’t trust the internet.  But if you are active on Facebook and Twitter, donating through Crowdrise gives your donation a voice – by showing your friends and family you care about a specific project, and giving you the ability to recruit others, share the link on your social networking sites, and tracking how close we are to our goal.  Something not possible through a traditional website.

So our first project page is dedicated to our deaf school in Kabul.  We got land donated from President Karzai, and the primary school construction donated by Innovida, a green technology construction company.  Fabulous news!  The more fabulous news?  They are ready to build NOW and can complete the school in about a month.  But we need to build the security wall and the secondary school so that the entire student population can move into the school at the same time.

So – visit our project page, to see the project, and donate whatever you can.  The beauty of a ‘vocal’ donation?  $20 goes a long way if you can find another 10 people to give $20!  So you need to share the project page on your FB and Twitter about it!   The potential is that its viral… think the Obama campaign!  Small donations by millions of people – we can all be part of the change we wish to see in the world.  Even if we think we can’t afford it!

Help us build this school!  Visit the link, donate, share, and make yourself and M2M heard!  This way – even the deaf children in Afghanistan will hear you!

A Bold New Look

Today, Mountain2Mountain unveiled their bold new look.  Our logo represents our bold approach, our ethos of thinking outside of the box, and the determination to look at things in a different way to find solutions.  It sparked the discussion of ‘who are we’ and ‘what is our longterm vision’ that allowed us to create a statement of beliefs that in turn, became the backbone of our beautiful new website.

Our ‘DARE’ statements came out of the desire to challenge a different way of thinking. To challenge people to think big, to see the potential for change, and to BE THE CHANGE.  Help us help others help themselves.  DARE to think big.  DARE to believe change is possible.  DARE to take action.

Images from Western and Afghan photographers take center stage in the bold new look, allowing donors to ‘see’ who their money is going to help, and why.  A series of stories that relate back to our project areas help answer the why.  Stories like that of a grandmother and her newest grandchild that she helped to deliver in a rural mountain village that relate back to the need for rural midwife training in a country where a woman dies every 30 minutes in childbirth, the highest rate in the world.

In the end, the entire exercise of rebranding, both tightened our focus, and widened our vision.  Daring all of us within M2M to keep driving forward, believing that others will hear our call, get involved, and be part of the solution.

Please visit our new look at www.mountain2mountain.org and see how to get involved.  We dare you!!

Land for the Deaf in Kabul

Two years after Mountain 2 Mountain first dedicated itself to working with the deaf populations in Afghanistan, a breakthrough.  Land, glorious land.  Not as easy to come by or inexpensive as you may think in a war torn region like Afghanistan.  In fact its quite expensive, hard to find and even harder to get firm commitments even if you have the cold hard cash to purchase it outright.  Harder still when you are looking for a land donation on which to build a school.   Land is notoriously changing hands, it becomes a game of he who builds first, wins.  There are many stories of land being donated in a village for school, yet in the time it takes to run things past a Board of Directors and in our case, raise the money, someone else may show up with cash in hand and the land is given to them instead.

Its not surprising given the history of broken promises that the Afghans have endured during thirty-five plus years of occupation and conflict.  Reconstruction and education is key to the future of this country, and while M2M is not a building-centric organization, in some cases construction is needed.  In the case of the deaf population a sustainable and permanent structure that could house not only a school but a teacher training program for the future meant that the search must first start for land.

Several avenues were pursued, until finally, last month a second visit with President Karzai yield a solid confirmation of a large parcel of land we visited last fall.   Originally we were told we could have it for the reduced price of $60,000.  Too steep for a small organization such as ourselves.  We held fast, and this March had another meeting and secured the land for the bargain basement price of $0.

Two weeks ago an opening ceremony was held on the parcel of land to celebrate and to officially transfer over the deeds to ANAD – the Afghan National Association of the Deaf.  Government officials attended and cut the ribbon, and engineers marked out the land boundaries and marked with chalk.

Last week a small trench was dug over the chalk to ensure the boundaries didn’t get washed away from rain and wind so that we can make preparations for our next steps.   The immediate step is to raise $10,000 to build a perimeter wall on the boundaries.  This is integral for any institution in Afghanistan for safety and to protect the land demarcation.  The wall and requisite security door ensures safety for the upcoming construction of the school and more importantly for the future safety of the teachers and students.

While the wall is being constructed this summer we’ll be moving forward with design plans and raising the big chunk needed for the school construction.   An estimated $200,000 is needed to build the school and now that we have the land, we are hoping to raise that in a few short months so that construction can start before winter hardens the ground.  No easy task.

Our excitement and commitment  is with ANAD and the deaf children the future school will support!

To read more about the realities facing the deaf in Afghanistan check out our previous blogs:  Silence in Afghanistan and Hearing Literacy.

Education for Kabul’s Streetchildren

No group of children are more at risk in Afghanistan than the streetchildren.  These kids work the streets selling gum, maps, and a smokey good luck in a swinging incense burner.  Some wash cars, clean shoes, and run errands for pennies for owners of market stalls.  The enterprising ones, like the bold as brass kids that run Chicken Street in Kabul, stride up and offer their services in a variety of languages.  Don’t want gum or a map?  They’ll shine your shoes.  Looking to buy a scarf?  They’ll escort you there and stand guard outside.  Checking your  Going into the kebab shop?  They watch your motorcycle and keep the other kids from messing with it.

They’re sweet, spunky, and frankly sometimes overbearing and annoying when they swarm your car, incessantly knocking and begging.

These kids are the ones at the greatest risk in any city.  In Afghanistan, the risk is heartbreaking.   Mountain 2 Mountain is working with two centers for streetchildren run by an Afghan organization that we already work with in the women’s prisons.

