Peace First Challenge

As a teenager, I co-founded Peace First in 1992 along with other students at Harvard University. During my time at Peace First, we have grown from a localized school-based violence prevention program to be a global tech NGO that empowers young people in nearly 150 countries with digital tools, mentors, funding, and worldwide connections to create and lead social innovations addressing injustice. I have received numerous awards and honors, including, for example, the National Point of Light Award, the Youth Service America’s Fund for Social Entrepreneurs, the Echoing Green Fellowship for Public Service, the Ashoka Fellowship for leading social entrepreneurs, and Pop!Tech’s Social Innovation Fellowship. I received my A.B. from Harvard University, my Ed.M. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and my M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School.

1. The Problem we are solving

Young people are consistently left out of critical roles in solving the world’s problems. 

1. The Project we propose

Our model, the Peace First Challenge, was developed by young people for young people and in partnership with the Harvard School of Education, are like digital science fairs for youth-led social innovation on a global scale. We’re providing young people with digital tools, funding, mentors, and global connections to take social action on issues that are important to them.

1. How we’re elevating humanity

Our project is radically expanding who gets to participate in social innovation spaces (i.e. youth), surfacing and scaling powerful youth-led solutions, and changing global perceptions of the critical role young people play in creating solutions to social injustice.

There are 1.7 billion young people (ages 13-25) on the planet and many experience injustice. Yet, they are the only group of humans viewed solely as potential. They are told that someday they can have an impact. This is dangerous because for young people experiencing injustice, they may not have until “someday” to act.

Working with Deloitte to understand social movements over the past 120 years – from the workers’ rights movements to the global Black Lives Matter protests to the Arab Spring – Peace First found they had one common element: each was powered by youth. Young people have been and still are the world’s most powerful drivers of social change.

Unfortunately, for most youth, because of geography or demographics, they lack access to the social, financial, and imagination capital to be changemakers. Peace First is bridging this gap by growing a powerful model for investment in youth-led ideas for improving the world. 

Unlike traditional models which invest money around youth, we invest in youth by putting tools and funds directly in their hands to build and run projects. We are issue-agnostic but a young person’s social change journey must be grounded in compassion, courage and collaboration.

Here’s that the journey looks like:

• Through a trusted source - a friend, mentor, school - a youth joins our digital platform to learn more.

• If inspired, a young person creates a project to address an injustice.

• After creating a project, a young person receives feedback from a “near-peer” located in their region of the globe. Materials are available in multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.

• The young person then experiences a guided process to bring their project to life, creating a theory of change, project plan, and project budget.

• After completing a budget, they receive a mini-grant of $250 to launch, along with mentorship and access to a global community of changemakers.

Projects that show promise for scale are selected for our 9-month accelerator with grants up to $2,500 and customized coaching. The Peace First Prize, a competitive award with $25,000 in funding and $75,000 in wraparound services, is awarded annually.

There is an unparalleled opportunity to unleash the moral imagination of GENERATION Z (born after 1994) – and harness their values of compassion and courage to make social change. Demographers have identified three unique features of GEN-Z. First, they seek unmediated experiences and are adept researchers at finding the information they want. Old notions of difference mean little to them given shifting gender roles and the increase of youth who identify as multi-racial. Second, they build and maintain communities digitally. Generation Z communicates visually, knows the ins and outs of the internet, and embraces the DIY culture and crowdsourcing. Third, this generation wants to make a difference in the world. Members of Generation Z are hungry for what Peace First offers in terms of digital tools, mentorship, funding, and global connections.

We understand the needs of Gen-Z because our programs are designed by them and are also implemented by Fellows-in-Residence, social justice leaders under the age of 25 and located in every region of the globe.

Our programs are grounded in learning and testing. Our robust evaluation system measures program effectiveness at every stage of a young person’s social action journey through individual, community, and narrative and culture change.

Peace First’s work actually lives at the nexus of all three dimensions and that is what makes our work so powerful for young people left behind. We provide opportunities for young people - especially youth on the margins - to make change. In doing so, we are building a much bigger tent, using stories of youth-led social action to inspire and drive impact from others, while also changing young people’s individual beliefs and behaviors as they ground themselves in courage, compassion, and collaboration to make a better world.

