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"If you were walking down the street and saw a child slapped hard by an adult, what would you do?" Benjamin Quinto, the 23-year old Associate Director of Global Youth ACTION Network, poses the question and answers it by saying, "You'd get involved." He goes on to say that 35,000 children die around the world per day of hunger, disease, and other preventable causes. "If a person would intervene on behalf of one child, shouldn't we all be intervening for those thousands of children? So we're asking young people to get involved. We want young people especially to know what's going on and to figure out what they can do about it."

In fact, that's exactly what Benjamin did as a young high school graduate living in New York. He thought that he would be an actor but was already beginning to question that choice when a friend took him to the U.N. As he sat in on a meeting, he looked around the room and realized that he was the youngest person there by 30 or 40 years.

The question he asked himself-"Where are all the young people?"-was the first step in finding his own voice. He spent three years researching and writing a proposal to create a U.N. Youth Assembly.

As he began to talk with other people working to give young people a voice and as he became more and more familiar with what he was doing, Benjamin realized that what young people around the world really needed was a network. With that knowledge, Benjamin worked with other young people to create Global Youth ACTION Network, a network that gives active young people opportunities to share what they're doing and provides others with a chance to connect and become active in their communities, countries, and world.

Benjamin has not lost sight of his original goal but wants to make sure that a U.N. Youth Assembly is truly democratic. "We're laying the foundation with the Network," he explains. "We want young people from around the world to know and understand each other so that when they come into power in politics and other arenas, they have a foundation of understanding."

The Network also worked with Youth Service America to take its Youth Service Day global. In partnership with more than 100 youth organizations, the Network established Global Youth Service Day, which took place for the first time in April 2000, with 27 participating countries. This year, Global Youth ACTION Network expects as many as 150 participating organizations and almost 4 million young people to participate. It has also provided face-to-face forums in which young people can come together and talk about important issues.

The Network recently partnered with TakingITGlobal to create an Internet-based activist clearinghouse that provides opportunities and information for young people interested in speaking out and becoming active in social justice and service.

Through the use of tools like the clearinghouse and an international service day as well as the opportunities to meet face to face, Benjamin believes that he and his colleagues are finding a new way to make the world a better place. "We want young people to know and understand each other, to form friendships, so that when they are the ones making decisions, they'll have a different knowledge set with which to make them."

The journey Benjamin has embarked on is not likely to be simple or easy and he's already overcome his share of obstacles. But what he's doing now is a direct response to what he saw as a high school student. "I looked around and saw students exposed to so much violence even in places that were supposed to be safe like school. I knew so many people who were hopeless and depressed, some even suicidal. I wondered what kind of world this was."

But he didn't stop with asking the question. He found a way to answer it differently. Today, he is bound to make the world a more hopeful and better place. You can already hear the difference what he is doing has made in his own life. ""This network is made up of extraordinary young people. My peers are some of the most inspiring people I know."