Answering the question of how you could help out :)

Since I opened up this project to the world in general, the two questions I get asked most often are

1. How is the whole thing going to work at a detailed level... content, interaction, access, reach etc.?
2. How can interested people get involved and where can they help?

To Q1 I have only basic answers for the moment, and I'm hoping some of your ideas will help fill in the blanks. The point of this is blog is that I've started with a reasonably comprehensive framework idea, but haven't got to the details stage as yet, and I guess if I had there wouldn't be so much scope to involve you all.

So we've taken step 1, which is to kick off the journey of this idea... and it's on to step 2, which is to begin to figure it out in more detail. And that I guess brings me on to the answer to Q2.

This is essentially an experiment to see if we can tap into our social connections to get this idea off the ground so the easiest way you can help is to get let your friends and contacts know about this project. Basically a one-off exercise - forward on the email or help build the facebook network group by inviting your friends list.

What I was really hoping for however, is a network that we could send out requests for information to. A group of people like you who are happy to point us to friends you know who might be able to help, get involved or share their expertise with us.

Finally there's those of you who actually want to get involved. There's a whole range of areas I could use help with, and I'm hoping to start to get a team together over the next few months and I'm happy to involve anyone who's game for putting in some effort :)

Here's a quick outline of what I'm going to do next

• Learning – more about needs of young people in inner cities
• Research – what’s out there & where we could make a difference
• Brainstorming – developing user interaction & content
• Marketing – designing a logo and building a brand
• Modeling – building a sustainable cooperative business model
• Planning – setting it all up & figuring out how to get it done
• Technology – architecting a solution around existing networks

It should be pretty interesting, so if you have a little time and feel like doing a bit in any of these areas drop me a note, and we'll find something that doesn't involve too much time or commitment.

For this weekend I'm going to get on with some investigation into what's already out there that does anything similar to this project; primarily to understand how we differentiate, and where we can improve. If you know anything about existing volunteer or youth services on or offline, let me know. It would be v helpful!