YouthActionNet Global Fellowship Day 3: A lot of heart

Today, the most interesting part of the day was a session called "Open Space", where some people wrote topics they were interested in discussing on a flipchart, and then everyone ticked the topic they were interested in discussing, so that we could divide up into different interest groups.  It was like one of those crowd-sourced conferences.

I'd been dying to know the size of everyone else's organisations - how long they'd been doing it, their budgets, and whether they have any paid staff.  So we went around the group and shared just that.

Robogals is so close to who I am, it was like I was shedding another layer of skin to the group and letting them see who I was.

What struck me the most about this exercise is that amount of amazing things this group has been able to achieve on the leanest of budgets.

Some of the amazing projects include:

• Hoja Blanca, an international magazine that allows for a more meritocratic system for journalists to get published.
• World Faith, an international non-profit with 21 chapters in 9 countries that aims to create understanding between different faiths by facilitating volunteers of different faiths working together.
• Mentortogether, an incredibly thorough and well-researched Trust in India that matches poor urban children with corporate mentors, who serve as their mentors.
• Ecosan Club, which promote simple, low-cost solutions to health, sanitation, and soil fertility problems in the rural community in Mindanao, Philippines.
• Techamos una Mano, a project based in Mexico that works with high school students and teaches them about sustainable housing by having the students build houses (yes, houses!) out of recyclable materials.  Post-edit: It recently (in late November 2011) won the National Award for Youth in Mexico, presented by the President of Mexico!

These are just a sample of amazing projects that the under-30 year old, 2011 cohort of YAN Fellows spend tens of hours of week on, for no pay, because they are passionate about the cause.

So next time you think, "I don't have the money or resources to implement my idea", look to the YAN Fellows for inspiration.  There's a whole database of them here.  With a lot of heart, and a lot of hard work, you can achieve anything.