George, together with other teenagers from around the globe, took part in the No Minor Futures Initiative, organised by the South American organisation JAAKLAC. Whilst this project was active, George participated as much as they could to ensure that the campaign would be sucsessful. The campaign was launched on the 23rd August, 2022.
At the start of the preparation, George’s main role was to participate in the oficinas (workshops), in which participants learnt about Artificial Inteligence. These oficinas showed the benefits and downsides of AI and digital technologies we use in our day to day life.
George also created a character to be used in the campaign. The Skyler character was created as a reflection of George themselves., our digital life and how social media and big tech (focusing on shopping companies) like Amazon and eBay are able to influence us without us noticing. In the animated Skyler video we see that although Skyler fell for Amazon’s trap, together with their parents, they managed to solve the problem, and work to become less influenced by big tech in general.
George was also quite active in creating podcasts. Taking the role of technical lead for most of the podcasts recorded, they ensured that the podcasts went with as little hiccups as possible. George, together with a close friend of theirs, Dimitris, were also given their own podcast, where amongst other things, they discussed the importance of moderation, without invading privacy. Even though George’s Spanish is quite at a beginner level, they also recorded bits of the Español Podcast, and were the host of said podcast.
This eventually led to George and some of their friends to co-write an article which was published on Global Voices.
Overall the No Minor Futures campaign was a success, as it gave George, and other teenagers from all around the world a new perspective of the digital life we’re living, and how important it is to speak up, in creative ways about stuff that matters to us.