Youth Venture United States

2008 has been an exciting year for Youth Venture. Over the summer, we held our inaugural Youth Venture Summit, which brought together over 100 young Venturers to Washington D.C. to meet one another and participate in a weekend-long series of workshops and activities. Youth Venture also partnered with several sponsors, including Best Buy, Staples, MTV, and Nike to hold important competitions for young people to participate in.

Over the course of the year, Youth Venture has launched 200 new teams encompassing close to 1,000 young people. Along with standard seed grants, Youth Venture has provided them with one-on-one counseling, access to an online network of young changemakers through our website, and critical resources to expand their ideas. Additionally, 2008 witnessed a hugely successful series of competitions designed to help young social entrepreneurs. Youth Venture partnered with Staples in October to produce a record turn-out of over 500 entries. Meanwhile, our current Best Buy @15 competition will give fifteen winners $10,000 to transform their dreams into realities.

In an article on youth social entrepreneurism and Youth Venture, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times writes, “Young people have often been engaged in social movements, of course, but today’s activists are younger than ever. More important, these kids aren’t just protesters but rather are “social entrepreneurs,” pioneering clever ways to “give back” just as a business entrepreneur fills a market niche.”

Youth Venture continues to rely on your generous support to build a movement of young changemakers capable of transforming themselves, their communities, and the world. Please provide us with any feedback on how we can better go about achieving this goal.

Links:

• Youth Venture Website
• NYTimes Article on Youth Venture