Participation. (Youth monitor: a national roundup of recent press reports on youth issues).

`Social venture capital'

The world of venture capitalists has provided an unusual source of inspiration for a charitable foundation. Using the idea of distributing seed funding to innovative enterprises, Mary Wooldridge, chief executive of the Foundation for Young Australians, and Siobhan McKenna, of McKinsey & Co. (a business consultancy firm), came up with the concept of `social venture capital'. The model allows young people from outside the FYA working with it to make decisions about the kinds of project to be funded, and then to work alongside the Foundation to keep those projects sustainable.

The Foundation for Young Australians was formed from a merger of the Queen's Trust for Young Australians and the Australian Youth Foundation. It aims to focus on the 12-25 age group, with programs both for the disadvantaged and for those seeking leadership and improvement for young people through a broad range of community-based projects.

The first stage of the social venture capital project involves the selection of seven young people from each Australian state to be trained to work with the FYA to review funding applications for youth projects and then to go back to the applicant organisations and work out how best to work with them. More information is at www.youngaustralians.org (Financial Review, 19/2/02, p.50; Shepparton News, 22/3/02, p.9).