This September, California 100, working in partnership with the award winning youth-driven nonprofit media organization YR Media, released the Dreamers & Doers Toolkit for Young Futurists, a creative and inspiring guide for young people to design and build their own futures manifestos and democratize futures thinking.
The Toolkit is designed as a set of interactive frameworks, games and idea-sparking prompts to help young futurists dream big and envision more innovative and equitable futures, develop creative solutions and strategies, and build strong connections and commitments to inspire change and take action.
Explore the toolkit at https://california100.org/toolkits.
The Dreamers & Doers Toolkit is grounded in California 100’s intergenerational and youth work over the past two years, including the youth-designed Our Dreams, Our California: A Youth Manifesto for the Future and the first ever Youth Futures Summit, which convened more than 500 young activists and creative change makers at the Sacramento Capitol in March 2023.
“This toolkit is an exciting culmination of the deep collaboration and thought partnership between our campus-based Futures Fellows, statewide youth partners, YR Media and our youth team,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, Executive Director of California 100. “We hope the youth work that California 100 sparked and catalyzed will continue to blossom and grow into an enduring youth futures movement in California.”
The Dreamers & Doers Toolkit was created and distributed to statewide educator networks in collaboration with the Teach YR initiative at YR Media, an award-winning nonprofit media, technology, and music training center and platform for emerging BIPOC content creators who are using their voices to change the world.
“We are excited to collaborate with California 100 to create an empowering, experiential, transformative learning resource” said Monica Clark, PhD, YR Media’s Teach YR Project Director whose team led the work. She continued, “The Dreamers & Doers Manifesto Toolkit does this and so much more. It allows YR Media to continue the important work of encouraging GenZ’s emerging BIPOC creators to use their voices to make their own future-visioning manifestos.”
The toolkit was designed specifically for young futurists — student leaders, activists, artists, innovators, creators, and changemakers — and also provides tools and ideas for youth champions and allies to use in education and community building settings.
Over the course of the 3-year initiative, California 100 has led futures-thinking and creative visioning workshops that have reached more than 1,500 young people throughout the state. Explore more of our youth work at California100.org/youth.
About YR Media
YR Media is an award-winning leading media, technology and music training center and platform for emerging BIPOC content creators, who use their voices to change the world. Headquartered in downtown Oakland, California, with a Midwest hub location in Chicago, the non-profit has invested 30 years in helping future generations build foundational skills in journalism and multimedia content creation. They produce journalism, music, graphic design, podcasts, and documentaries that disrupt and shape the mainstream narrative.
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