Because of my own experience with violence, I found my redemption in youth organizing. Thanks to a scholarship, I attended Harvard where I became involved with the International Peace Games Festival, created by Francelia Butler. With a group of other young visionaries, we created curriculum for the Festival in response to sky-rocking youth violence sweeping Boston and other communities around the country in the early 1990s.

We had a belief that because violence was learned, peace could also be learned. Integrating a peace-focused curriculum into schools seemed like the most logical way to have an impact. In 1992, Peace Games as a 501(c)3 organization was launched.  

What started as a three-week curriculum school-based course focused on conflict resolution and civic engagement, has grown to create the Peace First Prize—imagined as a “Nobel Peace Prize” for young people—to a digital platform supporting young activists and social innovators across nearly 150 countries. Peace First pivoted its model to be adaptive in meeting young people in the digital and in-person spaces, and to be authentically youth-centered - from program design and delivery to youth serving on our Board - we have put youth and their ideas at the forefront.

As a young person living in Boston in the 1990’s I experienced violence in my life, community and country. I was angry and turned my attention to youth organizing. I got my first “yes” when I was offered a scholarship to Harvard. In collaborating with other youth, we believed that violence was a learned behavior and wanted to teach peace as an alternative and, in 1992 we launched Peace First (then Peace Games).  I soon came to realize that very few people were to take me seriously as an 18-year-old leader of a nonprofit organization because I was “just a kid.” No funders would invest in a new model of social change that placed young people firmly in the driver’s seat. Even with strong impact data, hunger from young people, and opportunities for growth, it was nearly impossible to find funding and support. 

This was demoralizing and I wanted to change adults’ perceptions that young people are capable of changing their own circumstances and can make their communities better.

I kept at it and got my second “yes” from Echoing Green when the organization provided a founding gift that catalyzed other funders and partners to join the movement. 

Bending the arc of justice is long and tiring work. Over the past 28 years, I have been a visionary in youth-led justice work. Peace First has seen many versions from a school-based national program to a nimble tech start-up. I’m not afraid to take risks and place big bets behind young people.

It is also important to highlight my roles in addition to being CEO of Peace First that have contributed to the broader social innovation community, empowering me to lead with strength, compassion, and love for people to continue their own path for equity and justice. 

As an Echoing Green Fellow, I founded a chaplaincy program after recognizing a gap in the support that social entrepreneurs receive as they go on the lonely and difficult journey of leading organizations that are attempting to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. I knew that there was something about the intersection of chaplaincy and social change work that would prove to be an exciting and much needed new offering to support and strengthen social entrepreneurs. Through my work, I support a community of leaders through an innovative program-bearing witness to the struggle they experience and offering wisdom along the way. 

I also serve as a lifelong Ashoka Fellow and was elected for my radically different approach to social change efforts that put young people at the center. My recently published book, “Putting Peace First: 7 Commitments to Changing the World” exhibits youth leaders and impact in the youth empowerment space.

In the spring of 2019, we needed to make an organizational pivot. After two years of successful prototyping and testing of our digital platform for young social change leaders, we partnered with the International Federation of the Red Cross to globalize our program while revolutionizing the IFRC’s youth engagement work. Unfortunately, due to changes in strategic priorities within the IFRC Secretariat, the partnership was eliminated, leaving us in a financial and directional crisis. We chose to leverage that moment to radically re-imagine Peace First around a core of youth movement leaders, recruiting and empowering the world’s top young social change agents to lead our program delivery. We eliminated 60% of our positions, created a new staffing model in 6 weeks, and brought on a team of leaders that looked like - and in many cases came directly from - the communities we serve. A year later, we’ve increased our rate of youth served by 350% with an essentially flat budget - the advantages of operating as a lean startup rather than as an offshoot of a slow-moving global institution. And our youth-led program delivery model has led to higher levels of engagement and satisfaction for young leaders around the world. 

