The country is making progress little by little and the people are eager to learn and discover the world. What I found most remarkable and a totally new experience was the fact that so many people own a mobile phone nowadays (they are very cheap, as are connections) and we, foreigners, are constantly being photographed or interviewed and recorded. It is something I have never experienced before and it takes some time to adjust to this topsy- turvy world!

I was therefore dying to learn how the YouBridge project was developing in the capital, Dhaka. I interviewed some 10 students of ages ranging from 15 to 21. They each have a laptop at their disposal donated by YB. They all have the same reason for coming here, which they do several days a week: they want to learn how to work with a computer and apply this knowledge in their daily lives. They learn the basic principles of hardware and software, how to use Word, PowerPoint, Excel and the internet. The two teachers are doing this free of charge: it’s a project they believe in.

The impact on the students’ future is immense: in the meantime, about 100 young people have been able to make a (new) start in life thanks to what they have learned in the YB computer class. It has given them job and career opportunities which they otherwise would never have had, they urge their friends to come and learn and open up their world and they become creative in how they run their own little shops for instance; – with the help of a computer, they can even think of expanding their business!

The YouBridge computer class is held in the same humble building as the remarkable Asha fair trade project www.ashaprojects.be. It is an embroidery workshop that young women come to on a daily basis to make the most fabulous of items; they also make custom-made products.

Taslima is involved in both projects and basically runs the daily operations.

It does not take much of an investment to give so many people future prospects in third-world countries.

The class has a constant stream of interested students. It is amazing how a relatively small investment can so utterly affect young people’s lives. The project advertises by simple word-of-mouth.

By being among them and seeing the kinds of things they have to face up to in their daily lives, people become faces and faces become names, identities and personalities. By talking to them, you can build a relationship, connect and interact. You don’t even have to go to Bangladesh: with some financial support, you can forge a relationship with them from your own home, from behind your own computer. Just do it!

Gerda Verschueren

YouBridge allows people to become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

Job description: Content Manager

We are looking for a dynamic, self-motivated individual with an interest in writing and editing for the web.

The website content manager will be responsible developing the voice for all aspects of the organization’s online presence. In addition to writing, the website content manager will also be responsible for crafting site and social media content, email newsletters, and online outreach campaigns.

The content manager will work closely with the YouBridge core team, so strong communication skills are needed.

What’s in it for you?

The YouBridge team consists of six young professionals with a lot of knowledge to share. By joining the YouBridge team, you join a fun group of people with a very extended network in Belgium and abroad.

Furthermore, engaging in this experience will help you advance your career in journalism, marketing or communication.

Contact details

If you want to learn more, please contact Kande Kazadi or Jonas De Cooman:

Kande.kazadi (at) youbridge.org
Jonas.Decooman (at) youbridge.org

Michel is a 30 year old Belgian and is currently active as Communication Manager Operations at BNP Paribas Fortis.

Michel’s take on YouBridge:

“The uniqueness of Youbridge.org, is that we service both parties. We are offering a communication platform to those who are in need and give transparent, up-to-date feedback to those who are interested in the cause and/or want to help. The fact that we are with a young, passionate team believing and proving that few can make a difference for many, stimulates us to do more and better every time again. Just image that you know with an absolute certainty that you are really changing lives with what you do…who wouldn’t be enthusiastic?”

The project will receive new laptops in the coming months enabling even more young people to have online access to the YouBridge network.

The YouBridge team would like to thank all its donators and supporters for making this possible.

More information in this full (Dutch) article

Who is running YouBridge and what does it take to make it all happen?
Allow me to tell you a little bit about both.

There are 6 people that run YouBridge:

Jonas, Pieter, Barbara, Kande, Tim and Elise. Have a look here to see their picture  and read a little bit about them.

These six young professionals meet every second Monday in the evening to discuss the process of current projects as well as long term actions that need to be taken. The topics range from collecting and asking for donations, solving operational challenges, follow-up on the local project status to marketing and communication material creation.

Because all YouBridge members have full time “day” jobs they can only work on YouBridge during their free time in the evening or on the weekend. You might not know this, but none of the YouBridge members receive any money for their work. They do it 100% on volunteer basis. When other people in Belgium are going home from their jobs to relax Jonas, Pieter, Barbara, Kande, Tim and Elise work on their computers or talk on the phone to help make the YouBridge project a success.

When I first met them in December 2011, it was this commitment that inspired me to also support YouBridge. After I got to know them a little, I was impressed by their level of professionalism and excellence in running and managing a nonprofit company.

As a former marketing executive and consultant I have seen a lot. Where other big companies still do not know how to go about social media marketing YouBridge is already present, executing, and engaged with its target audience and individual client base. That makes YouBridge as 100% volunteer organization very unique.

