How to create a peer-to-peer knowledge enterprise:

Gather young people who know how to do something, and ask them if they’d like to get paid to share their knowledge and skills with others.

Step 1

Identify who is doing great work with young people in your community in or out of school. That maybe you! These are the people who already know the brilliant young people you want as part of the strategy.

Step 2

Pull those young people together, and ask if they would like to get paid to share what they know, organize other youth, put on performances, run sports leagues, etc. Share examples with them and with the adults who love them.

Step 3

Decide on a rough governance structure with youth in control. Then support the young people in making a budget and planning fiscal controls that dictate where will money be held and who can access it. This is where adult trustees may be needed. Youth are the majority of staff and the principal wage-earners—not stipends, real wages!

Step 4

Young people design program elements and then assign teams to approach schools, local government, state government, philanthropy, etc. for contracts to teach or mobilize their peers.

Step 5

Start sharing knowledge and skills with peers, and plan weekly meetings with all members to debrief, troubleshoot, share problems, ORGANIZE FOR POWER and have fun. The youth wages buy time to build organizing and educational capacity.