Social Media for Social Change

Change That Clicks (CTC) is an innovative technology training and youth leadership program, developed by TakingITGlobal in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada. The program combines participatory learning and social media technology to promote digital citizenship, social responsibility and Internet literacy skills. CTC is unique in providing youth with the educational resources and experiences that empower them to use technology safely and effectively, while raising awareness of community issues that youth can relate to and translate into real action.

Change That Clicks follows a simple process based on the tagline of TakingITGlobal: inspire, inform and involve. From the facilitators to the participants, everyone starts the CTC program at the same point. Together, facilitators and participants interactively learn about different global issues, learn from each other through reflective discussions, and gain the confidence they need to mobilize each other and their communities to start the change they want to see in the world. CTC combines online and offline approaches to educate youth on diverse range of issues. In doing so, the program endeavors to provide the technological skills and exposure to community issues that will inspire innovative web-based, youth-led solutions.

Change That Clicks started as the brainchild of the Creating Local Connections Canada program supported by the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. The initial development of the curriculum and pilot project was led by Emily Briggs and the second phase followed under the leadership of Sheridy Leslie. CTC, like TakingITGlobal, was created to give young Canadians an opportunity to interact with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in a way that was radically different from mainstream offerings.

In November of 2008, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada (BGCC) centres across Canada participated in an intensive 2-day training weekend in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The training weekend brought BGCC staff together in one location to connect as a team, learn about the program, and to begin to envision how this program can be used to make a positive impact among the youth in their communities. The second phase of the program was launched in January 2009 with thirteen diverse module topics that were run weekly within most of the participating BGCC centres.

The Change That Clicks program was officially launched in fourteen different Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada centres in five provinces. It was also launched through TakingITGlobal's Creating Local Connections initiative as part of different grassroots youth engagement strategies within 5 different Canadian provinces and 1 territory. 100 youth directly took part in the program between January and June of 2009.

Inspiring the Next Generation of Youth Leaders

This generation of youth (born between 1978 and 2000) has often been affectionately referred to as the "we generation" – the generation of youth that recognizes social and global issues and seeks to work together to arrive at collective and sustainable solutions. The Change That Clicks program taps into this eagerness to get involved with creating change in the world and supports it by encouraging youth to become more digitally literate in the most current Information and Communication Technologies accessible to many youth today.

The Guide to Action model and guidebook (http://www.tigweb.org/action/guide/), a result of an intensive 2-year Master’s research study conducted by TakingITGlobal co-founder Jennifer Corriero, was designed to comprehensively demonstrate the key steps that every youth leader should follow when taking action on a social or global issue. This model was the foundation of the Change That Clicks program with the intention of bringing both facilitators and participants through a process of development that starts with knowledge, highlights critical reflection, and grows leadership skills and capacity. CTC was designed to not only inform youth across Canada on Internet safety and global issues, but also to inspire these youth to take real social action in their communities.

The topic of Global Issues has been chosen as the central feature of TakingITGlobal and the Change That Clicks program. These issues play a significant role in the lives of youth, children, and adults all over the world. The CTC program introduces participants to a specific global issue each week through an interactive narrative told by a unique international youth character. Each narrative was designed to highlight how an average young person may come to experience the global issue of discussion in the real world, in addition to showcasing how youth in different parts of the world have taken direct action on the issue to create change in their community.

Throughout the 4-month cycle of the program, participating Boys and Girls Clubs across Canada were producing poetry, art, slideshows, and videos that represented their own personal connection with the global issues they learned about in the program. At the same time, the participants’ active involvement and reflection in over 50 available program activities helped to demonstrate their ability to effectively apply the principles of digital citizenship and literacy to help ensure safe and meaningful interactions with their online community.

The most visible and ambitious youth-led activities in the Change That Clicks program is Call-to-Actions, which are a dynamic integration of collective knowledge on a global issue, team synergy around a single action of change, and a willingness to positively impact the community on a specific global issue. In the final modules of the program, youth participants were encouraged to get together with their peers to brainstorm what action they could do in their community to create change on a single global issue using technology as one of the mediums of action. A video record of the Call-to-Actions were digitally submitted and then evaluated by members of TakingITGlobal’s Toronto team to determine a national Call-to-Action winner. Moreover, what was most remarkable about these Call-to-Actions was how the youth connected some of the most pressing and complex global issues of our day to practical changes that they could make in their everyday actions. For example, the Boys and Girls Club of Hamilton organized a Call-to-Action around the issue of environmental protection by hosting a community-wide "clean up the neighbourhood" drive, which successfully impacted the way the youth and the greater community interacted with their environment in a sustainable and balanced way.

