by Omer Ongun, YES 2003-04, Turkey, hosted by AFS in Beaver Dam, WI

How often have you heard that «youth is the future»? But when does that future start? Climate change, violent conflicts, rising extremism... We are facing too many challenges that cannot wait to be addressed. I decided to take action! I came together with 8-12 of my friends from all around the world and decided to start NOW.

NOW (http://nowornow.org/) brings together people who believe that youth have what it takes to create a better world, NOW. We are working like crazy on NOW, which is very much our baby – shared with a few other friends. It’s exciting, scary and exhausting to be doing that, but we are very happy about it! We are starting a pilot this year in Europe and next year in Latin America, and if all goes well the plan after that is to start scaling it to other regions in the world.

To give you a bit more context: the idea behind NOW is to offer empowering intercultural experiences to young people who usually don’t have access to these kinds of programs. For six months we work closely with them to empower them to create a social change project in their local realities, which will then (hopefully) inspire and empower them to continue being agents of social change throughout life.

This week we have officially launched our website (feedback or ideas are always welcome, particularly from experts like YES Alumni!), our Facebook page, and most importantly, our crowdfunding campaign – and that’s where I mostly need your help now. We are working on different funding fronts to make sure the program is accessible to a diverse group of people and to reduce barriers to entry, and the crowdfunding is one of these strategies. We are running an ‘all-or-nothing’ campaign which means we really need as much support as we can get :)

To support us you just have to go to our crowndfunding campaign page and choose a reward that you like :) There you can also read more about NOW.
Besides that, it would be amazing if you could share the campaign on Facebook to reach your network. As you probably know, the more people hear about the campaign, the more support we get!