Grantee 2018 Wrap Up–See What They’ve Done!
Categorized as: Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Education, Girls & women, Grantee, Job Creation, Latin America, Leadership, Middle East, Our Partners, Pacific Islands, Poverty Alleviation, Stories, Storytelling, U.S., Youth on December 8, 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, JAAGO Foundation through the Jolkona Foundation, Medha, Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, Resonate, StrongMinds, Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, Voix & Actions, Women LEAD.
Sally Skees-Helly, Chief Financial Officer and Director
African Entrepreneurship Collective: AEC continues to provide entrepreneurs in Rwanda with skills and mentoring to develop and grow their businesses, including many refugees from Sub-Saharan Africa escaping ongoing conflicts. AEC’s work with refugees in Rwanda is nothing less than compelling, as they look to expand their refugee business accelerator into Uganda.
AGE Africa: Congrats go out to Edith, their Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, who was selected to participate in the inaugural Obama Foundation Leaders Program: Africa. Out of nearly 10,000 applicants, Edith was chosen as one of 200 leaders across Africa to take part in this year-long leaderships and civic engagement program. Unfortunately, AGE Africa’s foremost fundraiser, the annual triathlon held in Washington D.C., Tri for Malawi was cancelled due to heavy rains that flooded parts of the racecourse and made the Potomac river unswimmable. On a more positive note, 100 girls from various AGE Africa partner schools attended the 2018 All Scholars Retreat at the Malawi University of Science and Technology, a week-long event focused on providing girls a foundation in STEM. For many AGE Africa scholars, this was their first time away from home and on a college campus.
Agora Partnerships: The 215 Agora-accelerated companies are making a big impact in their 21 countries of operation across the globe. Check out their collective impact data below:
In September 2018 Agora Partnerships became an official partner of two important initiatives:
1. Asem-Asociación De Emprendedores de México through its initiative “Emprendecálogo”, an action plan of ten concrete proposals of public policies to support the Mexican entrepreneur ecosystem; and
2. Alianza por la inversión de impacto México, the local chapter of the global steering group for impact investment (GMP) directed by new ventures, which brings together forty active organizations in the field in Mexico.
Anseye Pou Ayiti: Anseye Pou Ayiti welcomed 65 new civic leaders in their 2018 cohort, representing a growth of over 40% in cohort size. They also celebrated the graduation of the 2016 cohort on July 7th. Congratulations to all of the teacher-leaders as they continue to transform the educational system in Haiti.
Teacher of the Year and two of her students: They absolutely LOVE her!
On July 6th, the 2016 cohort of teacher-leaders held their graduation. Here’s a great video of highlights of the graduation. You don’t need a translation to experience the joy, pride, and deep affection within this group.
Destiny: Smarita was name the Global Social Benefit Institute’s Accelerator Cohort for Social Enterprises at Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, a six-month program that prepares social enterprises to become sustainable and scalable through mentoring and an online course. Here’s a lovely article recently published in a leading magazine in India about Destiny, highlighting Smarita’s story. They have also partnered with Amazon in India to sell their products.
Educate Lanka: For the third year in a row, Educate Lanka will be representing Sri Lanka at the Global Citizen Institute, affiliated with their partner, St Mark’s School, in Boston. Nadeesha, one of the five scholars chosen to attend, defines a global citizen this way:
“I think a ‘Global Citizen’ is a person who doesn’t have one language, one religion, or one nation. She always thinks as a living being on Earth. So her country is the Earth. Her nation is all people on Earth. Her religion is the content of all religions.”
Sally met Manjula in New York City while he was in town speaking at the SDG in Action Forum at the UN General Assembly. When we talk about the value of leadership in the organizations we consider, Manjula truly is committed and passionate about EL and the progress they’ve made.
Global Press Institute: The Global Press Institute continues to promote outstanding quality in their journalism. GPI has recently implemented their own Style Guide, similar to the AP Stylebook, but with key deviations. The guide is a living document that establishes rules for referring to the people and places around the world where Global Press Journal reporters work. It is a guide intended to promote dignity and precision in international journalism. Additionally, here’s a great article on why employing local journalists helps to minimize the “reliability gap”; where it’s natural for the person who collects information to filter that data through her own experiences.
JAAGO: JAAGO recently began supporting 500 Rohingya refugee children who were rescued from the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. They are helping the children deal with their trauma and providing food, shelter, therapy, education, and other needs. See Korvi’s video here.
