YEP!

Changemakers: Gillion Bosman, Nick Henderson

Youth End Poverty (YEP) is an entirely youth led project that aims to give young people the skills knowledge and confidence to fight poverty and inequality. Both founders come from training groups of young activists. One from Dundee, Scotland and the other one from Cape Town, South Africa.

They started out by creating an interactive website, named http://www.youthendpoverty.org/

This website includes a workspace tool, and combines the traditional message board with a wiki space. Much like Wikipedia.com, it is a place where one can create his or her own page or edit another, allowing many people to work collaboratively on one document or idea. It also means people can feature their own project, campaign, or work on the wiki.

The project works with 10 unemployed and employed young people from Cape Town. These are young people with basic life skills and no experience with community or social action. Youth End Poverty project will train them, using the arts as a tool, to identify social problems in their community and assist them in developing solutions in the form of Social Action Projects. Using a rights based approach, this will help combat the high levels of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse and other social ills by giving young people an opportunity to engage in positive activities that promote positive actions that will promote diversity and inclusion, a culture of human rights and social responsibility, community development, democracy and active participation.