Igniter - empowering young people through crowdfunding
We’re very excited to announce the launch of a new platform, Igniter, empowering young people to raise funds from members of the public to run their own projects.
At vInspired, we believe in the power of young people to take a lead and develop their own projects that will have a meaningful impact in their communities.
Young people on our online support platform, Junction49, have already demonstrated their commitment to making a difference and we wanted to go that one step further to ensure they have all the means at their disposal to really make an impact. Through Junction49 we’ve found that a core motivator in ensuring young people follow through with their ideas is having someone there who believes in their vision, and encourages them every step of the way.
Igniter builds on this by giving members of the public the opportunity to show how much they believe in an idea and the potential of young people by investing funds directly into the project. Crowdfunding provides a platform for enterprising young people to raise funding for their community projects.
Help start something amazing
The projects featured on Igniter aim to tackle issues such as raising awareness of mental health issues and improving wellbeing, as well as raising aspirations and improving the employability of young people. Some of the projects have already been fortunate enough to receive funding from initiatives like our vInspired Cashpoint programme or O2 Think Big, but need additional funding to take their ideas to the next level. Others are at the very start of their journey and need the initial funding to get going.
To find out more about the projects, you can view their videos on Igniter. If you believe in their idea back it with as much or as little money as you like and help them start something amazing. We’d love if you could spread the word to make a real difference to the young people but also to the communities they will benefit.
There has been an explosion of crowdfunding websites recently - why create another one?
We felt that there was nothing quite like Igniter available for young people to access to aid them in doing good and wanted to change that. Igniter is unique in that its focus is on empowering young people. We already know that there's an appetite among young people to run their own projects but a lack of suitable funding opportunities. We have created Igniter to test if the public want to help fund projects. Crowdfunding cuts out the need for the ‘middle man’ so you can see instantly where your money is going.