We Need Young People - a website what I built (http://www.wnyp.org)

[Olly Benson]

Hello,

This is the result of an idea I've been mulling over for a while.

There are loads of opportunities for young people to get involved - from consultations, media requests, competitions, debates, surveys etc. The sort of thing that involve winning an iPod.

Anyway, these get emailed around various networks; but wouldn't it be a good idea if we collected them in one central place and then people could distribute them as and how they like.

And that's what We Need Young People is (www.wnyp.org - ed). Basically it's meant to be a depository of opportunities for young people to get involved. You put the data in and it is collated and returned in a variety of ways.

As well as being searchable on the website, this information is available in RSS and XML form so hopefully people can do some exciting stuff with the data.

It's still a bit of a proof of concept, so it's not a completed project. But to the people I've shown, they've sort of liked the idea.

However, what it really needs is content. So, if you spot an opportunity, then please add it into the database (it's a fairly simple form). This will then need to be approved. If you have lots of opportunities I can issue you with an account so you can add them and get them automatically approved.

And please spread the word. And if you love nothing better than wading through XML, then start doing some clever stuff. And give me feedback. And advice / support / help / assurance that it's not a totally rubbish idea.

Cheers in anticipation,


Olly

[Duncan Hodgson]

Hi Olly

We are currently in the process of redesigning www.rubothered.co.uk which we are planning to launch in December and this is something that we are keen to include. Is there some kind of API mailing list you can put me on to let me know about any changes in the XML feeds?

Am going to start doing some work on this over the weekend so will post anything I come up with here once it is done.

Thanks for another good resource!

Cheers
Duncan

[Hilary Mason]

Hi Olly

I'm liking the concept. Info I currently gather from different sources usually gets posted into our Service wide Monday email but I think this sort of website will be useful. Have you thought about links to Do It and the other volunteering sites? I know that this is different but as volunteering is used so broadly many of the opportunities that are up on the site at the moment would be considered to be volunteering so it might be worth a link, just a thought. I wil try to post some content when I come across it.

Thanks
Hilary

[Tim Davies]

Hey Olly

Looks really interesting... will explore more soon.

This certainly adds well to the growing eco-system of youth-focussed APIs and feeds of data out there - which is great :)

Tim