Good leadership is about helping people locate themselves - to help them become grounded in their work, understand their “superpowers,” and see themselves within a larger narrative of change. While my most visible work - writing, speaking, advocacy - is important to me, I’m most proud of and interested in the more pastoral forms of leadership that I practice. One of the most important parts of my work as a CEO is getting one-on-one time once a quarter with each of our young leaders, who are delivering our programs in the field every day. These conversations are more than a chance to gain insight from what’s happening on the ground: they’re about offering our young leaders a space where they can process all of the exhilaration, doubt, challenge, and confusion of leading grassroots social change at scale, and providing them support as they do the work of discernment - connecting their values, their experiences, and their insights to identify their path forward - which is so critical not just to improving their practice, but in helping them develop their identity as movement leaders and preparing them for long-term leadership in the social change field. 

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Our approach is innovative because:

• We are genuinely youth-led. We lead the field in authentically integrating young people’s voices and ideas, as youth design our programs, serve on our board and on our staff. 

• Our work is highly localized and with a global reach. We have engaged a community of youth leaders from all regions of the globe and a massive network of global partners. Yet our work is hyper-local, helping individual youth teams tackle the most pressing issues in their daily lives.

• We give funding directly to young people. We know financial resources are critical to helping young people — especially young people without access to privilege and capital — to create their projects successfully.

• We are diverse and inclusive. Our programming is accessible to youth who lack access to resources. Oftentimes, the best ideas come from those closest to the problems, and we have a track record of supporting young people who otherwise would not have had opportunities to lead social change work. With a simple, always-on digital interface, accessible in multiple languages, we are also working to ensure all young people have access, regardless of race, gender identity, language skills, ability, etc.

Our Theory of Change is grounded in 28 years of data collected from young people, studies with Deloitte, New Profit, Harvard, and others that define young people as drivers of culture change. (Reports available upon request). However, young people are rarely provided with opportunities to lead change and Peace First is here to fill the access gap. 

Our approach is grounded in “three C’s”:

--Compassion - crossing boundaries to understand others’ perspectives/needs, believing in the inherent worth of others, and acting to include others in solutions

--Courage - taking personal risks to help others, believing that if one’s community is going to get better one must act

--Collaboration - moving others to create lasting change, believing in one’s ability to make a difference, and working with others to solve problems without violence.

Activity Pillars:

--Activation to build a global youth community 

--Journey support to turn ideas into projects/solutions 

--Storytelling of what’s possible

--Youth Leadership offerings 

Measurable Outputs:

--# YP engaged

--# projects supported 

--# stories told 

--# digital mentors trained 

--# accelerator participants 

--# fellows supported 

--# partners engaged 

--$ invested in young people

Outcomes related to:

-- % of young people to notice something is not right and want to fix it, motivate others to partner with them, respect and work to understand people who are different from them, see themselves as leaders 

--% of young people who believe their projects had a positive impact on their community and report that adults let them lead their projects in authentic ways 

--% adults and strategic partners who report increases in their belief in and capacity to support youth-led initiatives 

--% increase in positive perception of young people in the media

Ultimately, the change we strive for includes: 

--Short-term: Young people see themselves as peacemakers and their communities are positively affected by their skills and commitments.

--Medium-term: There is a redistribution of power among adults and youth, and coalition partners invest in young people's ideas and abilities. 

--Long-term: We live in a just and peaceful world where all young people are heard, taken seriously and supported to create a positive impact.

Peace First measures the number of people we serve in the following ways: 

Light touch:

--Users on our digital platform: This is very light touch and not a good measure of impact because of inactive users and many are working on teams created by other users.

--# of projects created on our digital platform: Many young people create projects but then do not complete various stages (i.e. theory of change, project plan, and budget) even after receiving feedback.

High touch:

--# of projects funded by $250 mini-grants is a high touch measure and a key indicator of impact because young people are receiving customized mentorship, funding and digital tools. 

--# of projects accelerated with $2,500 in funding and 9 months of wraparound services is categorized as a high touch service with measurable impact.

--# of projects receiving the Peace First Prize - $25,000 grant and long-term customized coaching - is our highest level of service with measurable impact.

Our current cumulative numbers for high touch measures since launching our digital platform in 2017 include:

--Mini-grants distributed: 793 (500 in FY20)

--Projects accelerated: 45 (25 teams in FY20)

--Peace First Prize: 20 (0 in FY20. We are reintroducing the Prize in FY21.)

