PSN staff are smiling while holding up orange and yellow signs that read, "Biden declare climate emergency"

About Power Shift Network

Our Mission

Power Shift Network mobilizes the collective power of young people to mitigate climate change and create a just, clean energy future and resilient, thriving communities for all.

What is Power Shift Network?

We’re an intergenerational network of organizations and campaigns that center the diverse young people most impacted by the climate crisis. 

Young people today face a world in crisis: a broken political system, deepening inequality, entrenched and emboldened racism, and a catastrophically changing climate. But we’re committed to action, mutual support, and solidarity.Wwe’re building a strong, intersectional, bottom-up movement to take on the climate crisis, shift the power, and create systemic change.

Network members are combatting climate and environmental injustice, stopping dirty energy projects, divesting from fossil fuels, fixing democracy, and building the just, clean-energy powered future young people need— all while working through an intersectional lens that allows them to organize as their full selves. We understand that these issues are deeply interlinked, and we believe that we can better tackle them as a coordinated network.

Our Vision

Through the collective power of young people, the Power Shift Network is working for a safe climate and just future where communities are thriving and own their power—whether that power is electrical, economic, social, or political.

Our Network Model

A network is made up of interconnected nodes and horizontal relationships, each adding to the strength and resilience of the whole. Power Shift Network members don’t just work through our staff and programs: they also connect with, collaborate with, and support one another. 

We aim to give our Members the autonomy to self-organize through providing strategic support including: training, coaching, networking, connections, and resources. As a flexible network, we’re able to move quickly in a rapidly changing world. As a community, we’re able to build long-term trust and alignment for joint action.

Our Guiding Principles

  • We believe in supporting, convening, and mobilizing young people to build and carry out innovative campaigns. In practice this looks like rebuilding Action Teams within our Network.
  • We believe that we must resist climate impacts, pollutants, and the fossil fuel industry AND seed and spread community-based solutions that foster social, economic, and environmental justice.
  • We believe that ownership and control of power matters, and that to achieve our vision we must work to distribute ownership of energy, wealth, and social and political power. In practice this looks like PSN’s Giving Circle, our wealth distribution hub, and our microgrant/regranting program.
  • We believe that those less directly harmed by extractive economies and climate change must stand in solidarity with those who are. We believe that collaboration and diversity makes us stronger, and is crucial to realizing our vision.
  • We believe that our shared vision of a more just, equitable, and sustainable world is possible and the journey to it reflects a long history of movements - many led by young people - creating bold shifts in power.
  • We believe in bottom-up governance based on trust, accountability, and transparency, and taking action as the essential expression of making decisions.
  • We believe in embracing experimentation and growing through failure; we learn through honest conversation and peer evaluation.

As a network, we also support and endorse the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing.