How Young People Reinvent Social Change

By Karin Hillhouse

An old woman makes the five-minute trip to the post office in the village of Baikunthapur in West Bengal. It is midday, and she interrupts her cooking for a short while to drop off the letter that should reach her daughter in a few days' time. It is 1998, and she has never before felt the confidence to leave home to mail a letter. A ten-year-old girl who lives nearby leads the way.

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Acting on an impulsive moment of reflection, a Colombian gang lord and three of his henchmen, all of them under 17, skip their typical morning round of violence and settle themselves at the "round table" of the neighborhood conflict-resolution center. Beside them sits the "hearing" council of three youths and an adult conciliator, along with the parents of two eight-year-olds who died in gang crossfire a week earlier. Every person present expects the process of mediation to ease tensions in the community.

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The street corner reverberates with teen-agers' guns at work. The neighborhood is Vigario Geral, a Rio favela that is overwhelmed by drugs and violence. In the next moment, a circus arrives. Smothering all other sounds, a homegrown Afro Reggae troupe comes into view. The man on stilts, the hip-hop, the dancing, the drums create a stage of social engagement and change. It is part of a plan. Everyone is singing, and many of the spectators are intrigued enough to ask how they can become volunteers, get an education, have a life of actual promise, a life beyond the street corner.

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Just returned from a weekend camping expedition to Thailand's eastern forest and seacoast, the school children patiently explain to their parents the life cycle of the mushrooms and the devastating effect on all their lives of the loss of local fish stocks. The youngest son proudly reports that a much-maligned forestry official at the wildlife preserve (where the family often hunts) had declared him a "forest guardian." As such, he must now ask before dinner, "What's cooking?" and whether that meat is legal game or represents an impending environmental emergency.

. . . continued