Cumulative Projections for Fiscal Year FY21 (July 1-June 30):

--Mini-grants distributed: 1,550 (750 in FY21)

--Projects accelerated: 70 (25 in FY21)

--Peace First Prize: 1 (in FY21)

Cumulative Projections for Five Years:

--Mini-grants distributed: 7,000 

--Projects accelerated: 300

--Peace First Prize: 20

Our impact goals to elevate humanity and inspire others to act for social good include:

--Individual Change: After several studies and several years, our evaluations, designed with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, consistently show that participating in social action with Peace First is a transformative experience for young people. Specifically, young people make direct gains in agency, compassion, courage, collaboration, and other necessary skills and mindsets. Young people also develop powerfully rooted self-identities as leaders of social change, grow in their community and civic engagement, and commit to sustained social action over the long term. 

-- Community Change: The solutions that young people design and test to solve injustices in their communities will have a direct, tangible impact on lives across the globe. We have seen projects impact hundreds of thousands of people – by reducing bullying in schools, bringing down rates of knife violence in neighborhoods, measurably building self-confidence in LGBTQ youth, and addressing direct needs for food, clothing, and other necessities with innovative and equitable service models. We are currently developing evaluation specifically to measure community change.

--Narrative and Culture Change: Right now, society tends to view young people as naive, misunderstood service recipients who need to undergo behavioural change in order to fit into an adult world. Through strategic storytelling, our goal is to change those narratives and cultures – to use examples of young people’s successful social action to help us all reimagine young people’s roles and capabilities and to envision a brighter future. 

Peace First is scaling globally and fast. As an example, we launched a pilot COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund to get resources quickly into the hands of young people addressing the secondary impacts of COVID-19. We expected a dozen or so responses. We received over 2,800 applications from youth teams in more than 80 countries. We had to pause further applications for COVID-19 until we have the funds and resources available while we worked to raise over $850k in new money from April-June. (We were successful.)

The above example highlights the strong demand from young people for our offerings. But, we need to address the following key barriers to:

• FINANCIAL: Build a fundraising engine that delivers dependable dollars - year after year

• TECHNICAL: Build an improved version of our digital platform to support youth globally (language capabilities, functionality for the project journey, ease of storytelling, impact measurements)

• CULTURAL: Better amplify the stories of young leaders that are relevant, compelling and impactful for various regions of the world

• HUMAN CAPITAL: Scale our Fellows-in-Residence program to empower more youth leaders to deliver programs and direct peer-to-peer youth support

• HUMAN CAPITAL: Build our Board of Directors to be representative of our communities served around the world

We are working towards building a fundraising engine that delivers dependable dollars through a blended model of traditional philanthropy and harnessing youth’s purchasing power. We are keenly aware that because our work is not issue-specific, we have challenges sourcing dollars from philanthropic foundations. And, we’re reluctant to accept funding that directs resources inequitably to various countries or regions. Therefore, we’re engaging individuals for unrestricted support and corporations for partnerships and need experts to help us.

Right now, the build of our platform is handled by one and this area of work - our project - is woefully underfunded. However, we’re currently hiring a PM to build critical functions young people have identified as critical for their project journeys.

We have just hired a Communications Director who has extensive experience in global communications for youth social impact. We will need support in building a global communications plan.

Last fiscal year, we had 7 Fellows-in-Residence to support over 6,000 projects on our platform. This year, we’re doubling the number of Fellows to expand in more countries and support more young people. 

We are currently building a Board strategy to recruit members - including youth - from key regions of the globe.

We have hundreds of on-the-ground partners in every region of the world that help us to recruit young people to our digital platform, recruit new leaders (Fellows-in-Residence), create allyships for current initiatives (i.e. in the US #BlackLivesMatter) that relate to youth-led social action. For the purposes below, we have listed a sampling of program partners in each of our regions.

