Learning between grown-ups and kids should be reciprocal. The reality, unfortunately, is a little different, and it has a lot to do with trust, or a lack of it.
Young people are often asked, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' and given advice about how to lead meaningful adult lives, but where's the encouragement to lead meaningful lives right now?
Since the age of four, I've been exploring what I can do with the written word: everything from championing literacy and youth voice to raising awareness about world hunger.
Success on the front of women's rights will look like a world not only with obvious advances - where no girl is denied access to education, for instance - but also one with more subtle changes in how we regard gender and gender stereotypes.
By creating so many illusory images of physical perfection, whether on store aisles or storefronts ads, magazine covers or TV show, we speak more to the profit margins of companies than the self-esteem of today's girls.
There's no committee that says, 'This is the type of person who can change the world - and you can't.' Realizing that anyone can do it is the first step. The next step is figuring out how you're going to do it.
A lot of negative words adults call the young, like 'naive,' 'impulsive' and 'way too connected online,' are all things we can turn into strengths to help us.