Young People First: Future Preparedness Index

Producing the Future Preparedness Index (FPI) is the intellectual focus of Young People First. It is not a traditional index in that it neither tracks a set of indicators numerically to produce an assessment, nor does it rate legislators based on a simple voting rubric. The Young People First team has developed a framework for FPI development, based on our consultations with young thinkers and coalition partners regarding the challenges facing the United States. As we reach out, our guiding principle is to identify the basic necessities of what it will take right now to ensure a peaceful and prosperous America in twenty-five years. The Legislation Analysis Corps (LA Corps) is the organizational backbone of Young People First. Initially, our recruitment will rely heavily on our coalition partners, as well as other partnering organizations and by reaching out through connections throughout the blogosphere. Young people who complete one of the trainings successfully, and demonstrate the capacity to read, write, and organize effectively will be invited to join the first group of LA Corps members. The relationship between the LA Corps and the FPI is an especially important one. The LA Corps will begin with a guide for analyzing how well individual pieces of legislation, or potential legislation, help America meet our Future Preparedness goals. The LA Guide will teach Corps members to use quick reference to cost projections and possible outcomes to determine what kind of impact the new legislation will have on long-term targets. This guide will be a living document that provides issue breakdowns, including problems that need solving in order to reach the Future Preparedness goal, potential solutions to those problems, and ways the problems could be made worse. Our website will be the home of the FPI online, a place for LA Corps members to collaborate on legislation analysis and organize around Future Preparedness, and the center of the LA Corps alumni network. As the home of the FPI, our website will explain the concept of Future Preparedness and offer a description of the methodology behind the categories. It will also feature commentary and articles by young people on the importance of Future Preparedness. The broader YPF community will be invited to provide feedback and to engage in advocacy. While executing a robust methodology for producing the FPI, training a talented LA Corps, and building an interactive web platform are all critical to our success, we ultimately seek to change in policy priorities in the United States. That means our constituency has to advocate. The LA Corps will organize on a grassroots level, in colleges and communities, to demonstrate the strength of the youth voice in support of Future Preparedness. They will distribute their analysis and commentary through social media, in college newspapers, blogs, and communications with thought leaders on both state and national levels.