YouthNoise blogs from The Summit

A big shout out to our friends at YouthNoise who came to the 2010 Youth Venture Summit, to blog and film. Click HERE to see her post and check out the video below!

A Call to Action: Everyone a Changemaker

Ashoka’s Youth Venture® is based on the simple underlying and core insight that if individuals are powerful as young people, they are more likely to be powerful as adults. To be powerful – in fact, to be a full citizen in a world characterized increasingly by change – one must be a changemaker.

Unfortunately, according to a new study conducted by Best Buy @15 and the Minneapolis-based Search Institute, there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to building the relationships that give teens a leg up when it comes to taking action to change their communities and themselves. They found that only 22 percent of all 15-year-olds feel as though they have the confidence, skills and opportunities to voice their opinion and influence the things that matter to most to them. So what can you to make your voice heard?

Our challenge, especially those of us attending the Youth Venture National Summit this weekend, is to figure out how to support our friends in developing their own voices as young leaders. Its a tough task, but we're working on it!

Check out the findings of the study for yourself. Its called Teen Voice 2010: Relationships That Matter to America’s Teens.

If you see yourself as an enterprising individual who would like to travel the world and help out in local communities, Your Big Year, could be just what you’re looking for.


Your Big Year is a free competition to encourage global citizenship and social responsibility through enterprise. It is the biggest official event of Global Entrepreneurship Week and it’s now open to applicants.


Winners will be given the opportunity to meet World Leaders, celebrities and inspirational entrepreneurs. They will live in different communities, learn leadership skills and join volunteer projects – from teaching children in South America to conservation work in Asia.


They will be given the tools and support to share their experiences via the global media. Chris Arnold, of Your Big Year, said: “This is truly a prize that money can’t buy, and we anticipate huge interest from across the globe. Our two winners will experience the trip of a lifetime, get the opportunity to fulfil their potential, develop their enterprise skills and stimulate their entrepreneurial spirit.”



For more details – and to register your interest – click HERE..

A Small Act

The inspiring HBO documentary film A Small Act follows a single gesture of generosity that ripples out to affect multiple lives. When Hilde Back sponsored a young, rural Kenyan student, she thought nothing of it. She paid roughly $15 dollars per term to keep him in primary school. She certainly never expected to hear from him, but many years later, she does.

Chris Mburu has been thinking of Hilde since he was a boy. The small contribution she made paid off – Chris went all the way to Harvard and is now a respected human rights lawyer for the United Nations. As a thank you, he decides to replicate Hilde’s generosity by starting a scholarship program of his own. He names it the Hilde Back Education Fund and sponsors a new generation of kids in his village. The students of today also vow to one day give back.

To find out when A Small Act is playing on HBO, click here. The film will also be available on HBO On Demand till September 6th.