US & Canada: Future Coalition, America's Promise Alliance, Student Voice, US Youth Climate Strike Coalition, Youth Activism Project, ThinkGive, Our Turn

UK & Europe: Bytes project, Diana Awards, Generation Change, Let Us Learn, Reclaim, Revolution Hive, Step Up to Serve, The Key, The Mix, UK Youth, Young Scot, Youth Action Northern Ireland, and Youth Work Unit

Middle East & North Africa: Shera'a Center in Sharjah, World Government Summit, Ashoka Arab World, International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent, Moroccan Center for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship

Sub-Saharan Africa: Young African Leaders Initiative, Teach For Nigeria

Latin America: LALA (Latin America Leadership Academy), Government of Argentina

Asia & Oceania:  United Network of Young Peacebuilders: Asia, We for Change, Labhya Foundation 

Our value proposition is evidenced by the trust that young people have in Peace First. 96% of youth who participate in our programs report trusting Peace First.

Our model, the Peace First Challenge, designed by and carried out by young people, is a global call to action for young people to address injustice. The key investments we make in young people are fueled by philanthropy and include:

--Our Digital Platform combines decades of research from our in-school curriculum with insights from today’s youth to create an always-on, trusted resource. Teams of young people take part in a guided training using digital design tools to create social change projects.

--Funding in the form of non-competitive mini-grants up to $250 so that no young person is excluded due to lack of resources are approved after completion of a project plan.

--Fellows-in-Residence provide “near peer” direct mentorship to every young person on our platform.

--A global community of young people can browse other projects to connect with, learn from, and partner with thousands of other youth leaders around the world. 

Once young people have completed a first round of their project they are invited to apply for our Peace First Accelerator program. Teams receive funding of $2,500 and nine-months of customized coaching to scale.

We elevate the most groundbreaking ideas with the Peace First Prize - $25,000 to scale their work, plus an additional $75,000 worth of wrap-around services for organizational management, marketing, and leadership.

In 2019, Peace First launched a Global Youth Investment Fund, a 3-year $10MM fund designed by young people to put money, digital tools, mentorship and global connections directly into the hands of young people. It is a philanthropic model supported by a community of individuals and families, as well as philanthropic foundations and a handful of companies, who make 3-year funding and engagement commitments, joining together behind young people’s visions, eager to learn from them, and commit to supporting them as partners and allies. In just one year, we have raised over $4.25MM of the fund.

Currently, we are mid-stage into launching a $100MM fund (estimated launch January 2021) that will empower Peace First to be not just youth-led but also youth-funded. By 2030, Generation Z’s buying power is expected to exceed $2.5 trillion dollars. Further, 68% of global youth say they expect brands to contribute positively to society. Therefore, through corporate partnerships, we will harness the purchasing power of young people to self-fund their social innovations on a global scale. We have engaged an advisory council for this work who are guiding strategy and funding partnerships.

As our funder list will be made public, we have chosen to list funding sources by category to honor the wishes of the majority of our funders who wish to remain private. However, we would be delighted to provide a full list of funding sources directly to the MIT Elevate Prize panel upon request. 

The following represents actual cash received during fiscal year FY20 (July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020). The majority of individual donors and family foundations have made 3-year commitments to our Global Youth Investment Fund, which launched in FY20 through FY22. Total cash received is $2,316,981 with percentages coming from the following sources:

-- Individuals and Family Foundations: 88% (grants and donations)

-- Philanthropic Foundations/Institutions: 5% (grants)

-- Corporations: 7% (grants)

In FY21 (July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021), our baseline budget for our global operations is $2.6M. However, we dream big at Peace First and we will aim high to raise funds significantly above and beyond our baseline budget and have roll out plans if we raise $5M+. We are looking for organisations who want more than to invest money in youth-led social action and, like us, use an equity lens by not restricting their dollars for certain projects, regions, or groups of young people. We recognize that, for example, there are more financial resources in the US than there are in Sub-Saharan Africa, but by sourcing funders who care deeply about equity across the globe, we can truly reach the young people who need our tools and resources the most.

We are looking for partners who are interested in learning, exploring, and building authentic relationships with young leaders. We encourage investors and influencers, early adopters, and believers to participate in building a learning community. We need people who:

--Are motivated by impact and learning, rather than outputs;

--Believe in placing big bets behind big ideas;

--Believe in transformative, not transactional relationships;

--Lead with curiosity and are willing to follow young people’s passions rather than expecting young people to follow them;

--Are intrigued by co-creating, conspiring, and learning with young people in a digital space; and

--Want to be connected to a global community of learning, supporters, and youth.

Our Board approved expenses for July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021 total $2,606,569.

