YouthxYouth: Education Activists
How YouthxYouth Began
Zineb and Valentina
YouthxYouth Cofounders
YouthxYouth began in June 2020, when every education system in the world was making unprecedented changes as the most marginalized youth continued to fall further into crisis. Yet these national and global conversations were repeating the same critical error as the decades of conversations that came before it. They were excluding the core of their systems, the primary constituents that they were seeking to engage and serve: young people.
So our co-founders invited young people around the world to see this crisis as an opportunity to radically reimagine learning for themselves and their communities. In January of 2021, we hosted our first online Learning Festival, which gathered nearly 1000 young people and adult allies from over 80 countries around a central question: What if young people designed the future of education?
Since then, we have grown into a global youth-led, adult-supported learning community dedicated to transforming education for collective liberation. Through conscious activism, radical reimagination and intergenerational collaboration, we seek to co-create a world where learning serves everyone—us, our communities, and the planet.
Meet our community
Our global community of youth activists and adult allies are dedicated to accelerating the process of young people influencing, designing, and transforming their learning experiences and education systems.
Since our founding, we have engaged over 2000 youth activists from 80 countries across 6 continents. Through our programs, we build the capacity and confidence of youth to reclaim their learning and create life-affirming futures within their communities. We are led by and serve youth who are between the ages of 15 to 26—75% of whom live in the Global South, and about 50% live in Africa.
Our Weavership fellowship program has equipped nearly 100 young leaders in the art of weaving local and global communities in service of education transformation. Alongside experienced weavers from the Weaving Lab and youth-serving organizations around the globe, they learn and practice how to interconnect people, places and projects to create thriving learning ecosystems.
Our Global Action Circles accelerate intergenerational collaboration and youth-led projects across critical themes in education, including: youth mental health, climate & nature education, peace education, gender equity and more. Since launching in 2021, these Circles have led to the creation and evolution of almost 200 youth-led and intergenerational projects.
We have 9 Glocal Hubs across Africa, where our youth weavers are mobilizing local youth, community organizations, institutions and government to collectively address local challenges with the support of global knowledge, resources and networks. These locally-rooted, globally-supported homes for youth-led transformation of education are currently growing across six countries: Nigeria (Lagos, Ogun), South Africa (Cape Town), Uganda (Kampala, Nakivale, and Namutumba), Tanzania (Dar es Salaam), Cameroon (Yaounde), and Kenya (Mbita).
Our partners are an integral part of our community, learning and serving alongside us to co-create pathways for intergenerational collaboration and global solidarity. Through our annual Learning Festival and programs throughout the year, we work with a diverse ecosystem of over 60 youth-serving organizations:
AIME Mentoring
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ALULIA
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Academy for a Love of Learning
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Alianza Global de Jóvenes Políticos - Colombia
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Ashoka
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Better World Cameroon
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Big Change
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CADS Malaysia
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Center for Systems Awareness
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ChangemakerXChange
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Children of the Earth
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Crazy Beautiful World
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Curriculum for Life
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Decolonize Together
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Dream a Dream
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Ecoversities
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Edge Future Learning
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Fito Network
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GCED-Peruvian-Lab
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Global ESD
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Grow Still
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Gwira Communications Foundation
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History Co:Lab
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Huddlecraft
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Ignite Philanthrophy
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Ikigai Data
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Indigeous and Modern
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Inspire Citizens
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International Peace Initiatives
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Kayode Alabi Leadership and Career Initiative
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Latin American Leadership Academy
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Learn Serve
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Learning Planet Alliance
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Mentor Dida
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Narrative 4
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PHINMA Education
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Peace First
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Peace Jam
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Peace in Practice
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Play Verto
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Progressive Education
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Project Everyone
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Prosocial Schools
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Resilience Project
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Restless Development
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Salzburg Global Seminar
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Sands School
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Shift Foundation
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Slow Work Garden
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Social Value International
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Start.Empowerment
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States of Mind
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Students Shoulder to Shoulder
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Sustainable Impact Foundation
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Tamkeen Community Foundation
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Teach for All
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Teach for Nigeria
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The Alternative UK
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The Amygdala
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The Possibilists
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The Soil Project
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The Weaving Lab
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Unbounded Associates
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Universidad del Medio Ambiente
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University for the Earth
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VillageCo
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Viridus: Social Impact Solutions
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Washington Baltimore Community Psychoanalysis
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Wom-en
LinkMeet our core team
YouthxYouth is woven by a global Core Team, consisting of 6 youth activists (age 17-25), primarily from the Global South.
Meet our Wisdom Council
The YxY Wisdom Council is made up of 12 adult allies, including our co-founders Zineb Mouhyi and Valentina Raman. This Council collaborates with our Core Team to make strategic decisions, develop internal capacity, and expand our networks in support of YxY's work.
Dominic Regester
Dr. Connie K. Chung
Dr. Karambu Ringera
Franco Mosso
Hammed Kayode Alabi
Irmin Durand
Luis Camargo
Pavel Luksha
Sumitra Pasupathy
Valentina Raman
Vishal Talreja
Zineb Mouhyi
Why Is This Work Important?
We connect the many injustices and crises we face today to one system that continuously seems to fail us: the dominant industrial education system. Born out of colonial ways of knowing and seeing the world, these factory-like ways of learning foster a monocultural society. The narrative that has and continues to be promoted through our industrial education system is one in which we are separate from ourselves, each other, our more-than-human family and the planet.
This has resulted in many intersecting struggles: in how we relate to our human family (institutionalized injustice), in how we relate to Earth and our relatives who aren’t human (the climate crisis) and in our mental and spiritual wellbeing (seen prominently in young people as a crisis in mental health), and so on. We see these as intersecting, unified by the Story of Separation, and recognize the education system to be a key place of opportunity and transformation.
Our Solution And Our Approach
Our solution is community. By building communities of care, online and in-person, young people start to see that they are not alone in questioning their education systems. They gain the confidence to ask deeper questions, and create innovative and thoughtful projects that they grow locally, while staying connected globally.
We build community through our youth-led programs, which build capacity through a tried and tested pedagogical approach which has 3 steps:
What is: Sensemaking
What if: Radical Reimagination
What now: Personal & Collective Action
This pedagogy is central to all our programs, which are designed and facilitated by our youth hosts and global partners. Our programs provide aspiring and experienced education activists of all ages with the community, resources, and global solidarity they need to grow, thrive, and co-create their visions for a better world.
An Invitation
We invite you to sit with what you’ve read and seen above. If you feel resonance with our community, our approach, and how we view the worlds we live in and the futures we are co-creating, we invite you to enter into community with us. We would love to get to know you and uncover the ways in which our work can best serve one another.
Join our community now. Let's weave the worlds of our deepest longings together.
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