Staples YSE 2008 Judges Packet

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. “The Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur” Competition Judging .......................2

II. Entries..............................................................................................................4

1. Changing the World Starting with YOUth .....................................................4

2. Fun Thursday (Le Jeudi des rigolos) ..........................................................10

3. Gardens for Health International.................................................................12

4. Girls Helping Girls.......................................................................................17

5. Gumball Capital ..........................................................................................23

6. Musso Fila: Women from here and afar (Musso Fila: Femmes d'ici et
d'ailleurs) ........................................................................................................27

7. Reading Support (Accompagnement vers La Lecture)...............................29

8. Tennis for Fun.............................................................................................31

9. The Hunger Brigade (La Brigade De la Faim) ...........................................34

10. Turn your World Around ...........................................................................37

11. Wetland Educators ...................................................................................40

12. Youth Adventure Program ........................................................................44

Appendix I: Judges’ Biographies .......................................................................48

Appendix II: Ashoka’s Youth Venture Facilitators ..............................................51

I. “The Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur” Competition Judging

Changemakers is an online initiative designed to source and accelerate innovative social solutions
from around the world. Its transparent, open source model allows anyone to explore and engage with
innovators through collaborative competitions that address the world's most pressing social problems.

During each thematic competition, Changemakers fosters a global community of thought leaders,
subject matter experts, and enthusiasts who facilitate a robust exchange of ideas and opportunities.

Competition Eligibility Criteria

The competition was open to all young individuals between the ages of 12-24 and all previously
awarded Youth Venture teams. We consider all entries – ideas OR projects – that meet the following
criteria:

• Idea or project reflects the theme of the competition: “Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur
Competition.” The goal of the competition is to identify innovative solutions that young people
are using to make life easier for others.
• Ideas show strong potential for significant or meaningful impact. Projects show potential as
well as demonstrated impact.

Competition Criteria

Innovation: This is the knock-out test; the idea or project must introduce creative elements or methods
to positively impact the community. For example, the project might use a new approach to tackle a
challenge, creative methods to raise awareness of a problem, or innovative strategies to raise funds
or engage volunteers.

Social Impact: It is important that the project provides a solution to an important social problem. The
entry must demonstrate impact on the target population it addresses, either a specific underserved
community or the society at large. Some innovations will have proven success at a small level (or are
still at the very beginning), while others will have scaled to engage hundreds or thousands of people.
Regardless of the level of demonstrated impact, it is important that the project has the potential for
growth and bigger impact.

Sustainability: For a project to be truly effective it must have a plan for how it will acquire financial and
other bases of support for the long-term. In other words it has a good strategy for creating ongoing
positive change in the community and engaging partners, as well as a sound plan for transitioning
leadership and recruiting team members or volunteers.

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The Judging Process

As a competition judge, you have been identified as a specialist in your field who is keenly able to
spot and evaluate innovation. Judges typically have
a) An innovator’s temperament (it takes one to know one!); and
b) A track record of practicing or supporting systems-changing innovation.

In this judging packet, Youth Venture has provided a shortlist of 12 of the 530 entries submitted to the
“Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur” competition. Applying the competition criteria, you have one
week to review and rank the projects on the score sheets provided.

Ratings are:

1 Excellent
2 Meets the Standard
3 Serious Questions

Do Not Score "0"

Please return your completed score sheets to Youth Venture by 5pm EST on November 5th. On
November 7th Ashoka’s Youth Venture will meet with you and the other the judges as a panel (via
telephone conference) to select the 5 finalists that will be awarded a trip to the Staples Award
Ceremony on November 20th. A panel chair from the Changemakers Team will facilitate the 2 hour
deliberation meeting on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 11:00am EST.

During the panel, judges will share the scores and rankings that they assigned to each of the
shortlisted entries. The scores and rankings are organizational tools that allow the judges to first
review those entries that scored the highest. The scores do NOT mean, however, that entries with
lower scores are automatically eliminated from consideration. Average scores are likely to tell only
part of the story. In practice, judges may give added weight to one or another criterion and thus end
up “ranking” an entry higher than its overall numerical score would indicate.

The panel chair will implement a meeting structure and process that takes into account all the judges'
scores, and efficiently produces clear decisions without blocking opportunities for in-depth discussion
or forcing decisions through a rigid procedure. The goal is to develop a bigger picture of all qualified
entries so that the finalists—as a group—are a fair and balanced selection of the best.

At the beginning of the judging session, the panel chair will:
a) Reiterate the criteria;
b) Name each entry (beginning with top scorers); and
c) Ask the judges to discuss how the entry reflects (or does not reflect) the criteria particularly when
compared with other entries under discussion.

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The facilitator will move quickly to qualify entries for which there is a consensus and less so when
there are opposing points of view that need sorting out. Operating on consensus, the panel will build a
slate of finalists that reflects excellence in the field and opportunity for impact.

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II. Entries

1. Changing the World Starting with YOUth
Country: France

Organization: EUforIA - Europeans United for Informed Action

Sector Focus: Education

Year the initiative began: 2007

Project URL: http://www.euforiaction.org

Project entry: http://www.changemakers.net/es/node/12618

What is the primary problem your venture is trying to address and how are you addressing it
(or planning to address it)? Global problems have taken such dramatic dimensions that our
generation (18 to 28 years old) often feels discouraged and weary: young people feel they cannot do
anything against global poverty, climate change or international conflicts. This powerlessness
paralyses any desire for action. This also means that an incredible amount of young people’s capacity
is left unused because there is not enough faith in them and they are rarely offered a chance to
realize their own projects.

