Impact

Accomplishments

Americans for Informed Democracy has a profound impact on both our student members and national policy debates. We have engaged over 100,000 youth in the US, and challenged leaders around our country’s foreign aid, security strategy and broader concern with global issues.

1. Building young leaders who understand and take action around global issues

Since our founding in 2002, over 100,000 students have participated in AIDemocracy summits, conferences and campaigns. They have gone on to be engaged global citizens via positions in the US government, think tanks, non-profit organzations, academia and much more.

AIDemocracy has hosted more than 100 young global leaders summits in over 30 states and in five foreign countries involving young leaders from Bob Jones University to Berkeley. We have then supported these leaders as they returned to their communities to host more than 1,000 town hall forums, over 200 global videoconferences and hundreds of local campaigns. Our programs have involved over 100,000 students.

Our organization has received recognition from highly regarded media and global institutions. Our work has appeared in more than 500 media outlets from sources that cover politics and global affairs such as the New York Times, C-SPAN, BBC, Voice of America, CNN, and the Washington Post to more unexpected sources such as Marie Claire and the Montel Williams Show. Our work has been featured at major gatherings, such as the 2006 White House Summit on Malaria. Numerous editorial boards have praised our programs, including the Boston Globe, which called our Hope not Hate series “a victory of knowledge and inquiry over fear and blind pledges of revenge. This is public pressure at its noble best, able to cut through the haze of politics, inertia, and fear…” We received the 2005 Award for International Understanding from Search for Common Ground and were specially recognized by Madeleine Albright at the closing plenary session of the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative for our commitment to connecting young Americans with their peers worldwide. We have been invited to present on our organization at the United Nations, Associated Press, World Bank, US House and US Senate.

2. Influencing national policies and debates

This year we took action to demand the US maintain its foreign aid commitment, called for the establishment of a Global Climate Fund (in particular as it promotes food security and reproductive/sexual health), spoke out about food commodity speculation, launched the Be2021 campaign around the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and much, much more.

In recent years, we have helped with the signing of Urban Environmental Accords in California, planned a Young Leaders Summit centered on fighting AIDS and helped students plan and execute hundreds of campus events focusing on global issues.

This work is always done in partnership with our partner organizations.