YWCA’s Own It Campaign

The YWCA has launched the Own It campaign, in conjunction with their 150th Anniversary, aimed at motivating women between the ages of 18 and 30 to take “purposeful action.” The campaign will include a series of reports over the next year, one of them just released on Monday. Check out the video:

I’m torn. On the one hand, I’m always excited when national institutions with long, rich histories of helping women set their sights on the younger generation and commit some resources to reaching out. The YWCA should be applauded for looking forward, not backward, on their 150th anniversary.
On the other hand, I feel like efforts to reach out to younger women often end up feeling pretty patronizing (i.e. the lead in to the video) and/or vague (“own it”? “take action”? What do these things really mean?).
A few questions come up for me:
What younger women did the YWCA engage younger women in creating this campaign? I know they’re surveying them over the course of the year, which is fantastic, but what about involving them in the strategic planning of the movement itself? If they did, it would be nice to see that indicated in the website either through some kind of young women board of advisers or just a strong commitment in the literature.
Which women between the ages of 18 and 30 is this campaign aimed at? There are certainly women in that age range who aren’t activists, and indeed, I commend an effort to engage those folks. But, and this is a big but, there are also so many young women–in fact far more, according to most studies on youth activism and volunteerism, already engaged in social action (Samhita just posted a video that includes many of them.). Is the campaign a repository for their stories? What will be done with all these stories?
Who are the girls in this video and what is their action? I imagine that this video was modeled after the infamously viral Wyclef video for Obama (as it seems so many others have been lately), but those were known celebrities touting a known entity. These girls are intriguing, but rather than hearing them repeat the same phrases continually, I would have loved to see them tell a story or two. This would have helped substantiate that the campaign recognizes that there are young women doing a lot of important work in the world beyond talktalktalking about how much they hate racism.
Again, very excited to see such venerable institutions devoting dollars and energy to the next generation. Just hungering for some clarity, some stories, and some clear indication that young women are the ones shaping this campaign.