The World Needs more NOWers

s happening! The applications are flying in from different corners of Europe and beyond. It’s very exciting to read these applications full of motivation and energy.

Do you know young people who are eager to change the world and could enjoy such an encounter with a diverse group of people? We would be thrilled to receive more applications! We are especially looking for participants from Switzerland. That’s why we made the following video:

Besides Switzerland, we are also hoping you could help us spread the word in Greece, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Send your contacts the following link with a nice personal note: http://bit.ly/NOWJourney. Thank you :)

By the way, this will be our last message sent out through the wemakeit platform. From now on, we will keep you up to date through our monthly newsletter.

Best wishes,

Rahel & the NOW team

P.s. the crowdfunding money has reached our account and will soon be used to buy trips to our NOW Encounter for our unlikely participants. Thank you <3

We just reached our crowdfunding goal! Thank you, thank you, thank you! We can’t find better words to express our gratitude.

We’d like to thank all of you who pledged support, who believe in NOW and who have helped us spread the word. This has only been possible with the help of all of you!

We can’t wait to turn the NOW Journey into reality! For now, you can join in our celebration at https://www.facebook.com/nowornow/.

Big hugs,

Rahel & the NOW team

We have a lot to celebrate this week: a Swiss foundation just confirmed their support for the pilot edition of our NOW Journey. If we can reach our goal in this crowdfunding, then the first NOW Journey will definitely start in July!

Meanwhile, we have reached over 60% of our goal this morning and couldn’t be happier. Thank you so much to our newest supporters! Please keep sharing and supporting us so we can reach our goal together in the remaining 6 days.

July is slowly approaching which is why we have officially launched the program now. You can help us spread the word by sharing our program with youth and organizations in your network. Information about the program can be found here: http://nowornow.org/now-journey/

Let’s make this Journey happen together!

<3

Rahel & the NOW Team

P.s. Our team member Eva made these beautiful zipper pouches herself from hand-printed fabric. Get one of the 3 editions before it’s too late. Or get the DIY instructions to make one yourself :)

We often hear that NOW is exciting but also very abstract. For us, the abstract is slowly but surely being filled with colors and experiences. Most important to this process of grasping NOW are our participants. They are at the center of what we are working on. Today, we’d like to share with you the following message from a potential future NOWer that we have received:

«Dear NOW team, my name is Christy Delaney, I am a member of the Traveller community in Ireland. As a community we face discrimination on a regular basis in Ireland. We also have a lot of problems with unemployment and early school leaving and the rate of suicide in the community is much higher than the settled community. I would like to go on this exchange as it’s a chance to get to know other communities and backgrounds and share my experience of my own community and the problems within. I also would like to be someone to make a change in my own community and I think this would be great opportunity to learn new skills to be able to do this.»

It’s young people like Christy who we want to reach with NOW. We want to be able to give them the skills and the needed self-confidence to make their dreams come true. Young people like Christy often do not have access to empowering intercultural programs. Luckily, we reached him through our partner organization Involve. Our contact at this grassroots organization was very enthusiastic about NOW and will give Christy access to her office – and internet connection – so that he can hand in his application.

With each partnership that we enter and each story that we hear makes the NOW vision more clear and important to us. We hope that today we can pass on some of that motivation to you.

By the way, today we celebrate 41% of our campaign goal. Thank you so much for making that happen! Please spread the word so we can reach 100% together.

Best wishes,

Rahel & the NOW team

P.s. have you already seen our newest reward?

We have developed «NOW-the Game» to give you a taste of NOW’s experiential and creative learning approach. By playing this card game you will experience how global challenges and local actions are interconnected – or you simply focus on getting more karma points than your competitors – it’s up to you!

They say that the second half of a crowdfunding campaign is the hardest. So far we agree. To change that we had a very creative weekend!

Our team members have prototyped several new rewards that we will upload this week. The first is already online:

Coloring is no longer just for kids! Now anyone can also get their rainbow pencils out. To create the Unicorn Coloring Book we have asked artists from all over the world to sponsor a page. We will combine these drawings into a beautiful book and send it home to you. The Coloring Book is also a great gift for a friend who needs to relax more ;)

A big thanks goes out to all the artists involved!

Cheers!

Rahel & the NOW team

Mothers! They have been the secret heroines of this campaign from the start! Our moms (and dads) have given us feedback and encouraging words, have been among the first backers and spread the word unlike anyone else. Thank you moms!

Today we received a truly heart-warming message that makes us believe in our project even more: a group of Turkish mothers sent us the following message: «We don’t have much money to invest but we can prepare bags from recycled clothes for your first group of participants». <3

Coming from different parts of the world and different backgrounds, we know that not everyone has the same financial means. Supporting NOW can happen in so many different ways. We are truly amazed by the number of people who support us with small gestures or want to help us develop further. Thank you!!

For those of you who can afford financial support, please help us bridge this challenging second third of our campaign. <3

Rahel & the NOW team

The first week of our crowdfunding adventure is nearly over. You have been supporting us in this early and important phase. Because you’re a NOW pioneer, we’d like to say…

Over the next weeks we want to get from 15% to 100% and we are going to need your help for it: Please spread the word! Together we can get from 25 supporters to 100 :)

We wish you a great start into the week!

Rahel & the NOW team