User:Emily alice/USA Cooperative Youth Council

USA Cooperative Youth Council (USACYC)

Overview
The USA Cooperative Youth Council (USACYC) is a national federation of young people (age 17-30) and their allies involved in the cooperative movement. USACYC operates as a common equity, non-distributive cooperative and is incorporated as a Minnesota State (317A) and Federal (501c3) Non-Profit Corporation. "[m]ost of the USACYC’s membership is comprised of young people who do not work within any of our largest cooperative institutions, and, instead, come from smaller cooperatives or organizations that identify as “grassroots”. USACYC connects small groups of youth working to democratize various sectors of the economy to one another.

USACYC is one of the relatively early adopters of the .Coop Domain.

Definition of Youth
The USA Coopeartive Youth Council defines youth as folks in their late teens through their 20s for three stated reasons:


 * 1) PRACTICAL: Depending on the state, you can’t be an owner of enterprise (so, you can’t be a member of a cooperative) until you are 17 or 18. While engaging young folks in cooperation is important for sure, there is only so far you can go with it. In a similar vein, you are legally considered a “child” and are largely without autonomy or rights until 17 or 18 – this holds true for many other places throughout the world.
 * 2) INTERNATIONAL context: The United Nations and its agencies talk about youth in different ways, but it always starts in your mid to late teens and goes up towards age 30. This is largely because most folks in their early teens and younger do not have social, political, or economic rights. In the cooperative movement outside the US, youth is classified as late teens or early twenties to age 30, 35, or 40.
 * 3) HISTORICAL: Agitation and collective power building has historically been a trait of youth all over the world and not just in the US – e.g. Civil Rights Movement, Arab Spring, and the Quebec Student Revolution. What is unique to the US context is a sort of stigmatization of this role of youth as a “phase” or as, worse, as “endearing.” All over the world and throughout the last century, this has been one of youth's most important contributions to society.

Programs
USACYC holds annual Convergence events bringing together youth cooperativists from all over the country together.