Empowering Young People

Grounded in progressive values, Empowering Young People takes stock of the pressing challenges we face as a society while highlighting how youth activists can help us envision a more collaborative, equitable, and inclusive future. It emboldens young activists and the adults who make key decisions on their behalf to prioritize strategies to help young people engage more actively in public life.

In recent years, young people are sounding the alarm about a wide range of concerns connected to environmental and social injustices. They focus on immigration, reproductive rights, race, school issues including book banning, gun violence, policy brutality, LGBTQ+ rights, mental health, and more. By bringing historical and social justice perspectives to his interviews with young activists and their mentors, as well as his observations about community organizations, William Marsiglio chronicles the kind of youth activism and civic engagement that is happening on the ground. The book shows how passionate young people cultivate a sense of belonging inside their activist groups; negotiate conflicting perspectives about time to inform and influence critical decision making about past, present, and future issues; and strive to create places that truly embody civic virtues. Finding inspiration in young people’s approaches to empathy, leadership, civic engagement, and social activism, Marsiglio outlines diverse and specific initiatives for building supportive institutions and opportunities that can empower them while fostering the social change they seek.

Illuminated by the voices and stories of these young activists and the groups supporting them, Empowering Young People reveals the seeds of hope for readers of all ages and, in acknowledging the serious challenges we face, offers a detailed roadmap to achieve a world defined by environmental sustainability and humane inclusivity

William Marsiglio is Professor of Sociology at the University of Florida. He is a leading scholar in the fields of family and fatherhood and a fellow of the National Council on Family Relations. At the University of Florida, he teaches courses that focus on people and places, civic virtues, men and masculinities, social psychology, families, and gender and reproductive experiences, topics that have been central to his scholarship. He is the author of fourteen books and nearly seventy scholarly articles and chapters on related topics. His recent books. People, Places, and Belonging (2025) and Chasing We-Ness (2023), both with the University of Toronto Press, explore timely strategies for promoting individual and social change.