Deadline: 1 May 2017
Applications are open for Youth Volunteering Innovation Challenge to support young volunteers throughout the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in their journey to catalyze youth-led innovation for social impact and sustainable development.
The Youth Volunteering Innovation Challenge (YVIC), under the theme “Impact ASEAN,” supports young volunteers throughout the ASEAN region in their journey to catalyze youth-led innovation for social impact and sustainable development by providing access to mentors and capital they need to start or scale up their projects.
Focus Areas
- Leveraging volunteering for the localisation of the SDGs
- How can volunteerism contribute to data collection and tracking of SDG progress?
- What are new ways to localize SDGs?
- Sustainable Behaviour
- How can you influence sustainable behaviour through youth volunteerism?
- Developing Skills for Life and Work
- What solutions can applicants create to measure and recognize volunteering experience?
- How can volunteering experience prepare for more fulfill life and career?
These innovative projects are called “Impact Projects” and will be used as a tool to support volunteer initiatives and to promote the idea of ‘leaving no-one behind’ and social innovation. The YVIC will facilitate a 2-step approach to incubate and accelerate these projects:
Start Up “Ideation and Prototype”
In this stage, youth from different backgrounds who have brilliant ideas will be given an opportunity and the space to formulate and prototype their ideas. The participant has an “idea on paper” without a working prototype or has a working “minimum viable” model of their product or service, but no revenue yet.
Scale Up “Growth and Maturity”
Focus of this stage is to select and support a team whose project is already in the implementation and growth stage. The participating team has customers or beneficiaries and a functioning revenue model, but their business model is neither at scale nor cash-flow positive yet. Or the participant has its operating business model at scale, is cash-flow positive and/or has raised or is in the process of raising significant external funding.
Process
Workshops
The 2-step process helps to accelerate the development of the innovative youth-led projects from being merely an idea to prototype and to scale up. Therefore, YVIC consists of:
- 3 National Innovation Workshops in Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand to start up youth ideas into tangible actions in their home country.
- 1 Regional Innovation Workshop open to all ASEAN country applicants to scale up their innovation prototypes.
Impact Projects
Ideal characteristics of the project idea:
- Youth-based
- Reflects young people’s ideas and youth implements them
- Inclusive
- Ensure that marginalized and excluded groups are stakeholders in the processes
- Innovative
- Proposes a solution that is more effective, efficient, sustainable
- Sustainable
- Has a long-term prospect for success through strategic partnerships and modeling
- Scalable
- Shows potential to grow to a broader community and/or to the regional level
Prize
- Start Up stage (National Workshops)
- Up to 3 winning teams from each country will be awarded with Start Up Micro-Grants and provided with mentorship for the duration of 1 month after the workshop to prototype their ideas.
- At the end of the mentorship period, the most qualified team out of the 3 teams is selected to attend and pitch their Impact Projects at the Regional Workshop.
- Scale Up stage (Regional Workshop)
- The 3 winning teams from the National Workshops alongside 7 selected teams from ASEAN countries will be invited to compete in a Regional Workshop.
- 3 winners will win a Scale Up Grant worth up to 10,000 USD and mentorship on growth and expansion for the following 3 months.
Eligibility Criteria
- A team of 2-3 people.
- All team members should be aged 18-30.
- All team members must be currently residing in their own home country: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore.
- Projects should demonstrate collaborative approaches of working with various partners from government, grassroots organizations, communities, networks.
- If selected, the winning teams must be able to work with their mentor right after the workshop
- If selected, the winning teams must be able to start implementing their project right after the workshop.
How to Apply
All proposals for the Regional YVIC should be submitted online via given website.
For more information, please visit Youth Volunteering Innovation Challenge.