Building an international youth platform over two years with founding teams across three countries, what coordinating without physical presence actually demands, and why the slow work of defining values prevents the faster work of constant misalignment.

Core insights:

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The idea for Not Too Young began during a UWC Deutschland short course called Building a Sustainable Future in the summer of 2022. I was eighteen, finishing high school in Macedonia. Simona was nineteen, from Bratislava. Eirini was sixteen, from Athens.

We met during discussions about youth activism and sustainability. The conversation kept returning to the same problem, circling it the way conversations do when something true has been touched. Young people want to create change but do not know where to start. They feel overwhelmed, confused about which issues deserve their attention, unsure whether individual action matters at all.

We decided to build a platform addressing this. Not another awareness campaign. An actual resource hub providing tools, connections, and steps that could be acted upon. The three of us committed to developing this as our project phase following the course.

UWC Deutschland provided mentorship structure for one year. Regular digital meeting points. Mentor guidance. A framework for developing concept into reality. This was not a weekend hackathon project. It was a two-year commitment to build something that would outlast our initial enthusiasm. And enthusiasm, I would learn, is a resource that depletes faster than you expect.

The first months focused entirely on clarifying mission and values. This felt slow. We wanted to start building immediately, to see something take shape. But the mentor guidance pushed us to articulate exactly what problem we solved and for whom.

We settled on a clear mission: provide young people with tools, resources, and support to bring about positive change in their communities. The platform would offer simple, doable steps instead of overwhelming manifestos. Explanations instead of assumptions about prior knowledge. Connections to organisations and causes instead of isolated individual action.

We defined six core values that would guide every decision. Empowerment. Education. Inclusivity. Accessibility. Collaboration. Impact. These were not abstract ideals to frame on a wall. They became practical filters. When we debated features or content, we asked whether it aligned with these values. The answer was usually clear once the question was asked properly.

Empowerment meant treating users as capable change-makers, not passive recipients of information. Education meant providing context, not just calls to action. Inclusivity meant designing for young people regardless of background. Accessibility meant steps anyone could take. Collaboration meant building with young people, not for them. Impact meant measuring real outcomes, not engagement metrics that flatter without informing.

This values definition process took longer than building the initial website. But it prevented constant misalignment later when we made decisions across time zones and cultures and the small frictions that accumulate when people cannot simply turn to each other and ask what they meant.

Coordinating across Slovakia, Greece, and Macedonia meant no casual conversations. Every decision required scheduled calls. Every miscommunication took days to resolve. Time zones were not drastically different, but finding overlapping availability between school schedules, part-time work, and family commitments was a constant negotiation.

We divided responsibilities based on strengths and genuine interests. I handled technical development and design. Simona focused on content strategy and community building. Eirini managed networking connections and event curation. This division worked because we had defined clear scope for the platform before assigning roles. We knew what we were building. We could therefore know who should build which part.

The platform structure emerged from our values and mission. A networking section connecting young people with each other and relevant NGOs. An events section curating opportunities for activism and social change. A blog called Voices for Change featuring perspectives from young change-makers globally. Resources explaining how to take action on specific issues.

We built the website, established social media presence, created a Discord community for connection and discussion, and developed content frameworks for regular publishing. Each component required coordination between three people who had never built an organisation before. We learned by doing, which is another way of saying we learned by making mistakes and correcting them before they became permanent.

Several structural decisions enabled progress despite coordination challenges.

Missing these required advance notice and asynchronous updates. This created an accountability rhythm that kept momentum when motivation wavered.

Mission statements, values definitions, role responsibilities, content guidelines, design standards, brand voice parameters. Documentation meant new decisions could reference existing agreements instead of relitigating foundational questions every time someone remembered things differently.

Launch networking section by this date. Publish first three blog posts by that date. Establish Discord community by the next. Concrete targets prevented endless refinement of abstract strategy.

The first version of every section was basic. We shipped it, gathered feedback, improved it. Waiting for a perfect comprehensive launch would have meant never launching at all.

The mentorship structure from UWC Deutschland provided external accountability. Regular check-ins with mentors forced us to articulate progress and blockers aloud. This prevented the drift that kills volunteer projects when the initial excitement fades and life reasserts its competing demands.

By September 2023, we had a functioning platform with multiple sections, active social media presence, published content, and a small but growing community. The website provided resources for young activists, curated events and opportunities, connected people with organisations, and featured voices from young change-makers across countries.

The impact was not measured in millions of users. It was measured in young people who found actionable next steps instead of vague inspiration. In connections made between activists in different countries working on similar issues without knowing the others existed. In resources that made activism accessible instead of overwhelming.

Sometimes the value of what you build is not in its scale but in its specificity. We built something that worked for the people it was meant to serve. That felt like enough. That still feels like enough.

Several lessons from building Not Too Young apply to any international founding team.

These become decision filters when founders disagree or face tradeoffs that have no obviously correct answer.

Assumptions that seem obvious in conversation become unclear when revisited months later across time zones. Written agreements prevent constant renegotiation of things you thought were settled.

Overlapping ownership creates confusion in distributed teams where you cannot simply sort it out over lunch.

Abstract goals do not create accountability. Specific dates and outputs do.

Distributed teams can endlessly refine without shipping. Done beats perfect when building across borders.

International teams move slower than co-located ones. Account for this honestly in timeline planning.

Most importantly, enthusiasm launches projects but systems sustain them. The initial excitement of the UWC course got us started. The structured mentorship, documented processes, and clear responsibilities kept us building when enthusiasm fluctuated, as it always does, as it must.

Until next time,