5) Description of initiative: Global Youth Fund offers the world’s 1.2 billion youth (ages 13 to 25) the first and only development fund that is managed by the young people themselves through an open and democratic process.

The fund offers youth of all backgrounds and beliefs a truly open and inclusive forum to find common ground and set common goals, which they then achieve together.

Through our program, young people learn – at an early age – that people with different beliefs are not obstacles to the better world they envision. In fact, they can be partners.

Every year, Global Youth Fund guides youth through a democratic process to select ONE global campaign. Youth research and nominate projects for funding, educate their peers, champion their causes, engage in dialogue with other youth, and then take part in a worldwide voting to select one project to adopt.

Once chosen, the project becomes Global Youth Fund’s official campaign for that year and youth all around the world will work to fulfill the campaign goals they set for themselves.

The young people will see firsthand that diversity (of youth) can make them stronger, smarter, and better global citizens.

6) Description of innovation: Global Youth Fund’s open and democratic model has never been tried before in the fields of philanthropy and youth engagement. Foundations, governments and other grant makers typically rely on small committees to decide what projects to fund. Even foundations that engage youth in grantmaking tend to rely on small committees of youth that “advise” the adult board.

Our model gives young people true decision-making powers, exercised in an open, non-hierarchical, and truly democratic system.

Even better, we ask the young people to offer their own solutions – to design, research and propose global actions that Global Youth Fund can adopt.

This bottom-up, inclusive, and collective approach has proven itself time and time again to be superior to more closed systems that rely on “experts.” Its success is well documented in the book, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, who shows why and when the “many are smarter than the few.”

It’s time that we experiment with the “open source” model in philanthropy. In so doing, we can…

a) give young people a greater sense of ownership and responsibility over global actions they undertake

b) show them the important role they play as individuals even if they are not experts

c) foster peer-to-peer learning, proving to all that youth are their best teachers.

Most importantly, we can introduce a new vision of “global citizenship” – one that embraces differences not for its own sake but for the greater good.

7) Delivery model: We have two methods of delivery: online and chapters.

1) Online: Our website offers youth everywhere the opportunity to take part in Global Youth Fund, provided they have internet access. Though some workshops, dialogues and other activities are offered only in some cities, all of the fund’s essential business can be conducted online.

2) Chapters: Schools, school districts, and community groups may decide to form Global Youth Fund chapters that target youth of a specific area. These chapters may decide to adopt their own global campaign, separate from the one that Global Youth Fund International adopts. However, all chapters share the same online space as GYF International.

8) Key operational partnerships: For now, we have formed partnerships with schools and school districts, mostly in the Vancouver, BC area. As we gear up for Global Youth Fund’s global launch, we will secure partnerships with educational institutions in other countries.

We will rely on these partnerships as our primary means to recruit committed youth participants for our program.

9) Financial model: Our program is and will be free for youth participants. Any young person can participate in the global effort to select and support Global Youth Fund’s annual campaign.

However, workshops and special events may require fees to help offset costs.

In general, Global Youth Fund will rely on merchandise sales, sponsorships, and grants, to support outreach and participation, especially in developing countries.

          • Costs as percentage of income: 50

          • Financing: We are financing our initiative through a combination of fees and foundation grants. We intend to rely on grants, sponsorship, merchandise sales and fees to sustain our program in the early years.

Our plan is to assemble a team and launch a social enterprise that can generate enough revenue to cover a significant portion of operating after year three.

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: Our first pilot project involved 145 high school students in four cities and three countries (US, Canada and Kenya). Though emphasis was not on fundraising, students did raise US$3,000 for school building projects in Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. The most important outcome was a better understanding of how we should refine our program, which led to the model that we have today.

          • Number of clients in past year: 145.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: Global Youth Fund is launching a four-month version of our program in Vancouver, Canada beginning in January 2007. Youth in the Vancouver area will work together to select GYF’s first official global campaign and then organize activities to achieve their campaign goals.

This limited launch will help us refine our process further and lay the groundwork for our global launch in September 2007.

Though youth everywhere may participate online through our website, we also plan to open offices and hire staff in the US, UK, and Kenya in the next three years.

12) Origin of the initiative: Originally born in Taiwan, I moved around quite a bit while growing up, and lived in places as diverse as Thailand, Malawi and the US. My career as a journalist for CNN also took me around the world. So I’ve been hardwired from a very young age to see myself as a citizen of the world, not just of one country. But it wasn’t until I produced PBS GlobalTribe that I saw the true potential of our newly emerging global community. I saw firsthand how solutions are spreading from one part of the world to another – in our case, from Brazil to the Philippines. Good ideas are already out there. They are spreading. We need to help them spread further. I knew then that I wanted to build the bridge – an organization where peer- to-peer learning and citizen-to-citizen action can take place. The internet is making that possible and we are helping to unleash its true potential.

Contact Information:
Charles  Tsai
Executive Director
Global Youth Fund
(NGO)
Canada
Website: http://www.globalyouthfund.org