Social issues like climate change, racism, poverty, gender equality, animal rights, gun violence, and may others are so massive, it can feel intimidating or overwhelming to think that you as one person can even do anything. While you can’t solve it single-handedly today, thankfully there is a lot each of us can do that all adds up.

How to be or get started as an activist is unfortunately not something that is taught in most schools, which is a major reason why YEA Camp exists in the first place.

Over more than a decade, we’ve trained more than 1,000 aspiring activists to make a bigger difference on the social justice causes they care about.

Our curriculum focuses on building knowledge, skills, confidence, and community as campers examine their issue, their identity, and their impact.

We have a simple 5 step approach we teach at camp, and we want to teach it to you here too. While YEA Camp is a camp for teens, these steps work for adults too.

How to Get Started an Activist

1.Choose an issue you’re passionate about making a difference on.

At YEA Camp, we call this your IOI, or your Issue of Importance. You most likely care about a lot of different issues, and they are probably very interconnected, but we encourage you to focus on one to get started. You can always change your mind as time goes on, and you can follow this process in the future for another cause as well.

2. Learn more about your issue.

How serious is this problem? What exactly is happening? Why should people care about this? Get specific. Research frequently asked questions and learn the best responses to them. What are the arguments against, and why doesn’t everyone agree with you already? What actions do you want people to take to help?

The more you know, the more confident and effective you’ll be advocating for your cause, and the more skilled you’ll be at deciding what actions to take next.

3. Find organizations working on your cause.

When just starting out, it can help to connect with experts on your cause who have been working on this issue for a long time — or at least longer than you! This can be anything from a small local community group or a school club all the way to large international nonprofits. Check out our list of favorites here. Review their websites and follow them on social media.

As you get to know the organizations working on your cause, you’ll probably find some groups you love and others you don’t resonate with or that you even disagree with. Seeing examples of organizations with different approaches is a great way for you to decide for yourself where you want to focus your time. Hopefully you’ll meet some great like-minded people and learn a lot along the way, too.

4. Take the actions they recommend, or that make sense to you.

Most organizations will have identified key actions they want people to take to support their work or cause. Look for sections on their website called Take Action, Get Involved, or Action Alerts. What are they promoting on their social media? Some examples might be:

• calling your legislators
• boycotting a company
• signing an online petition
• sharing information on social media
• attending a protest
• making a donation

Some of these actions may seem intimidating if you’ve never done them before, but you have to start somewhere! Each action you take will make it easier for you to take that same action again or to do something else next time! Even better, see if you can get a friend to join you! You’ll be more likely to follow through and have fun too. Don’t worry about doing it “perfectly,” and if you start wondering about how other people might perceive you, try focusing on cultivating a strong opinion of yourself and taking actions that you’re proud of.

5. Keep going! 

This might not seem like much, but it might be the hardest step. Changing the world can take a while, so please don’t give up because you don’t see huge changes right away.

One phone call to your elected officials is a great start! Unfortunately, that one call is not going to solve the massive issue you’re working towards all by itself. Thankfully, all of our collective actions add up over time. Critically important is to keep going and not give up before we see the fruits of our labor! Appreciate yourself for taking action and make sure to celebrate small victories. You are awesome for caring so much!

The Beginner’s Guide to Changing the World

We hope this helps you get started as an activist on a cause you care about!

Want to learn way more about how to get started or get serious about making a difference?

Check out our free ebook, The Beginner’s Guide to Changing the World for many more resources to help you along your changemaking path.

Want even more than an ebook? Join us this summer!

YEA Camp has in-person and virtual sessions for youth ages 10-17. If you’re a little (or way) too old to be a camper, we’re also hiring for summer!

Thanks for all you do to make the world a better place! Please let us know how it goes!

The post How to Get Started as an Activist — Follow these 5 Steps appeared first on YEA Camp.

In November, YEA Camp launched the first-ever “Volunteer-a-thon” designed to encourage people to get more involved in community service and activism, and to do it publicly with greater accountability. The best part? The Volunteer-a-thon is a fundraiser, with all money raised going to the YEA Camp Scholarship Fund. For many campers who participated, it was an opportunity to pay forward their own experience to make it possible for someone else to attend in the future.

Each year, we receive dozens of financial aid requests from passionate activists who want to experience YEA Camp but do not have the monetary means to do so. In 2019, YEA Camp granted financial aid to 51 of our 100 participants and full scholarships to 17 of those participants. Overall, you helped us fund over $66,400 worth of financial aid. 

None of that would be possible without the generous support of our YEA Camp community. That is what made the Volunteer-a-Thon so special for us. By participating, our campers were paying forward their experiences to the next summer of activists. 

What was the Volunteer-a-Thon anyway?

Instead of trying to raise money by training for a marathon or selling cookies, members of our camp community created a donor page asking for they’d ask their loved ones to sponsor to their activism. 

Mia Jay-Pachirat is a two-time youth camper from New York City whose Issue of Importance (IOI) is climate change. For the Volunteer-a-Thon, she created an art zine focused on NYC-specific solutions to climate change. 

When asked about her experience with the Volunteer-a-Thon, Mia said, “It really pushed me to keep my action plan and other little activism acts to the front of my mind!” You can read more about Mia’s experience here. 

B.T. Salle Widelock attended YEA Camp in 2019 and pledged to volunteer 30 hours for local organizations in his community. “I had an amazing experience at camp. That great experience can only be made possible with others’ help.” We are so honored that 7 members of B.T.’s family donated a total of $850 to support YEA Camp and B.T. — and thanks to two generous donors who offered matching gifts, those funds mean $2550 for our scholarship fund!

For some, the Volunteer-a-thon was all in the family. Camper Marley Goldman and her mom Gail are working to end the use of rodenticide in Washington state. Marley says, “I want other young aspiring activists to get the same kind of training and support that I did so that they can pursue whatever cause is important to them.”

We already shared with you about our amazing former campers Dima Bischoff-Hashem, Audrey Watson, and Danielle Holtz also participated in the Volunteer-a-Thon. You can read their reflections on camp and their projects here. 

And YEA Camp director Nora Kramer participated in the Volunteer-a-thon, too! Nora’s project was to reach out to at least 100 former campers from over the years to see if she could support them in her activism. Nora reported back that this was a huge success! “It was so inspiring how many of our campers shared their positive experiences of YEA Camp and even sharing that their memories from YEA Camp were some of the happiest memories of their childhood! Several donated to our Volunteer-a-Thon, several offered to volunteer and are now working on cool projects for us, and one camper even wrote this blog post reflecting on her experience at YEA Camp, looking back 5 years later! It was an honor and pleasure to be back in touch with such phenomenal people!”

You can see — and you can still support! — even more amazing changemakers who created fundraising pages here. We are so grateful to everyone who participated!

The Final Results

We were so excited to pilot the Volunteer-a-thon this year and so grateful to the fourteen members of our community who created pages and helped us raise almost $6,000! 

Thank you to everyone who dedicated their time, energy, and dollars into this exciting new program. We could not have done it without you. 

It’s not too late to make a final donation to our Volunteer-a-Thon to help YEA Camp make a bigger difference for even more people!

Time to register for summer 2020!

Are you interested in taking your activism to the next level? We’ve announced the dates for this summer and would love to have you there. Do you know someone who would be great for camp? Nominate them here!

• Youth Camp: in Ventura, California (July 5 – 12) and Charlton, Massachusetts (August 1 – 8)
• Adult Camp: in Lanoka Habor, New Jersey (July 18 – 24)

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