How to Start a Youth Organisation

Listen, we're all on the same boat here.

A couple of months left until university/college applications and you've suddenly come upon the realisation that you have no extracurriculars and your CV is looking pretty dry. You curse your parents for not forcing you into a thousand different hobbies at age two and set out on your own journey of CV building. You only have three months to do as much as possible and pray that the admissions officer doesn't see through it.

You stumble upon the concept of youth organisations, and after going through 739 Facebook recruitment posts you realise that you won't just join a youth organisation, you are going to start your own. But how?

Follow these steps to build a "youth org", and remember your existence will be a tautology to the actual problem you're trying to fix. It doesn't really matter if you're there or not.

STEP 1

Find your cause but make sure you're raising awareness and capitalising on your privilege by becoming "The Voice of the Voiceless" because power and privilege totally aren't limited resources and you definitely need to add your voice into the narrative instead of amplifying those who have lived said experiences.

STEP 2

Build your team. Throw up a recruitment post and watch like-minded CV builders pour into your inbox. See, they need dramatic titles to make themselves feel important. Using Canva templates and fancy fonts doesn't sound great; let's call it Head of Social Media. Sending a "please like and follow" isn't going to cut it, call it Head of Marketing. Make sure your first 12 posts are announcing every member of your made-up departments.

STEP 3

Start the work and spread the news. Make your research team rephrase Wikipedia articles and insert them into the same four overused templates, maybe you can really spice up your content and add some stickers and stock images. Remember you can only post infographics of whatever is trending on Twitter. If you're a news page, be sure to have a graphic designer who carries the entire account on their back. You have to make them put in hours of their time and not pay them a penny for their work. Exposure to your school friends is the best compensation, right?

STEP 4

Add CEO/Founder to your Instagram bio because everyone knowing about your work is more important than your actual work. Bonus points if your "organisation" has a single Bangla word as a name which has some vague association with your purpose. When you leave for college or university, and so do your friends, your page will become another 600-follower page that has been abandoned after it has served its purpose.

So, you've built your youth organisation or have a plan of action ready to go. Let's meet Zameer, founder of a "youth organisation". He lives in Norway in his own little privilege bubble. He writes about poverty and protest pieces on his MacBook Pro and adds his voice-overs to trauma ASMR. Zameer's organisation is called "Zameer's Stick", he has a brilliant unpaid graphic designer, and adds nothing new to the narrative. He is like the news if it was a month late and only did it for views.

Aryah Jamil is mediocre at everything except laughing at their own jokes Tell her to stop talking at jamil.aryah@gmail.com