Youth Changemaker City
“It can’t stay this way – something has to change!”
Many young people take a critical view of many things, and are unwilling to accept them as “just the way it is.” But what can they do to change things for the better and come closer to a solution? Young people are especially willing to invest time and energy for the community, to reach an achievable goal where they live, or for society at large. It is essential for every society to support, motivate, and direct this energy and idealism in the right way. If during this process these young people also gain the ability to develop their own solutions for the problems they identify, and implement them successfully, then society gains a great deal of constructive potential.
The Ashoka Youth Initiative works towards this goal with its Youth Changemaker City (YCMC) project, which the Siemens Stiftung supports in terms of both content and financing. YCMC brings local youth organizations and involved youths together to jointly improve the conditions for self-directed involvement.
Under professional direction, they learn to better understand requirements, processes and influences, identify and define specific problems in their own surroundings, develop solution approaches, and plan project implementation. They also learn to think and act as social entrepreneurs in real-life situations with their own projects, and take responsibility for their own personal and financial resources
Impressions from the Youth Changemaker Event
The pilot project started in Potsdam in the initial phase, and has since been extended to Frankfurt. The Siemens Stiftung sees this project as a long-term investment in greater social entrepreneurship, and therefore as an important building block in its goal of “strengthening social structures.”
