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Shape the Internet’s Future with the Early Career Fellowship

Imagine a world where a global roster of Internet champions can stand up against the threats to the Internet.

This ideal was the inspiration for our new flagship program – the Early Career Fellowship!

This groundbreaking fellowship empowers a diverse new generation of Internet thinkers and doers.

The Early Career Fellows will have the opportunity to think, learning from Internet luminaries, today’s leading thinkers and organizations. They’ll explore topics like the Internet Ecosystem, Project Management & Advocacy, and the Internet Way of Thinking with Professor Dr Laura DeNardis of American University, scholars from the Oxford Internet Institute, and experts from the Internet Society, Diplo/GIP, Pyramid Learning and 89up.

The Fellows will also have the opportunity to do, getting direct support to nurture their professional growth. They’ll attend practical modules to help develop their own projects – bringing their ideas to life as they address the real-world challenges facing the future of the Internet.

These components, complemented with discussion, mentorship and leadership tracks, will:

• Increase the capacity of Internet champions through targeted educational and leadership development activities – and expand their expertise to support the development of the Internet
• Empower a cadre of talented early career professionals, giving Continue reading

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Chapter Leaders Worldwide Make the Case for Strong Encryption

What makes a great leader? Earlier this year, 473 Chapter Members participated in the 2020 Chapters Training Program. The Internet Society kicked off the program with a lot of hope and excitement. This was an opportunity to harness the power of us – our global community – to incubate innovative ideas and tomorrow’s Internet leaders.

The program aimed to develop new community leaders to work with their Chapters, create local awareness of the Internet Society’s mission-driven work, and become involved in Action Plan projects, including Encryption.

Each time we share information on the Internet, we assume that only our selected recipients – and no one else – will receive and read it. But how can we be sure? Ursula Wyss of the Switzerland Chapter says, this is “where end-to-end encryption comes in, since it ensures that only you and those people who are intentionally included in the conversation can read the messages that are being exchanged. This is done by scrambling the message in a way that it can only be read by those who have the right encryption key to unscramble it. For everyone else, the messages remain scrambled.”

The Encryption Chapters Training Program was developed Continue reading

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Empowering More Gretas: Introducing the 2019 IGF Youth Ambassadors

When 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg burst onto the global scene a few months ago, people underestimated the power this young girl would have to raise awareness and rally the world around climate change. Today, she has become a fearless advocate, boldly speaking out and holding politicians to account for their lack of action on the climate crisis. We need more Gretas.

And they’re out there.

We’re proud to introduce 30 young changemakers who make up the 2019 cohort of the Internet Society’s IGF Youth Ambassadors Program. The group is made up of 15 women and 15 men from 21 countries. This cadre of young leaders are working on many of the pressing issues affecting the Internet globally.

In November, they’ll bring their drive for change to Berlin, Germany, to take part in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). This is an annual multistakeholder forum for inclusive policy dialogue on shared principles, procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. Although not an official decision-making body, the IGF remains an important forum. Many of the world’s experts in and advocates for the Internet gather there for discussion, networking, research sharing, and best practices from around the Continue reading

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We Cannot Shape the Internet’s Future Without the Voices of Youth

After almost a decade, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) remains a cornerstone of international Internet and local governance with participation from over 140 countries. The approach of the IGF is simple: anyone who has a stake in the future of the Internet can go and be heard. It was founded and operates on the principles of being bottom-up, transparent, and inclusive.

At the Internet Society, we want to empower youth as a key force in reforming decision making approaches to deliver sound Internet policies that put people’s interests at the center. With the goal of having Youth Voices heard, together we must demand world leaders to break down the barriers that shut their voices out. With this in mind, and together with our partners, we have brought more than 200 youth to IGF 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, under the Youth@IGF program. This is part of our commitment to ensure that the next generation of Internet leaders are primed to advance an open, globally-connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet for everyone.

Some of the 50 Youth@IGF Fellows who attended this year’s IGF in Paris wanted to share with us their impressions of the Youth@IGF Program and the IGF.

Marko Paloski from Continue reading