Youth Activists & Adult Allies

Reimagining
Education

Apply for our 2024 Weavership Program!
LearningPlanet Alliance
Learning Planet Festival
The Weaving Lab
The Alternative UK
Alianza Global de Jóvenes Políticos - Colombia
The Soil Project - Thien Quach
Tamkeen Community Foundation
Association Youth Clubs - Tunisia
Mentor Dida
Decolonize Together
Dream A Dream
Viridus: Social Impact Solutions
GCED-Peruvian-Lab
Crazy Beautiful World
Edge Future Learning
Dr. Nina Meyerhof
Curriculum For Life
Center for Systems Awareness
The Amygdala - Charvi Gangwani
ALULIA
Ikigai Data
Kayode Alabi Leadership & Career Initiative (KLCI)
Shift Foundation
States of Mind - Dr. Chris Bagley
Universidad del Medio Ambiente (UMA, University of the Environment)
Teach for Nigeria

Over 400 youth activists from 80+ countries and 9 Glocal Hubs

YouthxYouth (YxY) is a global community of youth activists and adult allies dedicated to the reimagination and transformation of education for collective liberation. Our goal is to accelerate the process of young people influencing, designing, and transforming their learning experiences and education systems.

Activist Programs

Designed and facilitated by our youth hosts and global partners in transformative education, our Activist 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. All our programs are driven by our foundational YxY Process (What Is → What If → What Now).

Learn more about our pedagogy and language in our glossary!

The “Solution” we Provide

Our solution is community. By building communities of care, online and in-person, young people first start to see that they are not alone in questioning their education systems and gain the confidence to ask deeper and deeper questions, which make for innovative and thoughtful projects that get deployed locally, while staying connected globally.
We build community through our youth-led programming and build capacity through a tried and tested pedagogical approach which has 3 steps:

What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?
What is?    What if?   What now?

The YxY Process

What is: Sensemaking & Meaning-Making

Sensemaking is the process by which people make sense of their personal and collective experiences and ascribe meaning to things. Unfortunately, our industrial education systems impede our ability to make sense of the world when they divide human knowledge into separated disciplines that rarely communicate with one another. We need to develop the ability to think more holistically to comprehend the complex systems we are a part of. 

YxY fosters our sensemaking capacities by: 

  • Creating spaces for dialogue and intercultural exchange 
  • Questioning the systems we are a part of to identify the root causes of the social and environmental issues we face, rather than just looking at the symptoms 
  • Developing our systems thinking and acting capabilities

What if: Radical Reimagination

Imagination is the soil that brings dreams to life. It enables us to bring clarity to what we want to change and what is truly possible. Unfortunately, research shows that as we go through school, our ability to imagine decreases steadily. We need to recover the ability to imagine if we are to create the world of our longing. 

YxY fosters our imagination by: 

  • Making visible the variety of learning and education alternatives as a way to show that another way is not just possible, it already in exists in many forms
  • Envisioning new worlds and thriving education systems - imagination becomes a practice 
  • Prefiguring the kind of world we wish to create through the way we show up with one another and the spaces we create 

What now: Personal & Collective Action 

Young people are facing similar challenges globally and are coming of age at a time of global multiple crises (inequality, biodiversity loss, climate change, etc.). Yet, schools rarely if ever teach young people how to take action to create the change they know is needed. Changemaking is a key capacity in a world in transition. 

YxY supports young people in taking action by: 

  • Fostering global youth solidarity
  • Centering peer-learning and self-directed learning 
  • Creating spaces to practice changemaking, share with one another, and support one another

Join The Movement

Connect, learn and grow with a global community of youth education activists and adult allies committed to transforming education, together. Receive emails notifying you of our monthly community calls, local meet-ups, and more!
Stay Connected

Support Our Youth

We are a non-profit, non-governmental organization, registered as a 501(c)3 in the U.S.A. All our funds go directly into organizing, facilitating and supporting our youth education activists. Donate today to sponsor youth-led transformation of education.
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