Do you want to support Youropeans? You’re very welcome!
Please contact me at mark@youropeans.eu.
Join the Youropeans! – a book, site and platform
28 European capitals, 8 professions, over 200 interviews with Youropeans, people like you and me. Our neighbours – some of them fairly distant neighbours – are all members of the same club, the EU. The book provides a platform for them to talk about their work, their life, and about Europe. The people’s Europe, as it were. Youropeans aims to highlight Europe’s beautiful diversity as well as the similarities within its borders. Its wider objective is to increase our understanding of our neighbours, however distant, and in some small way help to create an even more beautiful Europe. Europe, or to be more precise, the EU, is a fact of life, whether we like it or not. It is up to us to make the best of it.
A book and a site I have already ‘done’ eight cities, so I still have twenty to visit before the end of the year. The portraits of the people I interview are shown on youropeans.eu and as this gallery grows, I hope to have enough material to use as the basis for a book I intend to write about the Youropeans during the first half of 2015. The goal of my project is to produce a beautiful book full of fascinating personal stories and photographs, but the process, which began last summer, is time-consuming and will cover a period of two full years.
I need your help! The first part of the project was paid for by my own funds, but I need you to help me complete it. Your contributions, along with those from a number of other sources and a substantial chunk of my own money, can help make Youropeans a reality. Support Youropeans through my campaign at Indiegogo, the European crowd funding platform, or through Kickstarter.
A book and a site: what’s the difference? I’m still trying to figure that out. Some, but not all, of the portraits I post online will appear in the book. The interviews I am currently conducting are the raw material I will be using to identify themes and common threads, and to explore the differences as well as the striking similarities among Europeans in general and within professional groups. The idea is to write a book that is a good read, one that you can open to any page and start reading.
A platform: I hope that my project will grow out to be more than a book and a site: it would be great if Europeans would become Youropeans, if they would join the project, add their stories, and would meet other Youropeans. The place to do so is the Facebook page, Youropeans.
About me: I started this project out of personal interest: I like knowing who my neighbours are. Especially when they are members of the same club, a union that wants to have more and more impact on my personal life. I live in Amsterdam, a trained lawyer, former social entrepreneur (I sold my company, Robin Good, in 2007) and now a journalist and writer. My first novel, The Parvenu, was published in 2011, and translated into English. My latest book is a guide to creating your dream job. Youropeans is a project after my own heart, one that combines elements I consider to be essential to my work: creativity, social awareness, entrepreneurship and pleasure. My former company, Robin Good, combined all of these elements. You might describe me as a socially aware, entrepreneurial, journalist. Or something along those lines.
Some recommendations: