2018: A New Year and Great Changes for Our Partners
Categorized as: About us, Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Education, Girls & women, Grantee, Job Creation, Latin America, Leadership, Middle East, Our Partners, Pacific Islands, Poverty Alleviation, Stories, Storytelling, U.S. on May 12, 2018. Related Grantees: Advancing Girls Education: AGE Africa, African Entrepreneur Collective, Agora Partnerships, Anseye Pou Ayiti (Teach for Haiti), Destiny Foundation through Cents of Relief, Educate Lanka, Global Press Institute, JAAGO Foundation through the Jolkona Foundation, Medha, Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, Resonate, The School Fund, Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, Voix & Actions, Women LEAD, StrongMinds.
Editor’s Note: Pulling together updates of our grantee partners in the first two quarters of the year is always rewarding, as this is the time of year when many organizations issue their annual reports from the previous year. They’ve crunched the numbers, gathered the data, and measured the impact. These past two quarters are no different. Check out the outstanding work of our partners, both in 2017, and in the past four months, with expanded information available through links to blogs, articles, videos, and annual reports.
By Sally Skees-Helly, Director and Board CFO
African Entrepreneur Collective: Rwanda and Tanzania, Africa: Inkomoko, AEC’s flagship accelerator program, hosted a group of 12 students and professors from San Diego University, School of Peace Studies, who learned more about the program and how they support entrepreneurs in Rwanda. Additionally, AEC had a record year in 2017, more than doubling their entrepreneur cohorts from 2016. They worked with over 800 refugees and created more than 2,600 jobs.
AGE Africa: Malawi, Africa: Executive Director, Concepcion Gaxiola recently sat down with the Ambassador of Malawi to the U.S., Edward Yakobe Sawerengera, to discuss his commitment to Malawi, girls’ education, AGE Africa, and his continued participation in their biggest fundraiser, 10K A Day, coming up on May 20th in Washington DC. Read the interview here.
Participants in AGE Africa’s fundraiser: 10K A Day from previous years.
Agora Partnerships: Latin America and the Caribbean: Agora recently welcomed 33 exceptional companies at the Entrepreneur Retreat in Granada, Nicaragua, where they shared ideas and challenges; and drafted impact, growth, and capital strategies. They recently grew their team by another 11 members and are currently looking for a managing director for their Mexico City office. Here’s a video that explains Agora’s Accelerator program in a concise way.
Agora Partnership’s Entrepreneur Retreat
Additionally, Agora is launching a partnership with International Planned Parenthood Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF-WHR). Leveraging the healthcare expertise of IPPF/WHR and the business acceleration services of Agora Partnerships, the program will provide up to five IPPF/WHR Member Associations (MAs) with the technical resources they need to ensure financial sustainability.
Anseye Pou Ayiti: Haiti: In 2018, APA aims to add 65 teachers in 2018 to the 110 who are currently in the program. Check out their highlights from 2017 here. Our friend Nedgine was just chosen as one of 20 out of 20,000 applicants to participate in the inaugural Obama Foundation Fellowship! In addition, APA was selected as the Haiti-based partner for the College Board’s #WeNeedYourLight initiative in response to a prominent world leader’s remarks in February about those from Haiti, Central American, and African nations. At least something good can come from such unfortunate remarks.
Destiny Foundation: Kolkata, India: January was human trafficking awareness month. Here’s an article from Destiny’s Facebook page about the importance of female empowerment and leadership in the programs tackling this problem, especially the patriarchal societies in which human trafficking can flourish. Here’s another great article, written by intern Kalie Marsicano at Destiny that captures their work, their challenges, future projects, and her unique perspective.
Educate Lanka: Sri Lanka: In November, Educate Lanka and MasterCard presented the first batch of MasterCard sponsored scholarships as part of the partnerships initiated earlier this year. This partnership emphasizes the opportunities of the corporate-social partnership model. For more information, see the recent press release. As part of this scholarship sponsorship, Educate Lanka launched its first “Scholar Stories Series” on female empowerment in Sri Lanka. Meet their first student, Madjusha Lakimini, a future pharmacist.
Madjusha Lakimini receiving her first scholarship
Global Press Institute: U.S. and Global: GPI and Cristi Hegranes were featured in an article in Alliance magazine about a discussion on the rapidly changing media landscape and the exploration of the unique intersection of philanthropy and journalism. You can also listen to a December interview with Cristi on the Entrepreneur Podcast Network about social entrepreneurism and media innovation.
