Youth Venture
Catalyzing a Movement of Young Changemakers

About Youth Venture

In 1996, Youth Venture was launched with the vision of changing society such that everyone would have the freedom and societal support to take initiative and address social needs. An essential element of this vision is to enable young people to learn early on in life that they can lead social change. It is clear that any young person who has an idea for improving his or her community, leads a team, launches a venture and contributes something lasting will emerge transformed from such an experience. Young "venturers" will know that they are capable of leading and creating change, and it is likely that they will take initiative again and again over a lifetime.

Youth Venture inspires, coaches, and invests up to $1000 in teams of young people aged 12-20 to start social ventures, and is building a powerful network of young social entrepreneurs across the US. The Youth Ventures address all areas of social need: health, environment, diversity, education, youth, community and civic engagement. To illustrate:

• Jessica, Rachel and Ngiste launched Kids Who K.A.R.E: Kids Autism Research Effort, to raise money for autism research and publish a series of illustrated educational children's books about mental disabilities, which they distribute to local schools and libraries. They have also designed a kid-friendly website to dispel stereotypes about young people with autism.

• Determined to change the attitude that space exploration is not for girls, Becca decided to launch No Boundaries, a space camp that exposes girls to math and science. The camp features fun science-related experiments and crafts geared toward young children. The camp includes Astrotots, for young girls; Mad Female Scientist, geared towards learning about experiments; and Love Bugs, designed to teach children about beneficial bugs.

• Divine and his teammates, Deandra, Jamaal and Fernando, created Team Revolution, a youth center that provides recreation and leadership opportunities for teens in Brooklyn. Most recently, Divine has been named by Polo Jeans as one of 21 men and women who are "redefining volunteerism." This year, Team Revolution performed in a post-game Super Bowl concert.

• Students United for Racial Equity, started by Nina, has created a syllabus-based 14-session seminar on race issues for high school students, demonstrated first in five California schools as a pilot for national replication.

Youth Venture's ultimate goal is a society-wide redefinition of the youth years. As more and more young teams start social ventures in their communities, it will become the norm for young people to create positive social change. Once youth leadership becomes the norm, then society—young people and adults alike—will come to expect young people to be competent leaders of social change. (For more information please visit www.youthventure.org.)

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