The Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF) today announced an exciting new partnership with Mobilize.org, a national millennial organization which has been energizing millions of young Americans to take a greater role in understanding and protecting the policy interests of Americans born between the years 1976 and 1996, otherwise known as the Millennial Generation.

Funded by PGPF, and co-produced by Mobilize.org, the foundation will host its first national Youth Summit in Chicago, IL from November 18th to the 20th – just over one year after Chicago’s Barack  Obama was elected as our nation’s President.

The Youth Summit, entitled Democracy 2.0: Exploring the Millennial Generation’s ROI, standing for “return on investment,” will convene today’s leading youth voices as well as a number of newcomers who will offer fresh perspectives and thoughtful proposals for reform and change.

To that end, PGPF and Mobilize.org are inviting Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 with solutions for improving the economic health  of the Millennial generation and a desire to participate in this exciting and forward-thinking dialogue to submit their ideas via an online application, which  can be found  on  www.Mobilize.org [1] . Submissions will be accepted until October 17, 2009.

Those who wish to attend in the Summit  as a participant only may also go to Mobilize.org and apply for an invitation. For selected Summit participants who need it, travel and accommodation expenses will be paid.

PGPF and Mobilize.org will award grants totaling up to $25,000 for selected projects and proposals that rise to the top during the Summit through  the use of interactive keypad voting technology. Additionally, funded ideas will receive 12 months of support from Mobilize.org whose partner network and funders are committed to further building their success.

The three  day Youth Summit will focus on (1) exploring the barriers preventing today’s younger generation from achieving financial health and (2) developing the actions plans necessary to begin setting an agenda for millennial-led economic reform in the United States.

“The Peterson Foundation and Mobilize.org recognize that young Americans must become more active in protecting their economic futures. They represent a significant group in America, but are too often ignored because of more organized and vocal constituencies. We are providing support for various tools, resources, and forums necessary to enable today’s Millennial leaders to work collaboratively and develop solutions to the fiscal and selected other economic challenges facing our nation and their generation,” said Dave Walker, President and CEO of PGPF.

“Mobilize.org is a millennial-built, millennial-led organization that understands that the economic well-being of this generation is the key to our success, both today and tomorrow. It’s not enough for us to identify our most pressing individual issues, we must take the lead and work collaboratively to propose solutions and then obtain the resources needed to implement and institutionalize those solutions. We believe this Youth Summit will be a key catalyst in this process,” said Maya Enista, CEO of Mobilize.org.

The Millennial generation faces giant hurdles in putting its economic future on a sustainable path. These include increasing personal debt, decreasing employment opportunities, inadequate health care coverage, and rapidly disappearing safety nets for later years.

Prominent young leaders and key youth-focused organizations will share best practices, talk about the work that they are already doing, and learn from one another. They will also focus in depth on how to create an economic agenda that includes shared action between organizations and serious commitments from the funding world.

The Summit is also organized in association with Lifetuner, a web-based program co-created with more than 400 young adults, which offers guidance on what young Americans can do to get their personal finances into the best possible shape for the short and long haul.

Based in Berkeley, California and Washington, D.C., and focused on the interests of over 80 million young Americans, Mobilize.org works to show members of the millennial generation how public policy impacts their lives, and more importantly – how they can impact public policy.

Since its July 2008 launch, PGPF has used creative means and partnerships to focus young Americans on the nation’s growing fiscal challenges and it direct impact their generation. These include the current  partnership with Mobilize.org, as well as other youth-targeted ventures such as  Budgetball [2], and the  InDebtEd campaign  [3]which features “Debt Ski,” a viral video game developed in conjunction with MTV’s college network mtvU.

Other efforts have included the acquisition and promotion of “I.O.U.S.A.,” a nonpartisan documentary about  America’s perilous fiscal status; and a popular Twitter feed that tracks the national debt.

About Mobilize.org

Mobilize.org is an all-partisan network dedicated to educating, empowering, and energizing young people to increase our civic engagement and political participation. For more information, visit www.Mobilize.org [1].

About the Peter G. Peterson Foundation:

PGPF is dedicated to increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of key economic challenges threatening America’s future and to accelerating action on them. To address these challenges successfully, we work to bring Americans together to find sensible, long-term solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results. For more information, see www.PGPF.org [4].