I wanted to extend my greetings to my fellow coordinators:

Happy Diwali to those who celebrated it last Saturday!

and a Joyous Eid to everyone celebrating it on October 24th!

Novemberr 1 and 2 are also the celebration of the All Saints' and All Souls Day where people in the Philippines visit the their departed brothers and sisters in their resting place.

As for the rest opf the world, Happy Halloween!


Audrey

I had posted a comment on this earlier, but I guess it didn't push through. I tried to re-post it, but I was informed that my comment was too long.

My suggestions was to have 3 components of the fund:
1. Loans
Target Market: I would agree with Pam on this. Loans are for business proposals. I woudl suggest that the initial loans be given to YCNs as well. However, I am not sure that everyone would have the capacity to make such business proposals. And in order to ensure sustainability, it would be good for the loans to be made avaialable to those who can ensure that their businesses would be sustainable. Otherwise, there's no point in providing loans if the borrowers cannot pay it off. That's bad management. There's also the issue of interest rates since those who will be borrowing may operate in a country where the proposed interest rate of the loan may be too high. If that's the case, then the loan would not really help, but will only increase the debt of the person. Maybe the loans can be made initially available to countries with YCNs.
Project Management: For this particular component, YCNs can and should do the local project management (assuming that the YCN in that country is capable of this). Since the YCNs know their country, they are the best persons to do the monitoring, evaluation, interviews, etc.
*We just have to be careful not to immitate the existing business proposal contests such as BiD Challenge, Development Marketplace, Global Social Venture, etc. because if we do, then it's a poor use of resources particularly since this would also entail social marketing.

2. Grants
Target Market: YCNs who are capable of receiving grants and who has a development project falling under the YES framwork (5 areas) and 6Es. I think this should be prioritizes over loans just to give a focus on where the initial funds will go and to ensure monitoring and evaluation is done. Maybe on its 2nd or 3rd year, the Grants Component can accommodate more youth outside the YCNs.
Project Management: The web-based monitoring system will be good at this point since this will make monitoring and evaluation easier. Once the grants are made available to other youth, then it would be easier to deploy the YCNs to do the monitoring on the local level.

3. YCN Secretariat - with both the loans and grants in place, then it is easier to justify the funding for the YES Secretariat since they will be doing the local work.

Lastly, it's no use having a YES Fund if the first beneficiaries are not the YCNs who have worked on bringing YES in their countries and at the local level. If we want to ensure that the YES Fund grows, then we have to show success stories. Given what the YCNs have achieved, providing them with the YES Fund would help them scale up their efforts.

Just a few questions::
To whom will the management team of the YES Fund be accountable? Who decides where a p-ortion of the fund will be reinvested? What are the check-and-balance mechanisms in place?

Hello! I am glad that several of you have joined the coordinators blog and I hope that you will use this as a forum to continue the many valuable discussions that began in Kenya. One topic I would like to hear your thoughts on is the YES Fund. I gave a very brief introduction to the Fund during the coordinators workshop and I want to reiterate that the formation of the Fund is still underway so it will be another 9-12 months before the Fund is operation.

During this development process it is extremely important that the Fund is created in the right way to best serve the YES family and the youth. We are still considering partners for the management of the Fund because it will have to be an outside entity. YES HQ is not equipped to support the demands of an international fund but we will work very closely with whatever organization is selected. The role of the management organization will be to facilitate the financial side of the Fund, this includes: accepting donations (their primary role will be dealing with tax issues), investing the money so that the Fund will be sustainable, and communicating with local banks where the money will be made accessible for qualified applicants. The role of YES HQ will be to set the criteria for who is able to receive money, what sort of activities/programs/proposals will be considered, setting standards for qualification by the recipient (ex: having a local bank partner who can facilitate the financial exchange), the quantity of money given at a time, whether money from the Fund will be available as grants or as loans etc...

The issues that I mentioned as the responsibilities of YES HQ are still being determined and I would like to hear thoughts from the coordinators. For example:

1) Do you think money from the Fund should be made available as grants or loans? Why?
2) Who should be able to apply for support from the Fund?
3) What sort of projects should applicants propose for funding?

Please feel free to post your thoughts, questions, comments about the Fund or any other issue on the blog but I just wanted to get the conversation started!