I’m in the thick of researching and reporting my new book on young people and social change (finally!) and it’s been bringing up all sorts of new and exciting issues for me. Sunday I spent the whole day with a group of New York City high school students who have developed a fascinating project called NY2NO. I’m profiling one of the co-founders, an awesome young guy named Alex Epstein.

NY2NO takes NYC-area high school students down to New Orleans and teaches them about community organizing and gives them a chance to participate in making folks lives better down there—whether recording oral histories from ninth ward survivors or cleaning water damage in the first floor of a public housing building etc.

One of the things that strikes me most about Alex is that he is so deeply committed to face-to-face interaction. He and his friends were so inspired by the experience of canvassing in New Orleans—essentially going door-to-door and asking folks what they need, how they’re doing, what their stories are—that he came back to NYC and decided to do the same with homeless people. He and three friends took a video camera and went out and asked people of all different ages: how did you end up on the streets? What could you imagine would help you get off the streets?

The stories he collected about abuse and neglect, drug addiction and interpersonal violence, were so sad, and sadly unsurprising. Alex’s courage, however, surprised the hell out of me. He approached folks who he has been socialized to be scared of or just ignore altogether with such tenderness and curiosity.

There are two lessons I’m learning from the research right now: one is that young people are deeply committed to face-to-face interaction and the power of storytelling, and the second, is that young people are far more adept than previous generations in making connections between local and national, and even international, issues. Alex saw the effects of institutional racism and poverty in New Orleans, so he looked at NYC with new eyes and started making all kinds of connections right in his own backyard.

Talk about hope.

–Courtney Martin