GLOBAL PROGRAM 

PERSONNEL

-- Salaries: $1,004,614

-- Fringe/Benefits: $86,488

-- Non-wage federal and local taxes: $8,000

Total: $1,099,102

DIGITAL PLATFORM

-- Infrastructure: $18,280

-- Contractors (Tech, HR): $30,000

-- Subscriptions: $7,320

Total: $55,600

PROGRAM DESIGN & QUALITY

-- Contractors (evaluation, tools): $7,00

-- Incentives: $2,000

-- Subscriptions: $3,491

-- Miscellaneous: $2,000

Total: $14,491

YOUTH ENGAGEMENT

-- Grants: $180,000

-- Accelerators: $15,000

-- Fellows-in-Residence Stipends: $155,700

-- Fellows-in-Residence Professional Development: $8,000

-- Regional Expenses: $15,833

-- Technology Support: $7,520

-- Contractors: $32,700

-- Miscellaneous: $2,400

Total: $417,153

STORYTELLING

-- Contractors: $15,200

-- Subscriptions: $8,500

Total: $23,700

EXECUTIVE FUNCTION

-- Contractors: $5,000

-- Communications: $6,000

-- Subscriptions: $6,789

Total: $17,789

OVERHEAD

-- Rent, utilities: $27,989

-- Insurance: $12,000

-- Contractors (Tech, HR): $43,036

-- Other Fixed (IT, Subscriptions, Fees): $15,400

-- Miscellaneous HR Costs: $8,400

-- Aged Debt: $120,000

Total: $226,825

YOUTH INVESTMENT FUND (i.e. Fundraising)

-- Contractors: $90,000

-- Miscellaneous: $6,000

-- Technology: $5,909

Total: $101,909

CONTINGENCY ALLOCATION

-- Contingency: $650,000 (Program activities if funds raised)

Total: $650,000

TOTAL EXPENSE BUDGET: $2,606,569

Right now, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and blatant racial injustice globally, there are millions of young people who are scared, isolated, and facing a range of current and future hardships. Thousands want to do something about it but they don’t have the resources to act. 

As a digital-first, youth-centered, global platform Peace First was made for this moment.

We’re applying for The Elevate Prize because now is the time to put resources behind young people to lead. We believe The Elevate Prize will help us to secure dependable dollars to fuel youth-led social innovation over the next two years. And, we’re not thinking just in terms of funding directly through The Elevate Prize, but also how we can leverage the award to motivate a global audience to join us, connecting the funds directly to hopeful and impactful stories of youth leading change on a global scale. 

Specifically, we will use funding over the next two years to: 1) Amplify the stories of young leaders worldwide; 2) Build critical functions on our digital platform to streamline and enhance youths’ social action journeys; and 3) Accelerate and scale youth led projects on a global scale. Should we be awarded additional funding, we invite conversation about how The Elevate Prize and the Peace First Prize can be leveraged to build visibility of youth-led social change globally.

Funding Model: As we are building a $100MM Fund to harness the purchasing power of youth, we need experts to help us think through complexities of equity and help to make connections to corporations wanting to do good.

Talent Recruitment: As we raise more money, we have big plans for our team, including bringing more young people in leadership positions. We will need support from organizations recruiting young talent in the areas of organization development, fundraising, finance, operations, HR, and program delivery.

Board Members: We want to partner with organizations that have expertise in ensuring board members represent constituencies and provide a balance with fundraising goals.

Marketing, Media, and Exposure: we need partners with connections to influencers in all regions of the world, including celebrities and others who can help us to build our visibility. And, we are currently rebranding Peace First and need experts to provide pro bono support.

We have indicated in the above question about how we would like to partner. Below is a listing of potential partners for our growth areas.

Funding and Revenue Model: 

--Project RED

--Donor Circles like Resource Generation

--Philanthropic foundations focused globally - Ford, Open Society, etc.

--Funding advisors with justice and equity focus

Talent Recruitment:

--We can provide our growth plans in advance to help potential partners understand our needs for youth leaders.

Board Members:

--We can provide our plan for board development to help potential partners understand our goals.

Marketing, Media, and Exposure:

--Companies with expertise in brand development and global marketing and experience youth-focused storytelling