One of the centers is hidden behind a non descript doorway in between two repair shops.  A dark, mud hallway emerges a dirt courtyard and a ancient small building that houses 2 classrooms and two offices.  The center  runs classes for children aged 7-18 from grades 1-5.   We provide a doctor on site two days a week that can provide free basic healthcare, not just for the children, but for their families as well.  In theory, it sounds like any primary school in Kabul.

Until you hear the stories.

These kids not only work the streets, but often live on them, hiding at night with others to keep warm, safe, and share food together. Those that have families are often malnourished as well, their only meal comes from the simple one served at school.  They are often abused, victims of violence, and often carry small weapons themselves for defense.  Some walk up to an hour through the dangerous Kabul streets to and from school each day.   One young girl talks to us about avoiding kidnappers more than once.  Another is in a wheelchair, her spine broken when the ceiling in her kitchen collapsed during an earthquake.  Her brother pushes her to school and back each day.  Amazingly her spine was broke, but not her spirit.  She smiled widely, and even broke into song for us when a classmate started playing the tablas (small drums).

The Afghan organization we partner with works with the families to ensure they understand why they should encourage their children to go to school, and conducts the school in shifts to accommodate the necessity of these children working the street for their survival.  In the office upstairs is a board that has all the confiscated weapons hung as testament to the change they are making in these 265 children’s lives.

This visit we visited one of the streetchildren centers on their graduation day, balloons were hung, children were singing, and it was hard to believe these are the same children that don’t have enough to eat or a place to sleep at night.  Each year, the grade five children have the opportunity to take a test that confirms their education level is the same as fifth graders in the standard government run schools.   35 children graduated this year and the center gives them a new pair of shoes, a school uniform, and some food at the ceremony.  We have agreed to sponsor their stationary and uniforms through their government schooling to ensure that they don’t drop out due to the lack of supplies which is often the case.

A pretty sad reason to drop out of school.  And a fixable one.

The children who graduated were all smiles and it was obvious they took great pride in their accomplishment.  I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to hand out some of the diplomas, squeezing their small hands with encouragement.

Our desire is to not just support these two centers but to work with them longterm to extend the program to year seven, re-establish a vocational apprenticeship program with local businesses, and to update to newer facilities in the future.   For now, we just need to support these two centers, keep them running and sustainable so that these kids have a future off the streets.

Kabul Youth Movement

Afghanistan is known mostly for its stereotypes:  war, terrorism, burqas, Taliban, oppression, opium, and poverty.

That’s not to say these stereotypes don’t hold water.  All of the above are prevalent and part of the daily life in most Afghans today.  The media shows us these images over and over and reinforce our perception that Afghanistan will never change.  It has only gotten worse in the thirty five years of conflict, and what hope is there to expect anything to change?   The mindset solidifies and the mainstream turns it back on what is perceived as a lost cause.

When we allow our stereotypes and narrowminded opinions to dictate how we perceive a region like Afghanistan, no real changes can ever occur.  Afghanistan is not a country that has always lived in the dark ages.  It was plunged into it by a series of conflicts and war that devastated families, infrastructure, and economy.  Studies show that terrorism blossoms out of extreme poverty and its understandable to see how the cycle takes root.  Terrorism and oppression feed off of poverty.  Lack of education breeds ignorance.  Eventually its hard to remember that things were ever different.

Yet it was.

Afghanistan used to have tourists, and travelers explore its remote corners in the sixties and early seventies. The Hippie Trail went right through it.  Irish traveler, Dervla Murphy rode her bike through Afghanistan in the sixties, completely solo and unsupported. Many journeyed from the West to travel cheaply through Herat, Kabul, Bamiyan, and Mazar i Sharif, home to incredible architecture, culture, and the experienced the best of Muslim hospitality.  Thirty five years later, the Russians, the Taliban, and the ongoing offensive by international forces have made the country off limits to most except for military and aid workers.

It is interesting to note that in many cases, the elders are actually more liberally minded towards women’s rights and development than the youth.  The elders remember what life was like prior to the Russians and the Taliban.  In contrast, many of today’s youth have known nothing but war, poverty, and oppression.  They have grown up in a country where women are inferior, where boys get an education, but girls stay at home.  Where girls were publicly stoned to death for walking alone, for holding hands with a boy, or for any number of so-called honor crimes.

Today, this is a country full of Westerners working outside of the military and larger NGO’s, working, exploring, and having adventures. They have tapped into the youth that want more than their country currently offers.  This is a country where Skateistan launched a skateboarding initiative to introduce the sport to the youth. Where two hundred girls now play soccer, in public, at the Kabul Stadium where just a decade ago they would have been stoned to death in the same location for daring to play. Where a French aid worker, is trying to launch a yak train adventure business to take travelers into the remotest of remote, the Wakkan. Where an Aussie photojournalist and his two friends started the first motorcycle club. Where the most popular television show is Afghan Star, an Afghan “American Idol” style reality show.  Where two Afghan mountaineers made a first ascent on Afghanistan’s highest peak. Where Afghanistan’s first Afghan rock band, Kabul Dreams is breaking away from traditional music.  All of these made possible by the support of individuals and organizations that realize that there is more to aid development that only schools and infrastructure.

This is a real country, with real people, with a real youth movement. Just because there is daily violence and a ongoing war doesn’t mean that real life doesn’t continue, that normalcy should be encouraged, and that we can’t interact with Afghans in ways that don’t involve guns.  In fact, considering the 35 + years of conflict, its all the more reason to galvanize the youth out of their apathy and support those youth movements that are burgeoning.