Each insists that young people must learn to work collaboratively, and that this is perhaps the single most important skill for the next millenium. And all three organizations are characterized by a commitment to helping others, to active engagement in solving social problems. A connection between youth and adults in which adults are brought in as mentors and skill builders, but not as authorities who determine what youth will and will not do. A strategic approach that sets challenging but realistic goals, so that young people can build from their successes, rather than being consumed and deflated by their failures. Measuring social impact is a thorny challenge for most organizations that are trying to reach often unquantifiable, sometimes quite amorphous objectives.
Documented results tend to be suggestive and short-term.
Drayton discusses the former facet in terms of engaging in a Youth Venture-type experience. First, the process of establishing his or her own organization has profound impact on the venturer. Soares' efforts have already resulted in significant social gains, including a much-needed discount in public transportation for students and a constitutional law protecting conscientious objectors. Yet, even by his own assessment, these are but strategic steps in a much larger scheme. In Soares' strategy, an accumulation of such victories will, over time, not only engender a new cultural view of youths' capacity to affect change, but provide powerful lessons in how to build a truly democratic society.