In this interview ICNC speaks with Ilaina Rabbat, a 2010 alum of the Fletcher Summer Institute, and a program manager for Ashoka's Youth Venture program.  Her career involves working with young people throughout South America to build their capacity as successful change agents in their respective communities, tackling social issues in creative and innovative ways.  As an organizer in this field, Ila's work is closely tied to Gandhi's idea of the "constructive program" - the idea that in a nonviolent struggle, people may need to do more than just resist the status quo, they may also need to create new structures, institutions, and lifestyles in order to start living the alternative future they seek to create.  As Gandhi said, "we must be the change we wish to see in the world."  Ila's work with Youth Venture is a prime example of this idea put into practice.

Interview:

Ilaina Rabbat (IR): Well my name is Ilaina, Ilaina Rabbat, and you can call me Ila if it’s easier. I was born in Venezuela but I grew up in Argentina and I’ve also lived in Spain.

How and why did you first get involved as an organizer for social justice causes?

IR: Well, my parents were exiled from Argentina under the dictatorship , so that’s why I was born in Venezuela, and my sister in Peru. Because of that, I grew up within this culture of human rights and social movements where it was important to improve things within your surroundings and within the world. So with all this knowledge in my family and all this support I started, when I was very young, to take action within my neighborhood and within my school. Then I started an organization when I was 15 years old talking about youth rights and how it’s important, as a youth, to be a full citizen and not to wait till you’re a grown-up to start making change, you can make change now. I was called Argentinean Youth Organization for the United Nations. So we worked mainly through education and other projects as well as advocacy campaigns. Now I work in Ashoka, mainly in the youth venture program.

What are Ashoka and youth venture?

IR: Ashoka Is an organization that was born 25 years ago. And our founder Bill Dayton traveled once to India where he learned about Ashoka. Ashoka was an Indian king, and many prople refer to him as the first person who started to apply nonviolence into daily life and into government. So Ashoka, the organization, was born with these ideas and with these principals. And we also believe that Ashoka, the person, was the first social entrepreneur.  He started working in his own communities with innovation that really changed social problems.

What is a social entrepreneur?

IR: A person who is a social entrepreneur is a person who has an innovative solution for a social problem that creates a systematic change; it’s a solution that can reach the different problems within a problem. So it’s not only to just focus on, say, poverty. Poverty has a lot of different issues within the surroundings so to have the ambition and the strategy to analyze the problem, approach the problem in an original way.

Why focus on youth as social entrepreneurs?

IR: After working many years in Ashoka we did a survey between all our fellows, these social entrepreneur persons, and we found that the common characteristic between all these people was that during their childhood or teenage years they started a social project and were successful in that social project and because of that experience they went on to continue to do social change in their life. And that’s why Ashoka has created youth venture, the project I’m working on, and Youth Venture focuses on young people between 12 and 24 years of age because we believe that this is the age when you’re really creating your self esteem and is a critical moment to realize that you’re an active citizen and you can really make change.

Clip: “we’re happy, full of hope! There’s nothing better than a gathering of thousands of young people that are motivated, and full of dreams. Because the only thing that will change the world are dreams, nothing but dreams. Look at them! Look at them!"

Clip: “Other organizers have been in touch with us because our project was either part of the organization of the Avancmos Ashoka. That is a remarkable issue.”

Clip: “Thanks to the Avancamos, the project has been greatly disseminated both within the Latin American and within the whole world as well as Argentina of course."

Clip: “The nicest thing that happened to me after meeting Avancemos and Ashoka has been the chance to grow as a person and as a social leader I’ve also acquired tools to be able to transform my everyday reality. “

Clip: “I once said that Avancemos gatherings were similar traveling in a plane over the ocean. At night you sense that everything is dark but then when you see a city somewhere it makes the darkness vanish into thin air. Avancemos meetings are the same as cities you can see them in the dark, they are lights gathering lots of youth, people carrying brightness with them. “

How is nonviolent conflict and civil resistance integrated into your work?

IR: For me it was quite interesting to learn about this nonviolent conflict because I have been working with this concept for a lot of time but never knew what you’d call it. I really believe in civil resistance, but in a peaceful way.  I often educate young people to… maybe not to resist but to change things and to really have the tools to confront the system and don’t be quiet and don’t be passive because they really can do it, and they have to do it. So all of these social movements that we’re trying to create with Youth Venture and Ashoka are linked to this nonviolent conflicts, because if you want a free society, if you want human rights, if you want freedom of expression, all of these things, you need change makers in your society, you need people with power, but with social power, with positive power that can really make change possible.

How does Gandhi’s idea of the “constructive program” relate to your work?

IR: Gandhi had a very holistic approach and a very different approach about how to reach civil society. And he also talks about oppression and how it’s important to not be oppressive. But in order not to be oppressive you need to have positive things in your life and you really need to create an environment for this to happen and that’s what Ashoka is doing. Ashoka gives you the power to do it and gives you the tools to be able to make change in your life. We are constructing a new society, it’s not just to change the old one or just to resist the old society, but to really create new structures, new ways of communications new ways of relations. And it’s not enough to say this is not working or we want another thing or just to perpetrate the status quo. Gandhi talked about this. We don’t want to perpetrate the status quo, we want to change the status quo, we want to change structures. Also Ghandi talks a lot about youth because he realized the power of youth – they are important.

What kind of trainings are available through youth venture?

IR: Part of our training is about motivation about why you as young people should be involved in social issues, why it is important and why you can do it. <any young people say “Ila, I can’t do that. That’s impossible. I don’t have the money, I don’t know how to do it.  I don’t have time.  I don’t know where to start. I don’t want to do that.” But then when you start showing them the tool I show them that you can do it. You have time. You have all the opportunities to do it.  You have this strength and this faith in life. You can do it. We also bring fellows to talk with young people to inspire them to see how they started. Also when they started it looked impossible and now they are doing it and still improving it, so inspiration is very important. We also work a lot with teachers and professors because we feel like that those folks are a very important part of motivating young people. We also have regional and national gatherings because we believe that people have the need to know each other in their own region, know how their working, and collaborate between them and form these partnerships to really improve their communities. And these are national gatherings with not only from people from Argentina but from Chile Mexico, El Salvador Nicaragua and other countries as well, and these are powerful moments because they feel like they’re not alone in trying to change their communities because sometimes it’s very hard work. So they feel like they’re not alone and one can say to another “oh Ive had the same problem as you how did you solve it how did you do it? We have a saying in Ashoka we’re not going to give them a fish, we’re not going to teach them how to fish, we want them to revolutionize the fish industry. We want them to think out of the box.

What message do you have for young people interested in creating social change?

IR: Young people between 15 and 24 years old make up 20 percent of the population, so they make up 1 out of every 5 people. And also, make up 25 percent of the active labor force. So if you really want to improve the world, if you want to develop our communities, if you want to make positive change, you need to empower young people.