Next Gen Leadership: Dare to Collaborate

Saji Prelis is a global leader in preventing violence and empowering young people to drive positive change. Saji moved to the United States in 1989 to pursue his education. He left his homeland Sri Lanka due to war. In the US he experienced homelessness and racial discrimination but used it to commit to building peace, earning a Master’s in International Peace & Conflict Resolution from American University. 

Saji has 20+ years of experience working with youth movements in fragile environments. As a Director at Search for Common Ground, he leads youth-focused programming on transforming conflict through collaboration. Recent achievements: founding and co-chairing first UN-donor-CSO working group on Youth, Peace, and Security since 2012; co-leading successful advocacy toward Security Council Resolutions 2250 and 2419 & US House Res 6174, which recognizes young people’s role in peacebuilding, and receiving the Luxembourg Peace Prize for his Outstanding Achievements in Peace Support.

Next Gen Leadership envisions a future in which youth activists and institutions, rather than letting differences and grievances turn into polarization and violence, are empowered to use empathy, dignity and understanding coupled with coaching and mentoring to tackle their shared problems cooperatively and build inclusive systems over time. Our efforts will lead to collaborative mindsets and skills widely expected, valued, and taught across socio-cultural, political, and economic value chains young activists occupy. Unfortunately, this approach is not the norm. Divisive thinking prevents humanity from solving urgent challenges. A four-pronged approach over the next 5 years will generate demand and supply for collaborative mindsets and skills:

1. Cultivate grassroots champions who are equipped with collaborative mindsets and skills
2. Embed opportunities to develop collaborative mindsets and skills into institutions
3. Create the enabling knowledge and policy frameworks to support the popularization of collaborative mindsets and skills
4. Innovate financing to sustain

The primary challenge Next Gen Leadership will tackle is adversarial social norms. When pursuing goals, people and institutions often default to adversarial tactics, dividing the world into enemies and allies and striking at anyone who disagrees. Many people overlook the radical potential of collaboration; few have the skills to take a collaborative approach. As a result, people struggle to find inclusive, constructive solutions to shared problems. 

This challenge is more relevance today. Systemic racism. Climate change. COVID-19. Polarization. Declining trust in institutions. Economic inequality and systemic corruption. Alongside these challenges, the world is experiencing a tectonic shift in power. Young people have often driven social change, but today they are doing so with new force. Many are fed up with injustice, inequality, and limited pathways to a better life. Fed up with this status quo, young people are mobilizing to challenge the status-quo and prevent the next generation from experiencing further exclusion from their societies.  Globally 41% of are below 24, one in four experience violence daily. The US being a cultural influencer, engaging a generation of youth activists in the US in collaborative skills and action will have a ripple effect around the world.

Next Gen Leadership aims to equip a generation of young Americans with the radical tool of collaboration to drive change. We will engage influential, yet marginalized youth leaders, and provide them with tools and resources on how to design and execute non-adversarial approaches to address their frustrations, fears and aspirations. We will connect them to a global network of youth leaders so that they feel part of something bigger and inspire one another as trainers, mentors, and coaches.  They will learn how to build trust with institutions that influence their grievances and tactics of how to build strategies for facilitating the changes they seek long-term.  This work may lead to policy changes, improved community-level programs, and better relationships between adversaries. We will develop innovative revenue sources that sustain these efforts. For example, several US Youth groups have partnered with INGOs to influence the first House Resolution (H.R. 6174) on youth, peace and security.  They will continue their joint advocacy till the Bill passes.  It will significantly improve USAID’s procurement processes ensuring young people with greater access to grants, they are excluded from. 

We will target diverse group of young people (18-30 years), initially focusing on three constituencies: college students, young changemakers, and young moderators of closed online communities.

