Last Tuesday night, Justin Rockefeller, CC '02, spoke in Hamilton  about Generation Engage, the civic engagement initiative he co-founded. The four-year-old organization was created on the premise that voting rates correlate strongly with volunteerism rates, and it addresses the civic opportunity gap for young people who do not attend college because that demographic has tended not to vote in elections in large numbers. To find out how Generation Engage addresses this gap, click here.

Nicole Cata is an Events Coordinator for CPU who helped organize Mr. Rockefeller's appearance.

Rockefeller attributed this gap, in part, to the lack of access to such factors as earmarked funding, professors who discuss politics, and an engaged student body. According to him, organizations like Generation Engage are important because of the United States' claim to a legitimate democracy, and because of their affect on party affiliations - for example, young people who worked for FDR, by and large, are still democrats, while those who worked for Reagan are still republicans.

Rockefeller then addressed the specific structure and tasks of Generation Engage, which he described as a civic infrastructure with 8,500 members and offices in Miami, the Silicon Valley, San Jose, Charlottesville, and Raleigh. Membership is free and based on the completion of a survey, which asks potential members whether they voted in the past election and how many hours in the past year they volunteered. The goals of Generation Engage are to inform, convene, connect, and act. The organization hires two social entrepreneurs per community and facilitates an ambassadors program wherein the most active members put together events.

Directly addressing Columbia students, Rockefeller presented five action points, encouraging them to 1) write to their local representatives and senators about the Serve America Act because there are currently not enough New Yorkers on board; 2) visit the America Forward website; 3) visit http://www.change.gov, the offshoot of President-Elect Obama's former campaign website, to provide ideas; 4) help rebuild the Generation Engage operation in New York, and 5) embrace their frustrations. To contact Rockefeller, email him at Justin@GenerationEngage.org.