Unlike the coming-of-age experiences that are painstakingly familiar to Americans in their 40s and older – including duck-and-cover drills, mushroom clouds from atmospheric testing, and the Cuban Missile Crisis – nuclear threats often have little resonance beyond historical trivia with most of today's teens and twenty-somethings. New generations of Americans have grown up in a much different era after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which signified the end of the Cold War and, in many peoples' minds, the end of the nuclear threat.

Nevertheless, thanks in part to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's efforts, an increasing number of today's younger generation are realizing that the threats posed by nuclear weapons are enormous and daunting challenges, and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust is one of the most pressing concerns facing their generation. The Foundation's Youth Empowerment Initiative has attained nationwide success and recognition through its work to effect a coordinated, grassroots movement for nuclear disarmament among students and youth nationwide.

Our Mission

The Youth Empowerment Initiative aims to engage, inspire, and empower young people, ages 16-29, to work for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. We desire to see a new generation of peace leaders rise to the forefront of the current struggle for nuclear disarmament, to enliven existing disarmament efforts with fresh perspectives and approaches, and to interject a distinct and passionate voice for nuclear sanity into the current international debate about the utility and legitimacy of nuclear arms.

Our Work

Our principal means of engaging young people in our work are education, leadership development, and resource support.

Education is an inherent aspect of all Youth Empowerment Initiative projects -- and the principal focus of several. We periodically produce publications and brochures aimed at disseminating information to, and specifically for, young people. Most notable among these materials is the 2005 Demilitarization Guide. Our UC Nuclear Free Web site serves primarily as information resource for youth and students wishing to learn more about the issues with which that campaign is principally concerned.

Among our programs geared primarily toward leadership development are our “Think Outside the Bomb” conferences, of which three are scheduled for the 2006 calendar year, and the Peace Leadership Club program, which seeks to nurture the ability of high school students nationwide to effect change on a local, national, and global scale. Our UC Nuclear Free and national Campus Demilitarization programs encompass all three of the aforementioned means but fall most closely under the category of resource support. Through these programs, we provide the information and organizing tools necessary for students at university campuses both throughout California and nationwide to build a coordinated movement to disarm and democratize their campuses in a manner supportive of our vision of global nuclear disarmament.