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The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Global Youth Leaders Gather in Mexico City

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, October 19 2009

The Alliance of Youth Movements summit, the second of which took place in Mexico City last week, is in some ways a strange beast. (The first AYM took place at Columbia University in New York City last winter.) The annual get together and idea-sharing session is organized by a team of independent leaders, backed by a video startup called HowCast, and in many ways driven by the United States State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - a fluid public-private partnership that reflects the new world order where the lines are increasingly blurred between what's official statecraft and what those of us in the streets and on the Internet are doing to shape the world around us. It's at the Alliance of Youth Movements, for example, where Oscar Morales, who helped lead the No Mas FARC movement in Colombia, sat in a J.W. Marriot conference room next to Natalia Morar, who spearheaded the so-called Twitter Revolution in Moldova, and down the table were Jack Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter, and Alec Ross, Secretary Clinton's advisor on innovation.

I'll have more on what went down at the Alliance of Youth Movements later today and this week. Promise. But in the meantime, it's well worthwhile to dip into the dozens of youth organizations who sent delegates to Mexico City from all over the world, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan to Burma to Venezuela to Northern Ireland to Malaysia. Click on a few and see what they're up to. There's plenty to them from each of them, as they work on the front lines of tech-empowered social engagement. All are doing work that makes rich and valuable fodder as we all think about how we might take an innovative approach to politics and social organizing that this new age calls for:

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