Our approach will include engaging marginalized or minority youth and allies applying four proven strategies:

(1) working with youth outreach workers to engage marginalized youth as peers

(2) facilitating coaching and mentorship, (from within their communities) based on their underlying needs, hopes, and problems

(3) co-develop initiatives that instill collaborative mindsets and skills. Young people shape everything from messaging to delivery method, and their direct feedback guides our iteration.

(4) connecting them to a global network of young leaders so that they feel part of something greater, where they gain and share insights with one another.

Young people often lead culture, launching the trends, norms, and beliefs that power structures later adopt. By reaching youth who set culture, we can influence broader society. Regular feedback loops will help us learn and iterate, ensuring we are addressing the needs of young people and the institutions they engage with.  We bring lessons learned from our organization’s work over 40 years including initiatives I co-lead, that connects young peacebuilders across borders to build skills and mentorship opportunities.

Next Gen Leadership aims to equip young people with mindsets and skills to bridge divides, changing how they engage other people and institutions to create effective change. Trust is at the heart of this work. The project will support youth to apply the afore mentioned skills to relevant issues in their communities. These youth become champions for collaboration, creating a ripple effect influencing the attitude and behaviors of their peers, community members, and institutions. While Next Gen Leadership ultimately aims to address all three dimensions of The Elevate Prize, the first step is about elevating understanding of and between people. 

In 1989, arriving in the U.S. to further my education, I was struck by the resilience of student activists, homeless youth and gang members. Their example pushed me to join student government and fight for increased equitable access to higher education. 

After graduating, I dedicated myself to international peacebuilding and advocated for 10 years to pass UN Resolutions 2250 and 2419 on Youth, Peace, & Security. Initially dismissed as irrelevant, these global policy frameworks now engage youth as partners in peacebuilding, with a coalition today of over 65 UN, CSO and Inter-Governmental and youth organizations. Funding opportunities are also increasing now to support youth as partners in peacebuilding. 

I have realized that it is time to bring this work to the U.S. where "we the people'' are demanding change that institutions alone cannot achieve. When equipped with collaborative skills, young people can link protest aspirations with systemic change. 

I feel that my career has come full circle. We at Search for Common Ground are mobilizing for the passage of a bipartisan Youth, Peace & Security bill—which means that I am working with the same community of young American activists that inspired me so many years ago.

Media portrays young people as inherently selfish, lacking empathy and defined by reckless decisions. These stereotypes couldn’t be more wrong. 

After experiencing the devastating tsunami in Sri Lanka, I met a young boy who had survived the death and destruction of his family and home. In the wake of tremendous tragedy, his primary concerns were acquiring study notes for his surviving sister and how to make his parents proud. I have witnessed how young people turn to forgive their enemies despite their anger. In my own homelessness, I met struggling children and youth enduring the same trials of hunger as myself. Despite our own food insecurity, I witnessed deep compassion and gratitude that left me with a sense of great responsibility. 

I am passionate about empowering young people, because I have seen firsthand their generosity and compassion amidst struggle and ability to work across divides and find peaceful solutions. During this moment of conflict within the United States, young people have emerged as natural leaders with selfless instincts. Next Gen Leadership is empowering these young people who will advance much-needed, systemic change over time.

I have wanted to establish a whole field around positive roles of young women and men in conflict settings since 2001.  This required shifts in perceptions of young people from victims and troublemakers, to agents of peace. This global effort required new norms/policies, institutions to become more accountable to youth; and new markets for sustaining youth peacebuilding in conflict settings. I accomplished this by being humble enough not do this by myself but bring together people and institutions to co-own this process. Results include a 65-member global coalition that I co-lead; 2 historic UN Security Council Resolutions that shaped how UN and Member States can better support youth in peacebuilding; 3 groundbreaking global studies supported by the UN Secretary General; and increased funding for youth.  I am continuing to co-lead efforts internationally.  

In the US, as an international student, I was involved in school, community, state and national political issues, ranging from organizing student protests, working with police on community security, gang rehabilitation efforts, to being appointed by a State Governor to serve a 2-year term as a State Commissioner and working for the oldest national student organization as an elected officer.  

