Well have you read about this One-way-ticket to Mars journey that some Dutch company started?
Apparently that will be privately funded, using technology from ESA and Russia, mainly. But most of the applicants are Americans and its open for anyone, of any nationality. A group of people will be sent to Mars without the opportunity to go back, and they'll have to set up a colony of sorts...
The participants will be selected from a reality TV show. It sounds totally nutty but it's a completely serious project. They count on getting 500,000 applicants to choose from and they are closing the applications in August. 80.000 people already applied.
Mars One - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia