Youth Venture

Position: Project Entrepreneur, Youth Venture Program, Ashoka

Location: Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires or Toronto
Salary: Commensurate with experience

About Youth Venture

Youth Venture (www.youthventure.org) was launched by Ashoka (www.ashoka.org) with the vision of changing our society such that everyone would have the freedom and societal support to address any social need anywhere. Youth Venture is building a movement of young changemakers who are redefining the role they play in society as capable leaders of positive social change. Youth Venture is doing this by inspiring and investing in young people to start social ventures, and by building a powerful global Youth Venture network.

Youth Venture is investing in young people to have the transformative experience of launching social ventures that create lasting benefit to their communities. Youth Venture seeks to launch hundreds of thousands of teams of “Venturers” around the world and connect them into a global network. By fostering a generation of Venturers, Youth Venture will help tip society such that it will become accepted and common for young people to take initiative and lead in their communities, ultimately resulting in a dramatically higher number of changemakers in society.

Ashoka is a global association of social entrepreneurs from 70 countries and growing. Social entrepreneurs are individuals who possess innovative yet practical ideas to bring about far-reaching social change at the regional or global scale. (For more information, please visit Ashoka’s website at www.ashoka.org.) Ashoka launched Youth Venture with the belief that young people globally are critical to Ashoka’s overall vision of developing a productive, innovative and engaged civil society.

Role Description

Ashoka is seeking highly motivated, entrepreneurial, and experienced individuals to join the team as Project Entrepreneurs.

A Project Entrepreneur will be responsible for:

• Spread and adaptation of the Youth Venture program to one of several new countries
• Program management, including operationalizing, budgeting, monitoring and evaluating the Youth Venture program
• Development and ongoing relationship management of corporate and social sector partners
• Marketing and market research
• Capacity building of partner organizations’ program coordinators/facilitators
• Fundraising and strategic planning for program sustainability

The role will require some amount of travel. The role may also evolve over time as the Youth Venture develops and spreads.

The ideal candidate should:

• Believe strongly in the ability of youth to lead social change
• Be entrepreneurial, creative, self-motivated and a problem solver
• Have 10-15 years of relevant experience, especially as a leader
• Preferably, have experience in creating system change with youth
• Have strong conceptual and analytical skills
• Have strong project management and problem solving skills
• Have strong interpersonal, relationship building, and facilitation skills
• Have strong written and verbal communication skills
• Be collegial and comfortable with working in teams
• Have strong ethical fiber

Interested and qualified candidates should send in their CV along with a cover letter. The cover letter should address why they are interested in this position and why they think they are suited for it.

Candidates should also provide 3 references (senior, junior and peer) and state their relationship to the reference and contact information.

Interested candidates should visit http://ashoka.org/getinvolved/team to apply