Alliance for Youth Movements Announces London Summit

Alliance for Youth Movements Announces London Summit

Global Technology and Social Movement Leadership to Convene in London

Jason Liebman, CEO of Howcast and Founder of the Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM) and David Nassar, Executive Director of AYM announced this evening at the New York Tech Meetup that AYM will meet in London on March 9- 11. The event will convene the leadership of technology giants like Google with social change leadership of people like Oscar Morales, who mobilized more than 12 million people around the world to protest the FARC using Facebook.

The event will be supported by Google, AT&T, YouTube, MeetUp, Mobile Accord, Howcast, Access 360 Media, the Legatum Institute, and the Salesforce Foundation, among others. The Summit will explore the use of technology by youth movements to diminish violence. Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of the WPP Group, will keynote the event on the morning of March 10.

AYM, the organization hosting the Summit, is a coalition of hundreds of changemakers using social media tools to share ideas and build momentum in order to reshape civil society. The organization has hosted two successful summits in New York and Mexico City, the most recent of which was endorsed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Young people around the world are poised to lead this kind of innovative citizen empowerment,” stated Clinton, “which is why the United States is supporting [this] summit…Whether it’s domestic violence or dating violence or lawlessness in the streets of your community, we must all take a stand against violence. And this is a new tool that will help."

The 2010 Summit announcement comes on the heels of Secretary Clinton’s major policy address on Internet freedom last Thursday, which underscored the importance of AYM’s mission to synchronize technological progress with human rights and freedom.

During her address, Secretary Clinton cited AYM members like Oscar Morales as examples of young leaders who are redefining technology as a tool to expose injustice and mobilize peaceful political activism. “In Colombia,” said Clinton, “an unemployed engineer brought together more than 12 million people in 190 cities around the world to demonstrate against the FARC terrorist movement. The protests were the largest antiterrorist demonstrations in history.”

Morales, the “unemployed engineer” and founder of Colombia-based group One Million Voices Against FARC, catalyzed one of the world’s largest campaigns against a terrorist organization using Facebook. He attended AYM’s 2008 Summit and will serve as a returning delegate this March, describing it as “a truly important and exciting event that brings together important leaders and social activists to explore how we can better promote real social change by using simple, easy-to-access technology.”

AYM’s Executive Director David Nassar, who participated in the panel discussion following Secretary Clinton’s speech, echoes Morales’s enthusiasm. “As executive director, I encounter exciting young leaders every day who are using technology to do amazing things to improve our world. Some of them are organizing rallies to strengthen democracy. Some of them are raising a populist voice against wars. Some of them are raising awareness about adolescent depression, the leading cause of suicide among young people. All of them are inspiring. This summit will connect them with each other so that they can better connect with millions of young people to help create the world they want to live in.”

To learn more about how to get involved in the 2010 Alliance for Youth Movements Summit in London, visit www.movements.org

About the Alliance for Youth Movements Summit

Alliance for Youth Movements is non-profit 501(c)(3) organization comprised of individuals from the private sector, NGO community and of some of the most successful digital movements around the world. The Alliance for Youth Movements serves as a third-party vehicle that positively empowers leaders to affect nonviolent change in the world by creating and promoting the use of 21st century tools to safeguard human rights, promote good governance and foster unprecedented civic empowerment. It brings together selected leaders of organizations with influential leaders in technology, media, private and public sectors. The organization was formed during a December 2008 summit that brought together leading experts in social media with the most pioneering grassroots movements for the first time in history. For more information, visit www.movements.org.

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