Youth Venture has positioned itself in India to support young people at two key inflection points in their life cycles.  The first is to support young people who are inspired by an issue and committed to making a change in society by helping them to develop their ideas and start their own social initiatives.  Youth Venture currently does this through its Youth Venture Challenges. 

The second is to recognize and enable young people who have already established compelling social ventures and wish to deepen, sustain and grow their efforts.  These young people are supported through the Change Looms  Program which is a joint partnership between Youth Venture and Pravah and supported by the Youth and Civil Society Initiative of Sir Ratan Tata Trust.

About Us

Youth Venture was launched with the vision of changing society such that everyone would have the freedom and societal support to 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 their lifetime.  Youth Venture inspires and invests in teams of young people to start their own social ventures and is working to catalyze a powerful network of young changemakers across the world.  Youth Venture currently operates in 10 countries and provides capacity building, coaching and seed funding to young people to create, launch and lead sustainable community-benefiting initiatives. 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.  Through this process, the number of changemakers in society will dramatically increase as today’s young people grow older. 

Genesis 

Youth Venture grew out of insights gained through the experience of Ashoka.  Ashoka studied the work of roughly 400 of its leading social entrepreneurs primarily focused on children and young people, and developed a practical model based on their common lessons. Of these major successful innovations, at least two thirds relied on young people to provide the human resources for their new approaches. For example, young people teaching one another and running school-based businesses in Bangladesh are the heart of a program that has increased school enrollments 44 percent and cut the dropout rate in half. Ashoka’s Fellows found that young people, often the only substantial resource available in many parts of the world, mature rapidly through their practical, competence building involvement in these projects. By removing attitudinal and logistical barriers and helping youth communities develop the necessary competencies, young people can teach, administer, manage, or lead anything.