Overview
Revenue
$1 to $5 million (USD) per year
Category
Nonprofit Organization Management
Founded 25 years ago, Peace First is a global youth movement, unleashing young people’s compassionate creativity to counter the rising culture of exclusion, violence, and disconnection that affects us all. Across the globe there is a frightening rise in extremism, isolation, and despair. We have lost our basic capacity to come together to solve problems, to view other people’s needs as our own, and to cross lines of difference to build community. Meanwhile, there are 1.6 billion young people across the globe, many with ideas on how to solve the world’s most entrenched problems, but only a very few have access to tools, mentors, and capital to turn their insights into reality. Peace First is changing this. Although 25 years old, we are essentially a start-up social venture, moving from a school-based curriculum to a direct-to-youth digital platform for social change. Peace First invites young people (13 – 24) to identify a critical issue in their community and then puts project design tools, caring adult mentors, and small start-up grants into their hands to imagine and implement compassionate solutions to our globe’s most urgent problems. From thousands of initial projects we choose top innovations for support, amplification, and further investment, creating the world’s largest marketplace of youth-led, youth-created social change initiatives. Not only will millions of young people develop the skills and commitment for social change, but we will source and amplify powerful solutions from those closest to the problem through a variety of earned and owned media. Founded 25 years ago, Peace First is a global youth movement, unleashing young people’s compassionate creativity to counter the rising culture of exclusion, violence, and disconnection that affects us all. Across the globe there is a frightening rise in extremism, isolation, and despair. We have lost our basic capacity to come together to solve problems, to view other people’s needs as our own, and to cross lines of difference to build community. Meanwhile, there are 1.6 billion young people across the globe, many with ideas on how to solve the world’s most entrenched problems, but only a very few have access to tools, mentors, and capital to turn their insights into reality. Peace First is changing this. Although 25 years old, we are essentially a start-up social venture, moving from a school-based curriculum to a direct-to-youth digital platform for social change. Peace First invites young people (13 – 24) to identify a critical issue in their community and then puts project design tools, caring adult mentors, and small start-up grants into their hands to imagine and implement compassionate solutions to our globe’s most urgent problems. From thousands of initial projects we choose top innovations for support, amplification, and further investment, creating the world’s largest marketplace of youth-led, youth-created social change initiatives. Not only will millions of young people develop the skills and commitment for social change, but we will source and amplify powerful solutions from those closest to the problem through a variety of earned and owned media. Peace First is a national nonprofit organization that exists to create the next generation of peacemakers. We view children as natural problem solvers and creative thinkers, and invest in their ability to see themselves as leaders. Peace First is committed to celebrate young people and their potential to create positive change around them. Our work is grounded in teaching young people the skills of peacemaking; empowering educators and parents to teach and model these skills and values; and creating social messages that raise expectations for young people to demonstrate compassion and empathy. We also share our peacemaking lessons through The Digital Activity Center, which allows educators and parents to access our peacemaking curriculum and vast programmatic library in a cost-free and easy-to-use digital format. In efforts to inspire more youth to become peacemakers, the Peace First Prize has officially launched. Peace First will celebrate and share the remarkable stories of 5 peacemakers ranging from ages 8-22 and provide a $50,000 fellowship to assist in their peacemaking work. These winners will be chosen based off their ability to courageously and compassionately create positive and lasting change in their communities.
