SEInterviews: Charles Tsai's Open Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurship

[Ed. Note: For the last few months, Jim Bach has been contributing a wonderful series of interviews called "Youth Taking Action" to the site. As Jim transitions from his work with Ashoka, we've invited him to continue to contribute occasional interviews with amazing people. Enjoy.]

Like all social entrepreneurs, young leaders need the tools to work through ideas, build teams, develop work plans, market products, fundraise and carry out projects, but many times assistance and quality resources are either not available or accessible. One person who is finding ways to creatively provide support for young innovators is Charles Tsai, a former journalist for CNN who is now Director of Virtual programming at Ashoka's Youth Venture and founder of the Global Youth Fund, a nonprofit started in 2005 to support young leaders and innovators. Charles is supporting a large number of young social entrepreneurs by providing these valuable resources, opportunities and mentorship through widely accessible virtual platforms. I spoke with Charles about his work at the Global Youth Fund and his most recent contribution to the social sector, an innovative toolkit for young changemakers.

What is the Global Youth Fund and how does it support young social entrepreneurs and leaders?

Our simple mission is... Invest in Youth-led Change. We've tried different approaches in the past but we are now focusing more and more on what is perhaps the greatest challenge for the youth sector: creating and demonstrating measurable impact. The social sector is increasingly crowded and competitive. If young people hope to lead change and be taken seriously, they need to show they really do make a difference, that they can deliver social return on investment. Like the rest of the sector, they need to get even better at creating social change.

So who's going to help them do that? From my experience, I really believe young people can be their own best teachers. That's why Global Youth Fund's first program was to involve youth in a bottom-up democratic process to create change, a process that emphasized peer-to-peer learning. We then launched an international essay project (modeled after NPR's This I Believe) to allow youth around the world to share their core beliefs and wisdom. Now, we're developing a new toolkit to help youth leaders share the "secrets of their success" with other youth.

How does the Creative Activist Toolkit work? How is it different from other toolkits out there?

The toolkit is basically an ongoing series of presentations (PDF booklets uploaded to Slideshare.net) designed to inspire and guide young changemakers. Each short, interactive chapter presents a story, a best practice or a how-to guide that young leaders may find useful for their own work.

What's different about this toolkit is that it's open and open-ended. We will keep adding new chapters and we will invite many youth leaders and other organizations to contribute. If you have stories, knowledge or best practices you'd like to share with other youth, we will help you spread your ideas.

The way I see it: "We're all learning valuable lessons, not just from our successes but from our painful failures as well. Let's help other youth so they don't make the same mistakes."

The tools cover a wide variety of topics. How did you choose the first batch?

I tried to address what I've found to be the most common mistakes or shortcomings in social change projects, whether they're youth-led or not. First, many projects address only the symptoms rather than the root causes of a problem. I'm not saying don't tackle symptoms but one should also think about what the real problem seems to be and how we can bring about a long-term solution.

So the first chapter, Root Cause Analysis, offers a simple exercise that young people can use to figure out the root causes of the problem they're trying to address.

Other chapters help youth leaders measure outcome in a meaningful way, develop strategies based on assets rather than needs, and create effective fundraising pitches.

Because I used to work in the media (as a reporter and producer for CNN), I also devote a few chapters to storytelling - how to identify the powerful stories within your work and communicate them effectively.

Have you already seen some positive results from youth taking advantage of the tools offered?

The toolkit has only just been launched and youth are just starting to hear about it but Alex Lin (previously featured here) has already used the second chapter, Project Profiles, to create a short video about his organization, Turn Grease Into Fuel.

I argued that a short video (following a simple template) is the most effective way to communicate what you do. His video proves my point. Turn Grease Into Fuel is impressive on paper but much much more so on screen.

Youth can offer so much in terms of great ideas and positive action, but are often dismissed as being "kids." How can we as a society best serve and cultivate their potential?

Don't talk down to them. Young people truly want to make a real difference in the world. Let's not confine them to bake sales and car washes. Let's help them innovate solutions and create tangible outcomes.

We should do all we can to help youth get better at creating change. To quote Kathy Sierra: "People can't be passionate about things they suck at." So the better young people are at creating change, the more passionate they will be.

And we need them to be passionate. The future they face - we all face - demands nothing less.

James Bach is an international development specialist, focusing on education, disaster response, and social entrepreneurship. He has managed a variety of community development initiatives, the Crisis Corps program for Peace Corps Guatemala, and worked on several global campaigns for Ashoka’s Youth Venture.