Korvi also let us know that the kids that started with JAAGO eleven years ago just graduated from school this year and will be going to college. They all passed their exams with flying colors and all in English. He said a few might be studying abroad.
JAAGO’s class that started eleven years ago, and what they look like now!
JAAGO continues to expand its partnership with the government in spreading their online school infrastructure. Korvi was recently selected as a fellow at the Feedback Summit 2018 to share his experiences on disaster relief and recovery with regard to JAAGO’s Rohingya Refugee Project, the program that supports the physical and mental wellbeing of 500 disenfranchised Rohingya children by providing regular childhood social experiences, learning, and emotional healing.
Medha: Read about how Medha graduates increase their salaries by $1,289 per year through promotions, the growth of Medha’s alumni outreach and networking, the adoption of their employability curriculum by Directorate of Training and Employment (UP), and Medha’s launch in Haryana in their most recent newsletter entitled “What Makes us Proud”.
They have 29 new Student Relationship Managers bringing the total to 80, and are now located in over 12 districts, including two new states, Bihar and Patna. They’ve registered 436 students across 6 campuses, 40% more than this time last year. They are glad to now have Alisha who is responsible for messaging and social media.
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum: The museum is hosting a number of summer youth programs, including Explorer’s Club, Flight School for Girls, and Aviation Adventure.
As of October 1st, the museum’s new name is Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum with a new logo to boot.
Resonate Workshops: In response to one of their trainers leaving in May, Resonate organized a four-day Training of Facilitator course for 10 potential facilitators, in order to build a pool of qualified candidates who can step in on a contract basis, and be in line for upcoming full-time positions. Resonate is seeking funding to provide free workshops for up to 100 people per quarter from grassroots organizations they would like to work with, but do not have the funding.
Resonate then held an official launch event of their new Training of Facilitators program where partner organizations can amplify the impact of their own programs by integrating Resonate’s leadership-building content and methodology. It also serves as a professional development opportunity for partner organizations by building their employees’ facilitation and leadership skills. See an article on the program from a Rwandan publication.
StrongMinds: StrongMinds recently hired Dena Batrice as the new Executive Director. Dena had been serving as interim ED since 2017. They also hired Auxillia Msariri as the new Finance and Administration Manager. StrongMinds is trying a new approach to mobilization – the process by which they educate communities about depression and screen prospective beneficiaries.
StrongMinds is also in the final stages of selecting a second country to expand their operations, either Tanzania, Malawi, or Zambia.
Some metrics of their growth over the past 5 years.
Tomorrow’s Youth Organization: TYO accepted applications for admission into their young woman entrepreneur’s program targeted at graduates of university and colleges of all disciplines. The program aims to develop skills necessary to promote these individuals’ ideas and projects through intensive training in pilot and management topics, including marketing and finance, as well as other leadership skills.
Thanks to the financial support of the Qatar Fund for Development, TYO launched their fall 2018 session, with more children, youth, and women in the Early Childhood Education Program and the Women’s Empowerment & Parenting Program. The fund also supported TYO’s Academic Intervention Programs for students in grades 11 and 12.
Voix & Actions: We heard from Russell Collins, program manager of Voices and Actions for Haiti (Voix et Actions’ US affiliate and fiscal sponsor) and outreach chairperson for Trinity Episcopal Church in Virginia, who provides much support to VA, thanking us for the recent Seeds of Hope blog highlighting their work and our experience with them in Haiti. He clarified that VA taught a Business Development Class at the St. Marc Vocational School, but that other classes are sponsored by a group of churches and individuals in Virginia. St. Marc’s is hoping to add a class for Solar Power Technicians next year. It seems like more and more developing countries, especially in rural areas, are skipping the infrastructure of traditional electricity and moving straight to solar.
Women LEAD: After eight years at the helm, Claire Naylor stepped down from her position as Executive Director, but will continue on as advisor and mentor. The organization has begun the hiring process and the new ED will begin in January. WomenLEAD graduated 50 women in July from their two biggest programs, the LEAD Course and Young Women’s Political Leadership Institute. They are taking applications for the next LEAD course. Their newest initiative, The Youth Leadership Program is seeing great success. See more in their newsletter about how they are teaching gender equality.
Claire’s farewell gathering.
LEARN more about all of our grantees here.
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