We've written recently about the importance of youth involvement in international change. This post begins a series on one organization that demonstrates the power of youth to make real change in the world. The Student Movement for Real Change (SMRC) started in a shoe box. In 2001, Saul Garlick, then a high school student in Denver, CO wanted to prompt his peers to become more engaged in international issues. After September 11th, President George W. Bush had created "America's Fund for Afghan Children, " asking that American students each give $1.00 to help the children of Afghanistan. Saul and a friend went from classroom to classroom collecting money in a shoe box for the cause. After collecting $500 in 40 minutes, Saul said, "I realized that students have the power to change the world." Saul's shoe box collection was the beginning of an organization that has grown into an amazing and inspirational source of change in the developing world. This four-part series will cover the history of SMRC, stories behind its leaders, and its current project, a 17.4-mile water pipeline in Kenya that will improve the lives of over 30,000 people.

The following year, Saul traveled to South Africa with his family and visited the Mashlati Primary School in the Mpumalanga Province, which was lacking classrooms. Construction on a new classroom had begun, but only four layers of bricks had been laid. Once again, Saul felt the urge to help, and pledged to raise $10,000 to go towards finishing the classroom. He began to raise money every way he knew how, including community events, fund raisers, and beginning to create activists out of his peers. SMRC ended up raising $35,000 for South African schools by 2006. As SMRC has developed, its scope of influence has grown substantially. What began as a fundraising venture for neglected regions of the world has grown into a national non-profit organization that works on every step of the international aid process, from fundraising to actual infrastructure development. However, its unique focus has never changed. Since its inception, SMRC has been all about the empowerment of youth. Saul says, "Today the organization seeks to engage an entire generation of young people… Our model is innovative and unique because it is completely dependent on student initiative…Projects are identified by young people, funded by young people, and the movement is ultimately dependent on empowering young people to mobilize their peers around the same causes." In some ways, the SMRC model of youth empowerment appears bright-eyed and ludicrous. Sure, some kids can raise a dollar apiece to be given to the President's aid fund. But that fund is arranged, administered, and allocated by the U.S. Government. To develop infrastructure or improve health and education in underdeveloped areas, surely there must be a group of older, well-respected, knowledgeable people to oversee the project! Saul and other members of SMRC disagree, and their success to date demonstrates this. According to Saul, young people have more power to make major change in the world than they themselves know. "What is really exciting about SMRC and the work we are doing," says Saul, "is that, by aggregating the passion and commitment to global change of a few thousand students, entire projects can be and are built." Pearl S. Buck said, "The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation." Whether it is this kind of blind idealism or just that young people have the resilience, strength, and drive to make real change, it's clear that the SMRC model is working. SMRC currently has thousands of members and 25 chapters throughout the United States. Every one of these chapters is comprised of youth who want to eliminate 1.1 billion people's lack of access to water and 2 billion people's poor sanitation infrastructure. As Saul puts it, "In the future, the youth who were empowered to make a change in the lives of the 3 billion people living on less than $2 per day in the most destitute parts of the world will also be the leaders who make more informed foreign policy." SMRC has already had a great deal of success on a variety of projects. Now, however, it has taken on a project so important, yet so large, that such a project typically is managed by international organizations such as USAID and the World Bank. The new project, called the Kayafungo Water Project or Kenya Water Project (KWP), will bring clean water to an entire region of Kenya that is desperately in need of it. The story of the KWP begins with another inspiring young person who has made a grand idea a reality. The next post in this series will describe this project and Lily Muldoon, the force behind it. To learn more about, join, or donate to the Student Movement for Real Change, visit http://www.studentmovementusa.org/ and be sure to check out Part II of this series!