In 1996, Youth Venture was launched with the vision that everyone in society could take initiative and address social needs, rather than looking to the elite few who lead today. With so many more people taking initiative, imagine how many more problems we could solve! Young people are critical to this vision, because we believe that you have to start taking initiative when you’re young. If you wait till you’re an adult it might be too late, because by then you’ll already be set in your path of who you’ll be when you grow up. On the other hand, if you do have an experience of taking initiative at a young age, it is likely that this will prepare you to lead and create positive change throughout your life.

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 and invests in teams of young people to design and launch their own lasting social Ventures, enabling them to have this transformative experience of leading positive social change. Started in the US, Youth Venture is now expanding internationally. As we invest in Venturers around the world, we are beginning to connect them into a powerful global network.

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’s vision is a world of everyone a changemaker through a global culture of young people initiating positive, lasting change.

Youth Venture leads 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(tm) world - the key factor
for success in every part of society. Youth Venture currently operates
in 14 countries and online at www.GenV.net.

Youth Venture directly serves active young people aged 12 to 20 in the United States and Canada and 12 to 24 in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, South Africa, India and Thailand. At the same time, we serve society as a whole by building an active generation of young people who will be more engaged in society at every level, which benefits the entire world.

Our core program is built on giving young people the opportunity to lead and launch their own social venture. We assist young people through the process of developing their idea using online resources, our unique venture development plan and in-person assistance. 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.

Our program is currently operating in The United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, South Africa, India, and Thailand, with additional program launches scheduled over the next several years.

Too many to list! Check out website for details! We'll be highlighting some here soon.

Youth Venture is headed by an Executive Director who oversees several managers. We believe in incorporating individuals at every level in the decision making process.

Youth Venture was started by Ashoka, the oldest, largest and fastest growing association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs are people with ideas that solve some of the world’s biggest, most difficult problems. They are like business entrepreneurs who pioneer new industries or ways of doing things, except social entrepreneurs are motivated by their desire to create positive social change on a massive scale. Ashoka invests in social entrepreneurs and helps them start their ventures, many of which have led to social change around the globe. They become Ashoka Fellows, and they are part of the Ashoka fellowship, where they can learn from and collaborate with each other, for life. Like Venturers, these social entrepreneurs tackle problems in all areas of need: the environment, health, learning, human rights, civic engagement, economic development, etc. It takes a while longer to become an Ashoka Fellow, though – many Ashoka Fellows devote their entire lives to developing their system-changing ideas and creating global change.

See Board of Directors

With the exception of our Americorps Vistas program, Youth Venture is funded entirely by private donations and foundation grants. We have worked collaboratively with Starbucks, Staples, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Gates Foundation and many more like-minded institutions and organizations.

Youth Venture grew out of insights gained through the experience of our sister organization, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. Ashoka is the first, largest and fastest growing global association of social entrepreneurs – individuals with innovative and practical ideas for addressing the world’s most intractable social challenges. Since 1980, Ashoka has pioneered a movement of social entrepreneurs by developing the concept of social entrepreneurship and then helping more than 1,800 leading “adult” social entrepreneurs, known as Ashoka Fellows, to launch their system changing ventures in more than 70 countries.

Ashoka developed the concept of Youth Venture by harnessing the innovations of Ashoka’s Fellows in the field of youth development. In light of both the Fellows’ work and their own youth experiences, Ashoka realized how critical it is to give young people the tools and space to take initiative. Ashoka thus created Youth Venture to build a movement of young social changemakers. By enabling and inspiring young people to learn to take initiative from an early age, Youth Venture will make it possible for exponentially increasing numbers of people to lead and learn again and again throughout their lives, leading to Ashoka and Youth Venture’s vision of “everyone a changemaker.” Check out www.ashoka.org for more on Ashoka.

Our main objective this fiscal year is to enhance our current programs and strengthen their position within their respective markets. This means reassessing how we operate, who we reach and in what ways we can be even more effective. At the same, our central goal that carries through every fiscal year is to get as many young people as possible to evolve into societal changemakers.

Youth Venture just complete two extremely exciting programs and is in the midst of two others. The first, called Tu Voz, was a partnership with The Gates Foundation to launch at least 50 teams that work to aid Latin American populations in the United States. Youth Venture received more than 90 team applications, almost doubling our initial goal.

Youth Venture also just completed our first “Be A Changemaker Challenge” at NYU. We encouraged students at the University to launch their own Ventures, with the winning team receiving $10,000 in additional seed funding beyond the $1000 we always give. More than 350 teams submitted applications, involving thousands of young people.

The Dream It. Do It. World Tour is also in full swing. Youth Venture supported one Venturer to travel around the world meeting with our program participants to catalyze this global movement of young people creating change. Thousands of individuals attended meet-up event, site visits and media ops. The tour was covered by major national newspapers around the world and had an incredibly impact on encouraging youth to take action.

A recent relationship with Starbucks saw a tour throughout the state of Washington, where accomplished Venturers and other community leaders met with youth to inspire them to create change. Hundreds of young people participated and the relationship will now be rolling out in multiple regions across the country.