Youth Venture

Youth Venture inspires and invests in teams of young people who design and launch their own lasting social ventures, enabling them to have the transformative experience of leading positive social change. Youth Venture has supported more than 4,000 venture participants in 18 countries.

The formative ideas for Youth Venture grew out of experiences of more than 400 of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, Ashoka Fellows, who lead major pattern-changing innovations in every field imaginable and are supported in doing so by Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. Ashoka recognized a strong pattern among these Fellows who were working independently in nearly 73 different countries—namely that an overwhelming proportion effectively engaged youth to lead and implement the change they designed.  The idea that youth could be capable, competent leaders, affecting real and lasting social change became apparent.

Ashoka Youth Venture’s vision is a world of Everyone a Changemaker in a global culture of young people initiating positive, lasting change.  Imagine what a difference it would make in the strength of our society and in our lasting impact on the world if millions more people gave themselves permission to be changemakers.

Youth Venture plays a critical role in actualizing Ashoka's vision of Everyone a Changemaker by giving young people the means to know that they have the ability to change the environment around them. Through this experience, young people will grow up practicing applied empathy, teamwork, and leadership—the underlying skills needed to make change.

In Canada, Youth Venture has launched 30 ventures in Montreal and Vancouver.

Meet Youth Venture participants from around the world here.

Ashoka’s additional programs in Canada:

Ashoka’s Venture & Fellowship program identifies and elects leading social entrepreneurs into our global Ashoka Fellowship and provides strategic support, collaboration opportunities, a community of like-mined individuals, recognition and possible financial support.

Ashoka’s Changemakers.com is a global online community of action where we open-source solutions to the world’s most urgent social problems.

The Ashoka Support Network (ASN) is a global community of successful business leaders and philanthropist who engage with Ashoka, committing time and resources to support the work of Ashoka Fellows.

Ashoka’s University Program fosters, incubates, and accelerates new and effective approaches to high quality social entrepreneurship teaching, research, and action in universities and across campuses.

Ashoka’s Youth Venture inspires teams of young people to launch and lead their own social ventures with the support of mentors and seed funding.

Ashoka's Social Finance Services (SFS) improves more creative and strategic ways to financing and sustainable capital in the citizen sector, addressing the lack of quantity and diversity of institutional financial supports needed for social ventures to succeed.

All of our programs contribute to Ashoka's vision and mission. They all convey the historical transformation of the citizen sector taking place and are building upon that understanding. None of our programs exist to provide services exclusively.

Ashoka's programs together are bringing our vision of Everyone a Changemaker™ closer to reality.