Youth Funder 2

OBJECTIVES
Objectives of Youth Funder 2 are two folded and focused on participating youth workers and their youth work. Youth workers will get to know how to implement a successful crowdfunding campaign with all of its components with development of campaign strategy. They will also raise their competences in youth work about crowdfunding and will be able to implement some of the workshops in their local areas using the methodology from YF2 activity that will be provided with them. Our biggest aspiration is to advocate and raise visibility of crowdfunding as an alternative financing method that can be very useful for organisations and individuals striving to put their ideas into practice, but lack the funds to achieve their goals.

ACTIVITIES & PARTICIPANTS
Targeted participants are youth workers with strong interest in entrepreneurship, digital competences and possible experience in crowdfunding. Minimum age for participation is 23 while there is no upper age limit.The training course will provide an open learning space, providing participants the theoretical basis and inspiration through good and bad examples from the crowdfunding practice. This basis is meant to prompt further creativity in production of teams campaign idea and strategy. During the strategy production, trainers are meant to provide: further support through consultations, stimulate group productivity through various innovative methods and prompt group creativity and collaboration by adjusting working methods and learning environment to the needs of teams. Methods used will include: case study activities, group building activities, best practice examples transfers, reciprocal teaching, buzz groups, creation of visual social media content, business strategy making, branding and other.



RESULTS & IMPACT
Developed campaign strategies by each team will be the main final outcome of the project. Creating these strategies will give teams a full insight on campaign development and an ability to fully understand the crowdfunding process. The strategy template will also be disseminated after the training through on-line communication channels of the applicant, as well as a publication about campaign creation, in order to offer a guide in crowdfunding for young people in their respective areas. Impact of the mobility of youth workers will be seen through a group of youth workers ready to use alternative financing method, ready to spread the knowledge in their daily youth work, as well as networks established by participating European crowdfunding organizations. This will make a long-term value in terms of passing acquired knowledge to participants home organizations, enabling them to start small projects faster and enhance their overall community impact, along with further development of crowdfunding and alternative financing culture in Europe. Since crowdfunding is a process with a huge number of parallel components to be done, the newly gained skills will be usable in a much broader sense. Components of the crowdfunding strategy are very much useful for individuals and organisations outside of crowdfunding context and pose a benefit for a great part of 8 key competences:
Digital (video shooting, design, crowdfunding platform, newsletters…);
Mathematical (budgeting, tax calculations);
Entrepreneurship (business strategy, project sustainability, project management);
Literacy (promotion, copywriting, newsletters);
Social, personal (team management, offline campaigning);
Citizenship (socially & environmentally aware initiatives).