The early success of the Change That Clicks program is remarkable given that it is the first of its kind to be introduced at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada nationwide. Part of what makes this program distinct from traditional BGCC offerings is the way it creates a truly transformative experience for the participant by pairing vital knowledge of digital literacy and Internet safety with innovative Information and Communication Technologies to ignite real social change community-wide. The CTC program fuses the consistency of a traditional learning space, like a school classroom, with the flexibility of an after-school drop in centre, which is further enhanced by the numerous opportunities to actively learn between peers and using technology to contribute to the betterment of the whole community.

Best Practices

Among the many successes and challenges faced in the implementation of the Change That Clicks program, there were an equal number of lessons to be learned. Below are some of the key areas that were highlighted throughout the program this year:

Age. The program ambitiously sought to reach a very broad group of youth that included both older youth (aged 13-18) and younger youth (aged 8-12), however some program areas proved to be more suited for specific age groups while other program offerings equally engaged both older and younger youth. Given these differences, some centres found it challenging to present all aspects of the program 'as is,' and as a result with the help of the Change That Clicks National Programs Coordinator and the local facilitator, community-specific adaptations were made to the delivery of the program.

Access. The program uses interactive games online and offline to leverage the use of technology to empower youth to create real change in their communities. Although technology played such a large role in the program in terms of eligibility and feasibility to participate as a centre, some BGCC locations faced challenges in acquiring and securing reliable technology to launch the program. Yet, given the quick responsiveness of the Change That Clicks extended network, all the participating BGCC centres were brought up-to-date in terms of having access to the necessary programming technologies.

Commitment. The key to successfully integrating the Change That Clicks program within a participating BGCC centres has depended primarily on the willingness of the centre to commit to the idea of “change” in the way they look at youth programming. While most clubs were able to register and encourage participants to attend the workshops regularly, perform regular evaluations, and provide an adequate amount of prep time before each module, some clubs were not as fortunate. For the BGCC centres that had difficulty bringing about these required changes in their clubs, more comprehensive discussions about the level of commitment required to participate arose between both BGCC local and national offices in hopes of bringing about a reasonable resolution for everyone.

The central themes of the Change That Clicks program were digital citizenship, which describes the role and responsibilities that youth should take online; and digital literacy, which highlights the importance of learning to interact dynamically with Information and Communication Technologies. During the pilot run of the CTC program in 2007, one of the major lessons learned was the importance of communicating Internet safety to youth in a way that was both appealing and relevant to their everyday realities. The developers of the program used the concepts of digital citizenship and literacy to overcome this challenge and thus were able to deliver a message of Internet safety to youth that was engaging, interactive, and empowering. By the end of the 13-modules, several program alumni expressed their newfound identity as "digizens," or digital citizens who have a responsibility to themselves and their community to exercise fair and just practices online.

Global Youth Movement

Youth are defining themselves as a group by working together to create change in the present world in preparation for the future world in which they will be the leaders. There is little doubt that technology is an important tool in the global movement for creating change in our communities. The advancing the reach of technological innovations is empowering in the face of new global challenges. Young people are at the forefront of this technology-driven revolution. Social media technologies such as social networks, blogging, and file-sharing are the primary medium through which this generation of youth leaders have propelled their involvement and their voice in the global social change movement.

TakingITGlobal has become an international leader in promoting and advancing the efforts of youth everywhere who seek to bring about real and lasting change in their local communities through the active use of social media technologies. For a decade, TakingITGlobal has been supporting global youth actions by providing a variety of online action tools that help make their ideas for social change happen!

Unlike other programs directed at promoting Internet safety among youth, the Change That Clicks program has the potential to advance the efforts of the global youth movement for social change among Canadian and global youth alike. CTC directly equips youth with a knowledge of global issues and the technological tools they can use to positively impact their communities. From the humble beginnings of the CTC program that started with a handful of youth-directed centres across Canada, the possibilities for youth to change our world for the better is really only a click away so join us in making some change.

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