In 2023, the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund (RTYPF) announced an inaugural cohort of 26 youth-led initiatives would receive a total of $2 million in funding to support their advocacy for a more inclusive, equitable, and accountable technology ecosystem. The first-of-its-kind fund was made possible through generous investments from organizations including Hopelab, The Archewell Foundation, The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Omidyar Network, Pivotal, and more across a range of disciplines. Hopelab sat down with the team from Cyber Collective, one of the inaugural cohort grant recipients, to learn about their year-long experience.

Hopelab: It’s been a year since you received the call from Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex letting you know you received a Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund (RTYPF) grant. As you look back over the year how do you think this grant was able to impact the responsible technology space?

Cyber Collective: It has been quite an impactful year for the Cyber Collective team! Our goal is to help Gen Z and millennial digital natives understand critical tech topics and equip them with skills to protect themselves online – and we made progress by leveraging viral trends, pop, and Internet culture in some of our knowledge-building activities. We have a very active presence on TikTok and other social media platforms where we break down everything from how to shop online safely to handling a hacked account to AI dating scams. We also set out to expand our online resource library, which includes tailored content addressing privacy, security, mis/disinformation, and AI ethics. We now have over 100 digital resources to explore on our site! These resources feature expert-verified information designed to make it easier for people to feel safer and more confident in their digital experiences.

Hopelab: Did you find that the activities you initially planned to do shifted over the course of the year? What drove that shift or what helped you to stay on course?

Cyber Collective: Our goal was to use our RTYPF grant to develop a public awareness campaign to empower young people to become more safe, secure, and confident online. As we took on phase one, which involved developing the campaign creative strategy with our team, we transformed our work into the development and amplification of a core educational program called “Internet Street Smarts.” In phase two, which we’re currently working on, we’re expanding the digital experience and building partnerships to help as many people as possible understand how to protect themselves online. Receiving the actual grant was a huge catalyst. It helped us turn our idea for an awareness campaign into a formal program to ensure lasting impact AND allowed our two leaders, CEO and Founder Tazin Khan and Chief Strategy Officer Callie Rojewski, to work on Cyber Collective full-time.

Being so hands-on allowed us to build a stronger foundation for our programs and overall collective experience. We realized that we needed to upgrade and test our content and resources to ensure engagement and accessibility. Inspiring community and reaching people in their day-to-day lives was an important part of the experience we aimed to deliver. We created . These products allow our community to represent our mission and values, bringing our curriculum and recommended behavior changes into people’s homes. We even created a give/get model for the password journal, getting our community involved in helping their loved ones and communities as well.