My skillsets include ability to convene stakeholders from across dividing lines, establish common values, build trust and initiate bold visions together. The Next Gen Leadership initiative in the US will require all this. My existing relationships with stakeholders in the US as a national youth organizer is something I hope to build upon.

When I was an international student in LA, I didn’t have enough money for tuition, rent and food.  I made many sacrifices.  When I was hungry, I had to pick discarded food from a dumpster at a restaurant where I eventually obtained employment. This also taught me what helplessness feels like and I worked to ensure that other homeless children didn’t starve. 

Many people helped me with my tuition and I learned the value of paying-it forward. I didn’t want others don’t go through the same hardships I did.  I fought community college tuition hikes as student body VP, and as a Commissioner for the Oregon State Scholarship Commission. Nationally, I organized around welfare reform and affirmative action that increased access to higher education for parents with limited incomes and minority students. When people were incredulous at my idea of a global policy framework on youth, I brought many people together to co-lead the process, a collaboration that resulted in the policy that many now own. My defiance and activism stems from turning other’s negative expectations into something better. I also understand how gratifying it is when other marginalized youth turn their negative experiences into powerful forces for good.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I was invited to be a mentor in a gang rehabilitation effort. Instead of mentoring them, they were teaching me about their lives. The adage ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ was a constant reminder as I gained their trust and learned of their struggles. I also learned how good intentions can do harm. They taught me about forgiveness and reconciliation as I witnessed how some of them reconciled with their enemies or victims’ parents.  These members lit the flame in me to understand the psychological and structural violence of exclusion young people experience. In Oregon, as a Commissioner for the State Scholarship Commission, I testified in front of legislators to answer why, as an international student, I was qualified to address financial aid issues for scholarships I could not access. Through these experiences, I realized I must be a servant leader. My actions count in gaining people’s trust, which is fundamental for addressing systemic problems. 

This project sits within the Children & Youth department, which I lead, at Search for Common Ground. Search for Common Ground is the world’s largest dedicated peacebuilding nonprofit with offices in 30 countries and 700+ staff. This project spearheads the organization’s efforts to empower and support young people in the U.S. and to popularize collaborative mindsets and skills beyond our on-the-ground programming.

Numerous programs exist in the U.S. seeking to equip and support young people with collaborative skills. However, these initiatives have struggled to achieve sustainable scale and the reach needed to create a wave of collaborative leaders. 

Next Gen Leadership is innovative because we prioritize achieving sustainable scale in three ways: 1) all our initiatives will have a pathway to achieving self-sustaining revenue that is not solely reliant on philanthropic support; 2) we seek to shift key institutions so that they are supporting young people with collaborative skills (3) use a key people/platform to reach more people. 

For example, we are cultivating a partnership with Facebook in which they have expressed interest in paying us to equip their young Facebook Group moderators with collaborative skills. We are also building on decades of experience shifting institutions. I successfully led the advocacy to pass UN Security Council Resolutions 2250 and 2419 and have now catalyzed the introduction of the Youth, Peace, and Security bill to the U.S. House of Representatives, which will include a youth-led advising role within a whole of government approach to youth and provide financial support to young people using collaboration as a radical tool for social change around the world.

The theory of change that guides Next Gen Leadership is that:

• If young women and men are equipped with collaborative mindsets, skills, and resources
• They are made to feel that they are part of something bigger and they see a path that provides purpose and stability, and positive results
• Institutions have incentives and policies to engage young people as partners
• then young people will become even more powerful changemakers who can influence systems-level change
• and then these young people will influence their peers and community members, inspiring them to also become more effective agents for positive change

Our guiding approach is to leverage untapped markets for collaboration. We will work with key constituencies to develop transformative, scalable opportunities that equip them with collaborative mindsets and skills. Then, we will support them to advance collaboration in their communities.  

