AIDemocracy was founded by a group of American students who studied abroad just after the September 11 attacks. The students were traumatized by 9/11 and wary of being overseas so soon after the tragedy. But to their surprise, they were met with intense sympathy and solidarity from people from around the world. For them, the tragedy seemed to reveal the possibility for a global community of shared values.
But when these young Americans came back to the US, they were often greeted with questions about why people around the world hated America and our values. The students realized that the picture of the rest of the world that Americans were seeing in the media was very different from the experience of the world that they were living abroad. The media presented only the extremists and the threats from around the world. Americans did not have the chance to see the moderates around the world or the global partners that the US could work with to overcome common threats such as climate change, terrorism and disease.
These students set up Americans for Informed Democracy to bring the world home to Americans and to showcase the opportunities for the US to play a more collaborative role in the world. They began hosting town hall forums and videoconferences to bring the stories of the world that they saw and experienced to their peers and the broader public. Based on their own experiences abroad, they believed that if Americans had new ways to connect with the rest of the world, they would see new opportunities for the US to work with other countries to solve global problems. In other words, they sought to inspire a more informed democracy.
Key moments in AIDemocracy’s history have included:
- Launching the Hope Not Hate Initiative in 2003, a campaign to encourage conversation between Muslim and non-Muslim youth in the US and how the two worlds can work together
- Starting the Global Scholar summer seminar in 2006, a program to educate high schoolers interested in global issues that is still active today
- Helping organize a 2006 “Young Global Leaders Summit” centered on fighting AIDS in New York City that drew in about 700 active youth
- 2008 merging with Our Voices Together, a non-partisan group of families and friends who lost loved ones to terrorism.
- Launching of Be2021, a campaign centered on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 to create a better world by 2021
