Youth Venture shares Ashoka vision of an Everyone A Changemaker™ world – a world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and societal support to drive change.
Youth Venture’s goals are:
To provide opportunities for young people to develop critical life skills of team building, leadership, problem-solving, and ethical fiber by launching and leading their own community-minded club, organization, or businesses that create positive impact.
To support young people on a lifelong path as a changemaker that will help them grow to be healthy, resilient, and caring members of their community.
To help each part of society be more successful by increasing the proportion of their population who are changemakers.
Through Ashoka’s Youth Venture program, nearly 5,000 teams of young people have launched and led their own community-serving ventures. These ventures serve over 1 million people. The venture teams come away knowing that they are changemakers and with entrepreneurial, leadership, teamwork and empathy skills that are critical to their success in work, school and life.
Universities, and employers are increasingly recognizing how needed changemaker skills are in the workforce and in the community. Over the past several years, “changemaker” has become a factor in admissions and hiring, professional development, and educational programming.
