Jared Cohen is a member of the U.S. Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff. He has written extensively about youth and technology, including "Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East". We've asked him to post on the Facebook blog today as part of our participation in the first annual Alliance of Youth Movements Summit on December 3-5 in New York City, an event that brings together successful online campaigns that have translated into on-the-ground movements against violence and oppression around the world.


In 2004, I was one of many students who joined Facebook as a recreational indulgence. It was a fun, late-night activity and a way to satisfy occasional boredom. When I joined the U.S. State Department in the fall of 2006, no one mentioned Facebook or any online social network as a serious means of communication. But by early 2008, that fact had changed.

Oscar Morales, an engineer from Bogota, used Facebook to mobilize 12 million people in 190 cities around the world to protest against a 40-year-old terrorist organization called the FARC, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. The U.S. State Department was buzzing, and even the few people who were aware of Facebook were surprised that this platform for adding friends and poking crushes could also be used to organize the largest protest against a terrorist organization in the world's history.

On my end I had to figure something out--was this a game-changing occurrence or an anomaly? I talked to the organizers in Colombia, and two things amazed me: First, they had mastered the tactic of using the digitally connected few as community organizers to mobilize the non-connected masses. Second, their success sent reverberations around the globe as young people from all over the world began contacting them and asking how they did it.

Oscar Morales and his friends validated all of my assumptions. This really was a new wave of civil society in which there were no offices, government grants, or forms that needed to be filled out and filed for the establishment. Instead, we witnessed the advent of a new era in which some of the world's most effective movements will start in the online space. Already we are seeing this happen around the world including Burma, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the U.K.. These movements may or may not transform into real-life movements, but the more success stories we see, the more likely it is that best practices will be employed by young people in search of freedom and justice.

We are in the midst of uncertain times, but I am hopeful about the future because young people are using Facebook for change in every corner of the globe. They are building civil society in places never before imaginable, standing up to violent extremism wherever it exists and for the first time, are really aware of their value as a demographic. As a government employee who focuses on youth empowerment and countering violent extremism, all I can say is a big fat thank you to Silicon Valley for creating the most important opening of our time.

Inspired by this phenomenon, Facebook, Access 360 Media, Columbia Law School, Google, Howcast, MTV, YouTube, and the U.S. Department of State are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools. For more information, join us on December 3-5 and see how you can help make even the smallest idea have an impact.


Jared hopes you'll join us for this historic summit.