What is Be Change?
Imagine this:
You are a young person who has an amazing idea about how to improve wellness in your community. You do your research and see that this idea is definitely achievable. You speak to all of your friends and peers and they absolutely love the concept. However, there’s just one problem, you lack the resources and support to make the project a reality. Your great idea doesn’t happen the way you envisioned and the community misses out on something that could have been awesome.
This is the situation that Be Change will, well... change. Be Change is a platform to help young changemakers build their ideas and fund them into reality. Through our crowdfunding platform, young people can choose to raise money for a one-time initiative or an ongoing wellness project. In addition, we will help young people and the organizations they partner with – like our parent organization mindyourmind – to help their ideas go further in equal partnership.
We started working on Be Change in 2013, and have since talked to dozens of key informants who have experience using crowdfunding. They encouraged us to think beyond building a traditional crowdfunding platform. From these amazing conversations, a Co-design team of young people and adults was formed to help us build a platform that provides peer support, partnerships and resources to support their ideas. Everything you see on Be Change today was is a product of this innovative approach.
Our co-design team and key informants identified three priorities:
- Peers – By youth, for youth. It is critical to form connections to other changemakers in order to exchange resources, experiences and collaborate as needed
- Partners – Be Change will seek to empower youth within organizations, and help partners create successful youth driven projects. Through our comprehensive youth engagement model, we will help inspired youth and skilled adults combine to create change.
- Resources –Resources on running your own project can be overwhelming with so much available online. We’ve pulled together a comprehensive list of expertly influenced resources in one spot so that you don’t have to spend hours scouring the internet to find them yourself.
