Description
YouthBank Academy focuses on the potential of young people to get involved, to generate creative solutions to community needs, to become future leaders. YouthBank is a non-formal educational program that complements the education that high school students receive in school. One of the principles of the program is learning by doing. So, youngsters enrolled in the program will develop abilities that will help them in their life and further more in their career. In each of the 14 communities 12-15 youngsters (aged 15-20) will fundraise private resources through mechanisms designed and implemented by them. The funds (estimated value of the 2014 national YouthBank fund: 55.000 euro) are distributed in the community through grants that support projects proposed and implemented by youngsters (30-40 youth/city), having min. 8.000 beneficiaries/city. YouthBank Academy is an opportunity to expand the network of the communities that are now part of the program, but also to consolidate it, investing in the sustainability of the concept, regarding the vision, long term results, financial and human resources, network management systems.
Summary of project results
The project improved the potential of young individuals to get involved, generate creative solutions for community needs, and become the leaders of the future. The activities started from creation of the programme’s implementation manual, selection of local coordinators for the programme and a national course for coordinators. Work has been done for the development and implementation of sustainable mechanisms for attracting financial resources towards the programme. There has also been the desire to test a reoccurring program for funding, to increase the young individual’s efforts. After a rigorous selection process, a total of 179 adolescents were recruited among the now 210 individuals in our local YouthBank teams. After being trained and split into teams, the new members began planning the fundraising phase, each team having a specific goal to achieve. The amount of money accumulated varied between each city, given that each location had their own differences, whether they were smaller or larger, and whether they responded positively or negatively to the idea of philanthropy and civic involvement. After careful organization and planning, the Youthbank members developed creative fundraising mechanisms and implemented them. Before completing the fundraising phase, the teams started a research mission to discover the needs of their local community. They developed a questionnaire to find out about beneficiaries and stakeholders of YouthBank, were instructed on what to research, what the categories of respondents should be, how to collect data, how to interpret the results, and how to utilize the method in which they collected information in order to have a representative result. Based on the results of their local research and based on the financial results of fundraising phase, the teams then started to prepare the grant making contest and the materials needed to promote the YouthBank fund to high school students. 184 projects applied, 104 of them received funds summing up more approximately 230.000 RON (almost 52.000 euro), their implementation reaching more than 115.000 direct and indirect beneficiaries. After projects’ selection, the youth were monitors for the financed projects, being the support the team needed and intermediaries between the team and YouthBank.
Summary of bilateral results