Carolyn Lukensmeyer: Global Voices

Carolyn Lukensmeyer, founder and president of AmericaSpeaks, talking on video at the Soul of a Citizen website.

We have a broken democracy from the perspective of: Do the people’s voices make a difference in the policy choices that are most important to our country’s future?

Fortunately, in the last couple of decades there has been extraordinary word done to create methods and processes that bring the public back into real deliberation on the critical issues facing our country.

When you bring together a representative sample of the public and create a safe democratic space, they have a opportunity to explore in deep dialog the choices facing us on the issues that most impact their lives.

In August, AmericaSpeaks worked with the UN Environment Program to convene a global town hall of youth on climate change (pdf).

Young people from around the globe called on world leaders to take radical measures against climate change at the Seal the Deal Global Town Hall, the largest-ever truly global youth town hall on climate change. Some 700 young people, ranging from 10 to 24 years of age, produced a joint statement at the event that expressed their "concern and frustration that their governments are not doing enough to combat climate change," adding that "we now need more actions and less talking."

The global town hall was part of the new Global Voices project, the "international arm of AmericaSpeaks" (not to be confused with GlobalVoicesOnline.org, the project by Rebecca MacKinnon Ethan Zuckerman).