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Millennials’ startup: Social change in a social-networking skin

January 19, 2015 By Admin Leave a Comment

How fitting for a social network service for social good to launch on Martin Luther King Day. Created by millennials to have “a positive ripple effect,” its name, RIZZARR.com, comes from the Spanish verb “rizar,” which means “to ripple or ruffle the surface.”

rizzarr“Our goal is to provide a positive, globally connected platform where both inspirational news and content from Millennials are shared” by both staff and users, says its founder, Ashley Williams. “My team and I want young people to use RIZZARR to uplift, encourage, and empower each other.” So instead of fighting negativity in social media, these young adults have decided to demonstrate the opposite, in keeping with what the research has been saying about millennials and with what aims to be a movement in a social networking skin.

It’s at the commercial end of what increasingly looks like a commercial-nonprofit spectrum of socially minded enterprise (as opposed to the old either-or construct), part of the “sharing economy” that author and economist Jeremy Rifkin says will be in full partnership with capitalism by mid-century.

RIZZARR and millennial projects at the nonprofit end of the “be the change” spectrum – such as ShestheFirst.org, sponsoring girls’ education in developing countries and MiasCloset.org for “building confidence and self-worth in underprivileged children” – look like direct responses to Dr. King’s statement that “life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

Related links

  • “Millennial Givers and a ‘Movement’ Approach to Giving” in Nonprofit Quarterly
  • “Millennials’ Charity” in the Huffington Post
  • “The Generation that Gives Back” from a member of it writing in the Huff Post
  • More research cited in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on “Millennials in the Social Sector”
  • Then there’s Generation Z, the 2 billion people on the planet born since 1995 (roughly speaking). “Research, though still in beta, points to the emergence of a stellar generation: educated, industrious, collaborative and eager to build a better planet,” MACLEANS reports, pointing out examples of the “empathy-driven ingenuity” of some of its members.
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Filed Under: Literacy & Citizenship, Social Media, social networking, Youth Tagged With: Ashley Williams, RIZZARR, social change, social good

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