The birth of ReConnect

Two years ago, during summer holiday, two friends and I had decided to spend the day at the seaside. The day was perfect: warm weather, clear skies (a rarity here in the UK), and the companionship of two of my closest friends from school. Yet as we sat on the beach, I had (what felt like) a horrid realisation: my phone was about to run out of juice.

As irrational as it might sound, it felt like the day’s beauty and carelessness evaporated immediately; instead, dark clouds gathered overhead and I was left with an anxiety-filled pit in my stomach. Without my phone, without TikTok and podcasts and messaging, what would I do? What would we do? As I turned to my friends to let them in on my panic state—to seek solace from them—I had another awful realisation: How well did I even know them? In the absence of technology, what would we even talk about?

As these stress-fuelled fears showered down upon me, I had another realisation: if I didn’t change something now—for me, for my peers—it would be too late. Our precious youth—our precious time together, here, on this beach, and here, at this age—it would pass us by, an adolescence marked by friendships whose true richness and full potential had been literally screened off from us.

The genesis of ReConnect

That’s the exact moment when the idea for ReConnect popped into my head. Like a lightbulb, it brought me back to clarity—to the present—and got me so, so excited. By creating a resource for peer-to-peer connection and leadership development, I could help prevent moments like that one I had just experienced from overwhelming other teens like me.

As I envisioned it, ReConnect would be a platform aiming to facilitate a network of youth communities focused on discovering the world beyond their screens. They (we) would do this through active—the very operative word in this venture!—engagement in sports, community, and nature. More specifically, ReConnect would provide guidance, materials, and heaps of inspiration to help teen leaders all over the world implement their own, local ReConnect chapters.

Importantly, the curricula for the program would be flexible, so that chapter leaders could adapt activities per their needs and environments to refine sporting skills, improve fitness and nutrition, and establish healthier relationships with technology—all while forging international and cross-cultural friendships and making a positive impact on local communities. My own background—which has involved both a move from the US to the UK as a kid and a large amount of service work in Rwanda and Costa Rica—has taught me how life-changing such culture-spanning friendships can be. I want to promote that for the members of ReConnect and share the incredible benefits of such opportunities.

I am exceptionally hopeful that the ReConnect platform will not just improve my peers’ daily experiences but that it will leave a lasting mark on their attitudes and outlooks as they approach adulthood. Additionally, I hope ReConnect will be a creative opportunity: the leader guides we publish will provide key information and activity suggestions for the various local chapters—but we are also hoping to get input and new ideas from the chapters themselves. I look forward to hearing the stories of the change ReConnect helps to make. I can’t wait to see its ripple effect and, in the meantime, to see how getting my own face away from my phone and turned toward action changes how I see and experience the world. Onward and upward toward total Re-Connection!