Lillian Hertel

As an incoming high school freshman, I was extremely overwhelmed both with the social and environmental issues facing my generation, and the fact that I could seemingly to nothing to help combat them. It took months to even find advocacy groups that I could and wanted to work with, and much longer to learn the ropes of organizing once I got involved with them. Near the end of my ninth grade year, stuck at home due to COVID, I was on a Zoom call with several coworkers at one of these organizations, when the subject turned to how we first got involved with activism, I quickly realized that what I had experienced was not the exception, but the norm for youth organizers.

I began to wonder how, in a society that largely claims to celebrate civic engagement, arguably even more so among youth, why there weren't any resources available to help young people like us get involved. As the conversation drifted to the education system and its misgivings in relation to civic education, I got to thinking how both issues could be solved, which is how I first got the idea for Students Stand Up (”SSU”). It took a few months following that to create a plan and start to execute it, building a team (consisting in large part of those on the aforementioned call), and getting to work, but everything since has made all of the effort more than worthwhile.

When I was initially trying to get involved with advocacy, I found it extremely difficult to both find organizations to join and to organize well once I joined them. Through meeting other young organizers in the years since, I’ve come across a similar sentiment; most young people take part in advocacy efforts because they feel it’s important for them to do so. However, the sense of helplessness that often comes with being young and facing huge issues such as discrimination or environmental degradation is only exacerbated by not knowing where to start when getting involved. With the myriad of issues directly impacting today’s youth, I felt it pertinent to create a more streamlined pathway for kids like myself to get involved in their communities, which quickly developed into SSU. Through the organization, more and more kids will have access to direct involvement in their communities, and gain the resources to change them from the inside out.

Students Stand Up is an organization run entirely by youth organizers with the goal of helping other young people get their starts in advocacy and organizing efforts. First, civic-minded youth from around the world are made aware of SSU through members of the SSU team, our partners, former participants, and social media. From there, we encourage them to look into and potentially apply to our program, a 6-week curriculum delving into the fundamentals of government, democracy, and everything they need to know as prospective organizers — from the logistics of planning protests to social media content creation. Our curriculum is available to participants in multiple formats so as to accommodate as many learning styles and preferences as possible. These formats primarily include live lessons, asynchronous slideshows, and interactive asynchronous lessons. Finally, upon completion of the curriculum, participants are “matched” with our partner organizations who represent a wide variety of issue areas, and are also encouraged to join the SSU team itself.

The process for starting SSU consisted of structuring the organization into teams (outreach, curriculum development, and social media) and building them as well as their respective branches. I was primarily responsible for connecting with partner organizations who would accept/onboard students upon completion of our curriculum, and creating a six-week training curriculum covering everything from basic democratic principles to the daily responsibilities of activists in various fields. I also create posts for and help manage the social media team as we grow our presences on Instagram and LinkedIn.

As someone who was in the exact position of our participants only a few years ago, I and everyone on the SSU team understand how difficult it can be to begin advocacy work. We’ve made an effort to reexamine our own experiences and piece together what would have been beneficial to know before starting, and contacted many other activists to familiarize ourselves with the crucial knowledge for success in various fields (ie. event planning, social media). We send out feedback forms following every unit of our curriculum and at the end of it so that participants can share what they enjoy about the program and what could be improved upon, and facilitate communication with them throughout the program to ensure they feel comfortable reaching out to us with questions and suggestions.

So far, we’ve been able to work with over 200 kids from more than 50 countries and kickstart their involvement with their community with SSU and our 20+ partner organizations. Many alums share the program with friends, family, classmates, and coworkers in their communities and around the world as they feel they’ve benefited and want others to do the same. The SSU curriculum and matching program is specifically structured to provide young people with everything they need to be successful in advocacy, including ongoing mentorship after the program’s completion if needed. We also put a huge emphasis on feedback and open communication, so that issues can be effectively addressed when they arise and we can improve the curriculum for future cohorts. Ultimately, SSU exists to help youth help their communities, a goal in which I’m happy to say we’ve seen significant success.