Round Table Youth Fund

A youth-led fund for solidarity, shared responsibility, and anthroposophical initiatives around the world

The Round Table Youth Fund is an independent youth-led granting organization that supports projects inspired by Anthroposophy and led by young adults from around the world. It also provides travel assistance to active Youth Section co-workers who wish to attend the annual Co-Workers Gathering, helping to make these gatherings financially accessible despite the great differences in the value of global currencies.

At the heart of the fund is a simple but deeply social question: how can resources be gathered and shared in a way that strengthens trust, cooperation, and solidarity?

he Round Table Youth Fund is not a classic funding structure in which a distant committee decides who deserves support. Instead, young people and youth groups collect resources together and then enter a shared process at a round table. There, the needs of different initiatives can be seen, heard, and carried by the group. Money is not only treated as a financial tool, but as a bridge between people and projects.

The idea grew out of the Youth Section Global Access and Project Fund, which was shaped during the Co-Workers Gathering in June 2023 at the Goetheanum. From the beginning, the impulse was to work with resources collectively: people and youth groups could contribute what they were able to give, and the collected money could support young people when they needed help to travel, meet, and take part in the life of the wider Youth Section.

In 2024, the fund focused mainly on helping youth leaders attend the annual Co-Workers Gathering in the Netherlands. This created a first practical experience of global solidarity: young people from different countries and life situations could meet, share their work, inspire one another, and experience the worldwide nature of the Youth Section.

Since then, the impulse has grown further. The fund now also supports concrete youth-led anthroposophical projects. These projects may be artistic, educational, agricultural, social, cultural, or spiritual. What matters is that they are initiated by young people, can become practical in the world, and carry a living relationship to anthroposophy.

RoundTable is run by global volunteers who are young adults committed to creating opportunities for new initiatives to receive support. This group is also dedicated to fostering a sense of solidarity among Youth Section groups around the world by facing the financial disparity that is present today and working to address it in a small but practical way.

The funds raised by the Round Table Youth Fund are distributed every year at the Co-Workers Gathering. Representatives of selected applications meet in person, present their initiatives, listen to one another, ask questions, and enter a shared social process. Together, they determine the amount of money that each project should receive. In this way, the applicants help distribute the money themselves.

This process is the central ideal of the fund. It asks each participant to look beyond their own project and to perceive the needs of the whole circle. The intention is that money moves through trust, consent, cooperation, and a sense of kinship. The fund therefore becomes more than financial support: it becomes a living practice of sharing responsibility.

By supporting the Round Table Youth Fund, donors help young people travel, meet, collaborate, and bring anthroposophical initiatives into practical life. Every contribution becomes part of a wider gesture of solidarity, helping resources move toward the places where they can become most alive.