Youth Venture® is an international community of young people who are powerful now, changemakers now. Youth Venture inspires and invests in teams of young people to create and launch their own sustainable, community-benefiting ventures. Youth Venture then connects them into a global movement of young changemakers who are together redefining the youth years as a time of leadership and positive social change. This is the foundation of an Everyone a Changemaker™ world - the key factor for success in every part of society. Youth Venture currently operates in 14 countries and online at www.GenV.net.
Our Venturers start businesses, civil society organizations and informal programs that address all kinds of social issues, including poverty, health, the elderly, the environment, education, diversity issues, and the arts. Youth Venture helps our Venturers through this process of designing and launching their ventures, providing guidance, how-to's, and a process for designing and pitching a venture idea.
When the Venture team is ready to launch, Youth Venture offers:
- Seed funding of up to $1,000
- Guidance, tools and support
- Allies who provide advice, mentoring and expertise
- A supportive network of fellow Youth Venturers
- Identity as part of movement toward youth-led social change
After the team has launched, Youth Venture works to stay continually involved with the team. Youth Venture also connects Venturers into a fellowship of like-minded young people, helping them see that they are part of something bigger, catalyzing a movement of youth-led social change.
Youth Venture plays a critical role in actualizing Ashoka's vision of Everyone a Changemaker™. By giving young people the means to know that they have the ability to change the environment around them, Ashoka believes that youth will gain the skills and innate understanding that they can be powerful long into their adult future. Through this experience, young people will grow up practicing applied empathy, teamwork, and leadership-the underlying skills needed to make change.