We have found through our interviews, consultations, and years of experience working with young people that they are eager to create systems-level change and find collaboration to be a compelling idea at the theoretical level. They want to put these ideas into practice but find it difficult to do so and lack the opportunities to build and hone these skills. They frequently encounter adversarial tactics when seeking to work with and influence institutions and are frustrated by these norms and unsure of how to navigate them.  

However, our decades of experience empowering young people with collaborative skills through our Common Ground Approach methodology demonstrate the powerful impact that young people can have when they are equipped with these skills. Our programs abroad bring youth together for collaborative action with life-changing results, from reducing violence around schools through youth-run peace clubs in Cote d'Ivoire; to developing new forms of community-based policing in Kenya, Nepal and DRC that restore trust between security forces and community members, reducing recidivism in prisons in Morocco and Cameroon, and address deep socioeconomic grievances tied to counterterror policies; to increasing tolerance and respect for diverse viewpoints and minority religious communities in and around Indonesian religious boarding schools.

We currently work with 35 youth activists, who we are equipping with collaborative skills and are directly supporting our advocacy efforts around the Youth, Peace & Security bill. Our goal is to equip 100 young Americans with collaborative skills in one year and 5,000 young Americans in five years. 

 Furthermore, the ripple effect of the institutional changes we are advocating for will result in Next Gen Leadership having broader reach, likely impacting millions of young people.

Over the next year, our goal is to leverage our existing methodology and assets to design and pilot scalable initiatives that are specifically tailored for young Americans.

Over the next five years, our goals are to:

• have thousands of young people go through our programs and to begin to demonstrate the power of collaboration. These young people will be achieving short-term wins on the issues they care about (on the way to creating longer-term systemic change) that they can directly attribute to the collaborative skills we helped them acquire.
• Tested and scaled innovative funding models that help sustain this effort beyond the 5 years.
• Successfully advocate for the passage of two Youth, Peace & Security bills (one focusing internationally and one focused within the US) through the U.S. Congress and to have young people play a key role in ensuring the passage of this bill. This will unlock an unprecedented amount of U.S. support for equipping and empowering young people around the world with collaborative leadership skills.

I will continue this effort alongside my global efforts and in the next year will produce implementable national strategies on youth, peace and security in up to 20 countries; have the EU, African Union and UN adopt a 5 yr strategy on strengthening youth inclusive peace processes; and setup national youth mediators networks in 10 countries in the next 5 yrs.

Main barriers include financial and technical. We will need initial investment capital to develop initiatives that will equip young Americans with collaborative skills. We also need to develop revenue models that will allow us to sustainably scale our initiatives. This requires technical support on innovative financial mechanisms that will empower youth leadership, instead of traditional mechanisms that frequently leave young people behind. 

Other technical support includes:

• building greater awareness of our project and raising the visibility of the young people we work with, particularly from a media and marketing perspective. In order for us to have broader reach, more young people and institutions need to become aware of the opportunities we offer and believe that our initiatives will benefit them.
• Connect our work with platforms that elevate the profiles of young people that are using collaboration as a radical tool for social change to not only inspire more young people incentivize institutions to adopt collaborative mindsets and engage youth as partners model for decision-making.

To address the financial barrier, in the first two years raise capital from

• funders that we have an existing relationship with foundations and individual philanthropists who have given to us in the past.
• Conduct a corporate sponsor mapping and look for promising entry points.
• Identifying institutions that touch the lives of young people and have the means and interest to pay for our programming, as well as
• Map out people beyond our traditional funders who can serve as advisors to help us develop new revenue models.

Engage young people themselves to contribute a minimum of $2 from over two million young people in the US over the next 5 yrs.  This effort will ensure their contribution is as equally powerful as a large donor contribution and put the power in the hands of young people themselves. 

To build greater awareness for Next Gen Leadership, we will seek to learn from those who have led successful marketing campaigns. Depending on the financial resources we are able to raise, this might include hiring a marketing expert, engaging a marketing firm on a pro bono basis, or having marketing experts serve as informal advisors. We will also tap into the informal and formal networks of young people and institutions that work with young people to help spread the word. 

