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Your network is valuable, and provides an important source of “social capital.” Through SAGE all participants can increase the value of their networks.
Have you ever heard of Metcalfe's law? This law says:
“Take the number of people in your relevant network and square it. This is the value of your network.”
For example, if there are 20 people in your network, its value is 400. If you add one new member, the value doesn’t go to 21 or 401. It goes to 21 * 21, or 421.
First formulated by Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe's law explains many of the network effects of communication technologies and networks such as the Internet and World Wide Web. According to Wikipedia, the law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: A single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom you may send and receive documents increases.
If you are a high school student, your SAGE network includes university students, business leaders, civic leaders, and SAGE students from other countries. SAGE cuts across boundaries between secondary education and higher education; between education and business; between business and government; and, most importantly, between countries. One of SAGE’s goals is to give all participants a global perspective along with local insight.
Through voluntary associations such as SAGE, the amount of “social capital” you can add to your communities is based on your networks, and access to resources provided by members of the network. Used effectively, your network can provide a new source of social wealth, and possibly financial wealth, especially in a democratic society.
The eighth goal of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals recognizes the importance of cooperation to develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth. Moreover, in his book, The World is Flat, journalist Thomas Friedman (2005) commented on the importance of youth empowerment.
His comments apply to SAGE’s goals:
“Give young people a context where they can translate a positive imagination into reality, give them a context in which someone with a grievance can have it adjudicated in a court of law without having to bribe the judge with a goat, give them a context in which they can pursue an entrepreneurial idea and become the richest or the most creative or most respected people in their own country, no matter what their background, give them a context in which any complaint or idea can be published in the newspaper, give them a context in which anyone can run for office—and guess what? They usually don’t want to blow up the world. They usually want to be part of it.”