Their key to success lies in having won the support of a fantastic mix of companies: i.e. relationship management consultancy, video and radio creative content developers, social media marketing specialists and some very experienced and influential individuals in business and social causes. Have a look at their partner list to see who they are working with.

So how are these partners helping YouBridge?

Every few months there is a ‘Board of Advice’ meeting where the YouBridge team presents their progress status and seeks input to some challenges.

Not all advisers are literally connected to the business of YouBrige but rather act as mentors or business angles, meaning they are giving advise or asking for support on behalf of YouBridge within their respective networks.

Below you can see some pictures I took at the last ‘Board of Advice’ meeting.

In specific you see part of the YouBridge team sitting on the table (from right to left) Pieter, Tim,  Elise and Barbara. Jonas was presenting in the second picture. Missing is Kande who was abroad for work. The last three pictures show participants during a break engaged in discussions how to best help YouBridge.

What was discussed in the last ‘Board of Advice’ meeting?

We discussed exciting events coming up for YouBridge. There will be a big TV and radio campaign on Belgian media in May, 2012 and YouBridge will be launching a new Facebook environment in the new TimeLine format with customer designed pages of captivating content. The new Facebook page will be ready end of May and you should take a look. To stay up to date sign up for their newsletter to hear more about these and other exciting developments.

We also discussed how YouBridge can manage and secure more helping hands and minds. Because YouBridge is managed by 6 people during their free time, they need many more volunteers and commercial partners in order to grow further. If you are interested to help or want to know more email the team with “I want to help” in your title at:  info@youbridge.org

The ‘Board of Advice’ meeting and the last three months of regular team meetings have been a lot of fun and were very rewarding. YouBridge has a bright future. It is a real pleasure to contribute to such a fine non-profit organization run by such dedicated and passionate young social entrepreneurs.

I look forward to working more with Jonas, Pieter, Barbara, Kande, Tim and Elise on the great things they have planned.

Thorsten

Thorsten is a consultant who gives advise and works with YouBridge pro bono. Additional information and contact details for Thorsten can be found here.

The whole YouBridge team would like to thank Zonta Gent II again for their continued support of the project.

Barbara and I have just arrived from Europe, we’re both jetlagged. We’ve invited Pranab to the quiet garden of a fancy hotel in Thamel, Kathmandu’s busiest area.
Quiet? We’d forgotten all about the electricity generator. It makes an awful noise.
“That’s one of the reasons I want to become an engineer,” says Pranab. “To do away, at least, with our electricity problems. Did you know Kathmandu only gets 3 hours of electricity during the day? Four at night, but that’s hardly useful for a student. That’s why it’s important to have a laptop with a long-lasting battery.”
We’re inviting Pranab to a drink, but he is eager to see the YouBridge notebook we have brought with us.

So we decide to make a little ceremony and hand the notebook over in a very solemn way, and take a photograph to show to the donors.
“My daughter Lisa has charged the battery, Pranab, but you’ll still have to register.”
It’s no problem to Pranab. He seems to have forgotten all about us, he’s so absorbed in checking out the computer. He’s smiling all the time, he seems very proud! The battery pleases him, but he’s a bit disappointed because the notebook doesn’t have a cd-rom drive, essential in a country with so little electricity supply.
We talk about possible solutions: “Maybe you can buy an external cd-rom drive here? But wouldn’t that slow down the computer too much?” Pranab is not very worried about it.
He says he’ll discuss it with Lut, the ICT teacher from Ghent who will participate in coaching the YouBridge Nepal project from the Belgian side, and they’ll come up with a solution.

Papers are handed over: Pranab is to be the YouBridge ambassador for Nepal, and he’s thrilled about the job! We sign an official agreement and talk about what his task will be: coaching the people who will receive a YouBridge notebook, making sure contact between donor and recipient is established, acting as “a bridge” between Nepal and Belgium.
We exchange some news about our lives, our families, our dreams.

Pranab tells us it’ll be his birthday soon: in March. He’s just a month older than my daughter! So I give him her e-mail address and he promises to invite her to become his friend on Facebook. He tells us he’s currently staying at a hostel in Kathmandu, it costs 2 euro a night, far too expensive for a student, he’s hoping to find a new place to stay soon.
“You’re from Pokhara, Pranab?”
“Yes, my family still lives there. They go to great lengths to allow me to study here. What I’m also interested in, do you think it would be possible to establish a link between our engineering department and an engineering department at a Belgian university?”
We promise to do our best. To me, this seems very close to the YouBridge ideal: establishing a relationship between like-minded people all over the world. I know from experience how rewarding and interesting that can be.

