Second Wave of Think Big Started with Street Art Happening of Young Artists and Senior Citizens
Starting Thursday 27 October until the end of this year, young people aged 13-26 can register their ideas and projects to help their community for a chance to get up to CZK 90,000.
The O2 Foundation, in collaboration with the Civil Society Development Foundation, will distribute CZK 6 million among the most interesting and commendable projects. The programme kicked off with a street art event of young artists - one of the projects which won support in the first wave of Think Big. Assisted by young artists, senior citizens sprayed stencil art depicting 537 faces onto the wall of a services centre for senior citizens.
"We do not like brainless sprayers who tag on every wall. We want to do intelligent and modern street art about and for the people. We want to turn around senior citizens' and the public's opinion on street art. We also want to direct young people's attention to the issues faced by the elderly and show that there are many older people in the community who still want to try something new," says Jáchym Moravec who represents the project The Wall - 537 Faces. "We are happy to have earned the trust of the O2 Foundation. The support we got from Think Big allowed us to implement our idea on a greater scale than we originally planned," adds Jáchym.
Young people can register their projects online at www.o2thinkbig.cz until 31 December 2011. The projects will then be evaluated by independent regional committees comprising civil society representatives, subject matter experts, Telefónica employees and young people who had already seen their projects come to life. The results will be announced in January.
"In the first wave of Think Big we gave our support to a hundred of the best projects initiated by young people - from a project to save an ancient linden tree parkway, through a project to start an online service for young to help them in their bereavement, to a film against violence which was made in the region of Náchod, which is rife with problems arising from the majority and the Roma minority living alongside each other,"says Ivana Šatrová, Manager, O2 Foundation. "We assist young people with promotion and publicity for their projects; this is also why we started a large-scale media campaign to mark the arrival of the second wave of Think Big, in which we feature selected projects to inspire even more young people," adds Šatrová.
All projects which received support in the first wave of Think Big are featured on www.o2thinkbig.cz. Each project has its own page, with blogs, videos and photographs from the project team, which document and map the progress.
