Location: Switzerland

Mission: Global Changemakers’ (GC) objective is to empower youth to catalyse social change by providing them with skills, contacts, opportunities, and a world-wide community of like-minded people.

Focus Areas: Advocacy, community development, and education

Program Overview:

• GC does advocacy at different levels. A few times a year, GC will receive calls requesting a recommendation for young people that can present at an event. This is an opportunity for young people to advocate for something they feel strongly about; for example, peacebuilding in Kenya, or the importance of working to promote healthy lifestyles amongst indigenous people in Mexico. GC matches the young people with the high-level platforms based on what the young people themselves find interesting.
• GC’s annual Summit is the core component of the program, and GC funds youth-led grassroots projects that are developed during the Summit and submitted in a proposal. With a new model for Summits, GC will expect young people to do trainings in their own communities after attending the Summit, in order to reach more people. For annual summits, GC develops and shares toolkits, invites speakers, brings in other organizations, and facilitates young people meeting and learning from each other. All resources that GC develops are openly available to the public.
• For every Summit GC will always have a group of senior Changemakers come in and serve as peer facilitators. GC ensures that people who are running similar projects or in similar regions have the opportunity to meet up, exchange ideas, and learn from one another.
• Additionally, GC sets up mentorship meetings for young people with partners such as the business school at Chicago University, and in the future, with Reuters. These mentorship meetings allow youth to participate in webinars with people getting an MBA or working in business who can give business advice.

Impacts:

• In its ten year existence, GC has become a close knit network of 1,000 young social activists. GC has supported 280 youth-led projects in 128 countries, with 200,000 people directly involved, and benefiting over 4 million people.
• GC organizes training events locally and globally, and Changemakers have shared their experience in a range of high profile meetings in various fields. As such, GC’s results range from direct impacts to a ripple effect; Changemakers not only inspire young people to step up and become active, but also show policymakers, business professionals, academics, and others that young people can and will engage if given the access and tools.

Learn More: www.global-changemakers.net