The challenge
High school students in Županja have plenty of ideas for improving their community, but they rarely learn how such ideas actually get funded. Together with the NGO B.a.B.e., we set out to change that by giving young people knowledge about funding sources that the formal school curriculum simply doesn’t cover.

The process
We took the financial and project-funding topics we usually teach to adults and reshaped them for a high school audience: less theory, more doing. Students explored where money for community projects can come from, how crowdfunding works and what makes people want to support an idea. Then they got to work on their own projects, writing campaign stories, sketching video scenarios and building marketing strategies to reach their supporters.

We’ll admit it: we love working with students. Every time, they surprise us. Give them a blank page and a real goal, and they come up with videos, scripts and campaign ideas that would make many marketing teams jealous. Most of them just don’t know how creative they are yet, and watching them discover it is one of the best parts of our work.

The solution
More than 30 high school students gained a basic understanding of project funding, especially for socially responsible community projects, that they would not have had the chance to learn in school. They left knowing how to turn an idea into a plan, how to present it to others and how to find the people and resources to make it happen. Above all, they left with the confidence that their ideas are worth pursuing, and the first tools to do it.