Kids, teens and youth from low-income and single-parent families are disadvantaged on the road towards a successful and fulfilled adult life. We want to give them a push and a helping hand.
The concept
As Vuk, the 14-year-old founder of Thirteen, explains in his video, inner-city kids and youth from single-parent or lower-income families are faced with similar issues that tend to drastically marginalize them from their peers and from opportunities to develop into successful, worldly adults. The Thirteen Youth Association and Center in Belgrade we want to create aims to research and develop ways to change that permanently.
Along with Vuk, kids and youth will be guided by a team of adult professionals who have already joined our team and are willing to volunteer long-term at the Thirteen Youth Center in several capacities, to create educational programs that are adapted to younger generations in today's world and that are adaptable to almost any major city in the world. Almost immediately, within 60 days of raising these initial funds that will cover basic costs like a large venue for one year, electricity, water, heating, telephone bills and the likes, the Thirteen Youth Center will provide:
- Training and classes in 10 different subjects and skill sets not available in typical school programs, including arts, music, IT, communications, rhetoric, crafts, sports, responsible citizenship and life skills
- Provide an open, friendly, supervised space where kids and youth can come to hang out downtown any time for at least 12 hours every day, including weekends
- Hanging out will be free and open to anyone, while classes and training will be entirely free and fully accessible for single-parent children and those from lower to low-income homes, while the program will be entirely available for all other interested kids for a membership fee of $15 to a maximum of $35 per month.
- A network of young civil activists who will work together for a batter future, the first of its kind in Eastern Europe
What We Need & What You Get
We chose Belgrade, Serbia as our location, hopefully just our first, for several reasons:
- Vuk was born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia and he ain't doing too bad so far. Seems this place has potential.
- Belgrade is highly representative of issues that kids and youth face in other major cities in the world, so it's a great testing ground. Of Belgrade's 17 municipalities, most are very modern and urban, some overcrowded, some highly expensive, others not so much, and a couple are even rural communities within the city of Belgrade, so we will encounter everything from inner-city issues to farming and transportation issues - we aim to face them all and develop programs that will give kids skill sets that will help them flourish in their home communities
- Simply put, the Youth Center will cost three or four times less to build in Belgrade, Serbia than it would in most other major cities in the world, and that is a huge plus in getting the center up, running and self-sustainable in the next three years. These funds from this campaign will finance a full year of just having the center open and available, while every contemporary amenity is available in Belgrade.
The Impact
If you even know an inner-city kid from a single-parent or lower-income home and you understood any part of what Vuk explained in his video, the impact that this center and its programs could bring to the world will immediately be clear to you. Like any kid, Vuk wants to change the world. We're just looking to provide a space and opportunity for other kids to join him in doing just that.
So far, Vuk has been able to make an impact on his own life. At 10, he stared a blog aimed at his peers and blogged on occasion about Internet safety, social causes and other stuff important to his generation. At 12, he organized his first small fundraiser aimed at his peers in foster homes. That same year he spoke about the subject of educational reform and individual learning at International Student Week in Belgrade and became the youngest ever TEDx speaker in the Balkans. The following year, he spoke in front of some 800 adults at the annual AIESEC Global Leaders' Summit. With the help of individual learning and using skill sets he did NOT learn in school, Vuk completed his elementary education a year early and enrolled in a specialized IT high school at age 13... against the advice of his mother, but with her support once he had made his decision.
At 14, he believes any of his peers can do the same or more. They just need to work together to achieve it.
Other Ways You Can Help
Any ideas, expertise, materials or equipment you can offer will be welcome and greatly appreciated. Absolutely any. Throw an idea a us, we have a team ready to respond and eager to respond and work with you.
We'd like to get the Thirteen Youth Center up and running by June 16, 2014, and we're already working on it from our end, so let's get this rolling! And, whatever you do, don't ever grow a day older than 13. Really. It works.