We tell him about our personal dreams: my Berlin friend Barbara wants to write about education in Nepal, articles for German newspapers. My dream is to develop educational materials that are cheap, child-friendly and environmentally-friendly, materials that can be used in Nepalese primary schools and that can inspire Nepalese teachers. It is already going well and Pranab promises to help wherever and whenever he can.
Then we talk about computers.
“How many students have a computer in Nepal, Pranab?” He thinks some 5 % of university students have one, the others go to cybercafés, but that’s quite an expensive solution.
Yet, Nepalese students are very much into ICT – even though they might not have a computer themselves, they all have e-mail addresses and are into social networks like Facebook.
“Facebook is quite interesting,” says Pranab. “But there’s also a danger to it.” “A danger?”
“Yes, once you start, you can spend hours on it – that’s not so good for your studies…”
We laugh about it.

It’s nearly time to leave. Pranab gives us some more advice: “Always make sure you give some official papers to the people who bring the notebooks into Nepal. Stamps are important too. For customs.” “We’ll tell YouBridge, Pranab.” “We’ll stay in contact over the Internet. If there’s anything I can do for you, please tell me.”
We still want to do some tourist shopping in Kathmandu. Pranab is going in the same direction. Time to say goodbye. We’re quite happy about this first meeting and a bit sad because we’re only staying in Nepal for a short time and won’t have the chance to meet again.
Then Pranab is on his way to the hostel he stays at. He is taken up by the Thamel crowds.
We see him walk away, lightly, the laptop case in his right hand. A happy young man.

Carine Verleye

We are really proud to announce that since January 2012, The Coffee Club has become a permanent partner of YouBridge.

This means that The Coffee Club will be donating funds every year to buy laptops and send them to Tanzania.

The Coffee Club already works in close connection with Tanzania via the fair trade system, as their coffee partly comes from the Kagera region, situated in the northwest.

To start this great project, the coffee club has decided to give the first laptops to The Hekima Girls School, a school that they already support through a Fairtrade agreement. Thanks to YouBridge , this school, like others, will benefit from modern hardware, which we hope, in turn, will significantly raise the level in education.

Let me first introduce myself. My current age is 17, yeah, pretty young but doesn’t mean I ain’t motivated enough for YouBridge . A typical feature of myself is that I’m always trying to be as creative as possible. That’s why I spent my spare time making jewelry, shooting photo’s with my digital camera or maybe ‘pimping’ my schoolbooks to a kind of scrapbook. Since this month, I follow a Spanish course but Icelandic still stays my favourite language (although I don’t understand a word of it). I live in Asse, close to Brussels, where I also go to school. I study economy-mathematics at Koninklijk Atheneum Vijverbeek. And that’s where I first found out about YouBridge..

I got to know YouBridge because of my former math teacher, Miss Wouters. She wanted to raise some money to support the organisation. Me and my friends thought “yeah, why not?”. That’s the moment we started to spend our lunch breaks together to work out some great ideas. During a couple of weeks, we gained enough money for 3 laptops just by selling some ice creams or greeting cards! We have chosen Hanifa Nafuuna, Patricia Nantaba and Innocent Lemi to donate our laptops to. Afterwards, we shot a video together to deliver the message to this persons and it appeared they were extremely happy about it! We all felt great about it because now 3 students were capable to study much better because of the YouBridge-laptop! And it was all because of us! Another great part of it is that you can e-mail with the persons with ‘your’ laptop too. Just by sending a few e-mails, you could immediately feel the difference in culture. It was a whole new experience to all of us.

Since then Vijverbeek didn’t stop supporting African students. This year our students raised over €1 500 with different activities and were capable to donate 12 laptops! Congrats! (You can find the people who worked on this in the group ‘K.A. Vijverbeek’ on this website!)

Because of this great support from everyone in our school, I’m looking for people who want to start up another group with me. Together we would set up some events or activities to raise money. Next step: donate it to YouBridge! Do you want to help to bridge the digital gap in our world and you think you can do it in a team? Don’t hesitate and contact me as soon as possible!

Because we should all ‘bridge’.

I am profoundly grateful to YouBridge for providing a laptop to me. It has been an immense help for me in my work as well as in my communication with others. The postal system in Nepal is very poor and unreliable, and hence the laptop is of great help for maintaining communications even when I am travelling and out of station.

Many hours of  regular load shedding of electricity in a day from November to June every year is a great problem for all the people in Nepal. This lack of constant electricity affected my normal work very negatively  as the inverter too did not get sufficient time to get recharged. With the battery in the YouBridge laptop, this problem also has been greatly solved.

I am very grateful to YouBridge for your kind assistance to get a laptop. I am making very good use of it, and I am sure it will help me in doing my work more conveniently and comfortably.