Finally, to understand what kind of messaging, language, tactics, and channels will have the largest impact, we will conduct A/B testing.

We are working with over 40 organizations, including in the US, Despond Tutu Peace Laps at Butler University, NewGen Peacebuilders, STAND (The student-led movement to end mass atrocities), PeaceDirect’s US Youth coalition, Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, Humanity United Action, UNICEF USA and several other international organizations who are supporting the US Youth, Peace and Security Bill. 

We are also in the process of cultivating a partnership with Facebook, as they are interested in having us equip their Facebook Group moderators with collaborative skills.

We identify young activists who want to create systemic change. We position collaboration as a radical tool for social change and work with these young people to design trainings, mentorship programs, experiential learning opportunities that equip them with collaborative mindsets and skills. We pair this with identifying institutions that have an interest in seeing young people equipped with these skills and seek to embed our programming in these institutions. Some of these institutions have the means to pay for our programming. We are also building private-public partnerships with corporations that are interested in paying for programming that equips young people with collaborative skills. The remaining cost is covered through philanthropic sources. 

We have used such a business model in our work abroad. For example, we established a private-public partnership in Lebanon, in which we equipped corporate leaders and young employees with collaborative skills. We are now pursuing this model in the U.S. The partnership with Facebook we are cultivating, in which they pay us to equip their users with collaborative skills, is a starting point.

In order to design, pilot, and test initiatives, we will likely rely on philanthropic support and seek to raise investment capital from foundations, corporations, individuals, and venture philanthropy organizations. 

Over the long-run, though, we will pursue at least four pathways for sustainable revenue that rely less on philanthropic support:

1. Strategic partnerships: Long-term relationships with organizations and institutions that operate at a meaningful level of scale and influence; they will serve as thought partners and provide financial support through philanthropic contributions, in-kind support, and / or payment for our services (This is what we are pursuing with Facebook)
2. Service provision: Organizations, institutions, and / or individuals that pay for our services without a longer-term partnership
3. Impact investing: Working closely with institutions and impact investors, we could create pay-for-success models that realize financial returns when agreed upon metrics are met. 
4. Digital revenue models: We might also explore digitally-based revenue options, such as crowd-sourcing, subscriptions, advertising, etc.  This is where a minimum of $2 from 2 million young people will be raised.
   

We currently have $320,000 raised from a combination of foundations and philanthropists.

We are looking to raise $850,000 in grants or donations over the next two years ($400,000 in 2021 and $450,000 in 2022).

Our estimated expenses for 2020 are $320,000.

I am applying for The Elevate Prize because it would help me and my team overcome both the financial and marketing / media barriers previously mentioned. The prize would provide crucial funding and catalyze the development of a more robust team to scale and expand our work. We are also looking to experiment with new revenue models and believe the prize would allow us to access a broader network of advisors and investors who could provide insights and technical support on innovative funding opportunities. 

Furthermore, the support for marketing, promotion, and communication that the prize provides would be critical. We are looking for smarter messaging and channels to improve our reach and gain the attention of new audiences. Being able to tap into the media campaigns the prize offers would significantly improve our ability to scale. In addition, the increased attention to young people as partners, not victims or troublemakers will resonate well among other young people and help us expand our network.

Access to advisors and investors who could provide guidance on innovative funding models and marketing and media support would provide the biggest catalysts for our efforts to achieve greater scale and reach new audiences.

We would like to partner with activist organizations, such as the Movement School and the Leadership Institute. Partnerships with such organizations would allow us to tap into networks of youth activists and accelerate our reach and scale. 

Also, to explore and test new revenue models, we are looking to work with new investors, from private philanthropic groups to investment management partners, as well as corporations that would have an interest in investing in young people with collaborative skills.

Organizations that provide technical support on innovative investment models and shaping new norms are also most welcome.