By Kathryn Lakin, Communications Intern
Editor’s Note: Deb Delman is the Youth Leadership Manager at WorldOregon, a Global Ties U.S. Community-Based Member in Portland, Oregon, where she oversees the Young Leaders in Action (YLA) program. Each year, YLA students create an Action Project about social justice issues. The 2023-2024 students created The Leaders of Now, a short film and activity highlighting young activists who have been at the forefront of social change in Oregon and across the world. We spoke with Deb about the YLA participants and their project:
What is Young Leaders in Action and how do students get involved?
The Young Leaders in Action program brings together high school students from all over the Portland metro area and beyond to basically spend eight months building leadership skills, learning about social justice issues, exploring strategies for activism, and getting a global perspective on those things.
We do a lot of active outreach in high schools across the area and work with a lot of teachers. We have a pretty big network in the community, so when students hear about YLA, they apply. We’ve tried very much to focus on our DEI commitment to reach all sorts of students out there from different backgrounds and different lived experiences.
The application includes a mix of essays and group interviews. The cohort groups are about 14 to 18 students. Some of them have had tons of leadership experiences and others have never been involved in anything, which is great. I would say that the thing that unites them is that it’s a leadership program, and it’s a program about social justice and activism. All of them have an interest or passion and want to do something about something.
Why did this group choose film as a medium?
The program is centered around this framework that I call “leadership soup.” First, we start with identity and lived experience. How do we show up in spaces around social change? And what do we bring into that space? Then we get into the topic that this particular group of students wants to dive into, and every year it’s different.
The second ingredient of leadership soup is learning. Once we identify the issue participants are passionate about, we need to learn about it. This year, the students couldn’t hone in on one topic, but knew they wanted to work together.
I had seen a four-minute film called “My Sister” at an event that just blew my mind. I found out it was made by a local filmmaker and reached out to her about meeting with the students. They watched it and loved it. That was the seed of the project.
Leaders of Now focuses on current and historic activists and leaders who began their work at a young age. Why did participants choose these examples, and what did that process look like?
The content of the film was born out of something I do with students every year, which leads into the third ingredient of leadership soup, which is strategy. We look at activism and activists throughout time and place in history, local and global. I say, make a list of 10 leaders. Then, we methodically go through this list to ask ourselves: Are they dead or alive? Are they male, female, or other gender? Are they BIPOC or not? And finally, when you’re thinking about them as a leader, what was their age? The majority of our YLA student program cohorts (83%) write “adults,” people that they think of as older. The idea came up of “What if we made a film that highlights the fact that youth are the leaders of now, not the future?”
Two of the students wrote that incredible narration, and a local production company, The AV Department, donated their time. Each of the students chose a youth leader and were intentional about highlighting the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, and all these people we think of as leaders, were actually really young and started their activism before they turned 30.
How can educators use this film to promote activism and leadership?
The students were so excited about the film that they created a corresponding curriculum. The result was a bingo game with a briefer about each leader in the film. Within each of those one-pagers, you have their identity and lived experience, you have the context of their issue, and then you have their strategy. You show the film, and then you walk through this process where each person gets one of the roles.
You become the person and you go around, and you meet other people. It’s a whole process that’s shareable for educators or any group really.
The students want to make this for youth to inspire them to realize that they are leading now. They say youth are the leaders of the future. Really, they’re leading now.
For access to the supplementary activity that goes with the film, contact Deb Delman at Deb@WorldOregon.org.