These youth initiatives mentioned above, however, have always stayed independent, looking for their own financial resources. During the last decade, it became clear that only 25% of the 400 of them were able to find resources to publish the map. There is no universally working recipe to get the youth project funded. The geographical differences of the city initiatives, like the location, size of the city, the conditions for the tourism industry and its level make some of them disadvantaged. Plus young fundraisers are often facing difficulties when trying to find a common ground with local politicians and to overcome prejudice. Much energy is often invested in unsuccessful fundraising activities and by observing each other we learn that it must be used more efficiently. We focused on these. Our goal was to double the percentage of successful initiatives during the project period. And by sharing the funding stories and focusing on a specific group of young people during the projects we aimed at the target to inspire the users and stakeholders to learn from their experiences.
Ambitious young people who are running community projects are often missing experience or an overview of funding opportunities. They need to be empowered, their self-confidence, skills and creativity should grow, they ought to be heard since they are important motors of society. Their initiatives attract more and more young people to follow their example and to engage in a public life. They invest a lot of energy that is wasted once they do not find sustainable support. FUND-IT project wants to improve young people’s entrepreneurial skills. Even in a non-profit area. Sustainability and efficiency is a key to expanding the impact of their projects. Different funding models should be examined and improved. We focus on a group of young initiatives that sprang up around the USE-IT project. The non-commercial USE-IT map guides created by locals, honest and practical, are showing the real face of cities, breaking a bubble between locals and travelers. The worthiness of their mission is obvious, it meets European values on many levels. It supports intercultural understanding, fights the social exclusion between locals and tourists and does create European citizens. It is truly bottom-up, the maps show that there is "unity in diversity".