JAAGO: Bangladesh: Delegates from the 6th Bangladesh-Sri Lanka Youth Exchange Program visited JAAGO in December. 25 Sri Lankan delegates, including government officials and representative of the Youth Council and Youth Parliament learned more about JAAGO through this visit.
Youth Exchange Program Participants
Then, in February, JAAGO conducted a 4-day National Youth Assembly (NYA 2018) fostering self-development, capacity building, self-reliance, and developing leadership skills among the youth community in Bangladesh. The event hosted 140 elected youth leaders, 20 group leaders along with youth icons, entrepreneurs and social influencers.
Medha: India: In Medha’s quarterly report, they illustrated a more than a doubling of their internships this year to 543. Additionally, they have grown by 3x the last three years, and are aiming to reach 40,000 students across 100 campuses by 2020.
Medha’s internship growth
Pacific Aviation Museum: Hawaii: In the past several months, Pacifica Aviation Museum has provided numerous programming and educational opportunities to underprivileged youth in Hawaii and all over the world. One of the programs this year was “Flight Adventures,” a mini air-show. They brought students from Virginia and Japan together to participate in the “Discover Pearl Harbor” youth program. Finally, they had an Open Cockpit Day to honor women in aviation and aerospace. At this event, they invite kids to come climb into the cockpits of several of their historic aircrafts.
Resonate Workshops: Rwanda and East Africa: After a year of strategic planning, Resonate has developed a detailed 2020 strategy with clear goals and metrics for the coming years. They have gotten the results back from their Random Controlled Trial that identified areas of success and areas that need work. With their new website design, they’re including a Story of the Month to their newsletter. They completed their pilot run of their Training of Facilitators program and are in the last stages of completing the legal agreements necessary to offer the program more widely. They continue to grow their staff, having hired a new Country Director, Norette Turimuci, and Program Coordinator, Musoni Hamilton, bringing the team to 8 full-time and 1 part-time employees. Resonate recently secured funding while in the States from The Namaste Foundation and Conscious Capital. Co-founder Ayla Schlosser recently participated in a podcast on Finding Impact titled Creating Company Culture and the Role of Self-Confidence.
StrongMinds: Uganda, Africa: Meet Rashidah, one of the 25,000 women treated for depression in Africa through the StrongMinds program. And check out this chart detailing the impact depression has on the day to day lives of the women suffering from it, as well as the impact on their families and communities. Overall, StrongMinds has grown significantly. They did study the decrease in the percentage of depression-free clients after six months from 2016 to 2017 and determined some of the decline was due to a higher degree of depression suffered by many of their clients in 2017. Based upon this information, instead of just measuring the percentage of clients depression-free after six months, in 2018 StrongMinds will also focus on the degree to which their depression has diminished.
The School Fund: Global: This past summer, board members Matt Severson and Finnegan Harries traveled to Lucknow, India with Jackson Harries and Greg McCahon to create a short film about Dharini, one of the students supported by The School Fund through their field partner Milaan.
Tomorrow’s Youth Organization: the Middle East: TYO has expanded its current services and is offering the Youth Rehabilitation through Entrepreneurship program to university graduates, to address the high percentage rate (51%) of unemployed college graduates in Palestine. The program covers managerial subjects, creating a work and business plan, bookkeeping, English, and computer skills. There are networking and mentorship opportunities built into the course and participants are matched with a successful business person. Due to the economic situation in Palestine, self-employment is an important pathway for youth in creating opportunities for themselves. TYO recently kicked off Phase 2 of its Youth Rehabilitation Through Entrepreneurship Program, where they received intensive English training to convey their business ideas more broadly. In Phase 1, earlier in April, the youth entrepreneurs presented their businesses, including concepts they gained through 10 training sessions. TYO has also recently implemented the Academic Intervention and School Drop-Out Prevention to help support students in refugee camps in Nablus.
Voix & Actions: Haiti: Click here to meet the Voix et Actions managers who run the hen house, the fish farming project, and the goat project.
Women LEAD: Nepal: They have just completed their seventh Young Women’s Political Leadership Institute session, looking into the concepts of globalization, westernization, modernization, democratization, and their implications on the future of Nepal. Another program, the Youth Leadership Program, works to build academic success while furthering their understanding of gender equality. Gender equality is a focus in many of WomenLEAD’s programs. Read the endearing blog written by a couple of teens about what they learned from their Co-LEADers, Manisha and Manasa, through the School Leadership Program.
LEARN more about all of our grantees here.
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