YTI Turns 25, Launches Fourth Crowdfunding Campaign
Candler School of Theology’s Youth Theological Initiative (YTI) is once again participating in a fundraising effort through Momentum, Emory University’s crowdfunding platform that debuted in 2015. This year’s campaign runs from July 2 through July 29 and coincides with YTI’s 25th anniversary. Funds raised will benefit the YTI Summer Academy, which brings forty rising high school juniors and seniors to the Emory campus for three weeks of Christian theological education. Donations are fully tax-deductible. Learn more and give to YTI through Momentum.
The 2018 campaign hopes to raise $6,000 to support future YTI scholars. For three years, YTI’s crowdfunding campaigns have been some of the most successful at Emory, each time exceeding their fundraising goal. This year, Candler alumni Scotty Greene 14T and Rebecca Storace 10T have funded one scholar with a gift of $6,000, and issued a challenge for donors to raise another $6K to fully fund a second scholar in honor of 25 years of YTI.
Established in 1993, YTI has now enrolled more than 1,000 youth from across the U.S. and around the world. Participants wrestle with deep theological questions in a supportive community of peers and are taught by seminary students and faculty at Candler. This year, students applied to take part in a 10-day travel seminar to Northern Ireland or a nine-day YTI summer academy on the Emory campus. Diversity abounds, as participants are drawn from different theological and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Nurturing that diversity is the reason YTI is dedicating the proceeds from this crowdfunding effort to financial aid, says the program’s director, Elizabeth Corrie. “The beauty of YTI is its diversity, and we cannot maintain that diversity unless we can make it economically accessible to everyone.”