Europeans for Informed Action (EUforIA) aims to address this challenge:
1. The first step consists in creating a link between students and (young) global change makers
who are already active. Seeing that our generation’s commitment is not only important but can
make a considerable difference, should help our contemporaries to acquire a more
constructive attitude towards global challenges.
2. The second step consists in showing young motivated people the variety of concrete
assignments that are at their disposal; projects in the course of which they can realize their
own ideas, assume responsibility and shape their community. Where such possibilities are still
lacking, EUforIA wants to establish them by creating its own projects.

Project Description: Our project aims to raise global awareness among youth (inform) and
encourage local activism (activate).

Unique and different: We organize attractive events where young people can come into contact with
one another in a stimulating context in order to exchange ideas, encourage each other with their
examples and discover the many possibilities to contribute to the solution of global challenges.
It is very important to us that our events respond to the needs of our generation. As we know from our
own experience, students are not very keen on spending time and money on non-university activities

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which are not centered on entertainment. Therefore, in the organization of our events, we give special
consideration to three criteria: Efficiency (show what concrete benefits they will obtain from
participating in one of our events), Infotainment (movie screenings, concerts, competitions, etc.) &
Service (offer free services such as food, lodging, travel scholarships, etc.)
Our events shall be interactive, interesting, entertaining, generous and challenging, and above all:
participation is a privilege (selection process, scholarships, etc.). We plan to fill young people with
enthusiasm for our activities by underlining the incentives (famous guest speakers, scholarships,
parties, competitions and more) we offer through clever and precise advertisement.

We are convinced that a combination of constructive information, interactive participation and
meaningful entertainment is precisely adapted to the needs of our generation and that thereby we will
be able to appeal to today’s young people and motivate them on the long term!

Project plan:

1. From October 17th to October 19th 2008, we organize the EUforIA Youth Summit 2008
(EYS’08 – www.euforiaction.org/eys08) in Geneva, Switzerland, that will bring together about
120 students from all across Europe and Switzerland for a three-day conference to deal with
the question: "What can YOUth contribute to the solution of global challenges?!"
2. On February 28 and March 1st we organize the EUforIA Youth Weekend (EYW Feb’09) in
Bern, Switzerland, that will bring together about 50 students from all across Switzerland for a
two-day conference to deal with the questions “What is YOUth’ role with regard to Intercultural
Dialogue and Migration?!”
3. Plans for a conference in Paris, France, are being elaborated by our team in France right now.

Partnerships: What are some of your most successful partnerships and how have you created them?
In the three days before the EUforIA Youth Summit 2008, we will offer an intercultural journey through
Switzerland called "What does Switzerland Contribute to the Solution of Global Challenges?!" for 20
selected international participants of the EYS’08 (http://www.euforiaction.org/eys08/intercultural-
journey/). For the organization of this intercultural journey we have been able to find two amazing
student-run youth organizations as our partners: IFIL.ch (Initiative for Intercultural Learning –
www.ifil.ch) & YouthRep (Youth Delegates to the UN - http://www.sajv.ch/fr/projekte/youth-rep/)
We got to know them thanks to our networking efforts aimed at identifying promising youth
organizations and offer them a platform to reach out to a wider public to promote their work.
Looking for partners we were connected with Markus Gander, Swiss Social Entrepreneur 2006 of the
Schwab Foundation, who runs Infoklick.ch (http://www.infoklick.ch) and put his IT specialist at our
disposition to create the amazing website we got know (Design by Solidaridad Graphisme that made
our impressive design nearly for free because they support our initiative. We were put in contact with
them by CODAP - Youth resource center on Human Rights that foments youth initiatives).

Impact: In October we will have reached out to about 250 highly motivated and skilled young people
but since we are only launching our activities we will reach out to thousands in the future! Our basic
goal is to prove to YOUth that your personal commitment matters. That is to say, we want to provide
an ultimate impulse for YOUth who are already interested in world affairs to finally overcome your
passive attitude and step up to the challenge to become active. We think that our generation should
start considering itself as part of the solution. We live here and now and not in a distant future. Hence,

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we need to be conducive to the solution of global problems of today and tomorrow! Starting today,
starting with YOUth!

Effectiveness:
- How do you engage and impact the community?
- How do you measure this impact?

For feasibility reasons (we have better connections with them) our main target audience are students,
aged from 18-28, but we are looking to benefit all youth.

Our Informed Action campaign consists of a combination of

• Youth Summits
• Youth Weekends
• Youth Events
• Youth Initiatives
• Intercultural Journeys
• Speeches
• Panel Discussions
• Workshops
• Video Conferences
• Art and Cultural Events
• Movie Screenings
• Social Gatherings
• Competitions
• Many other interactive components

All of these events will be carried out in accordance with our "Informed Action" philosophy: Raising
global awareness (inform) and encouraging local activism (activate). The term "Informed Action" is
loosely inspired by the psychological concept of empowerment through information. Based on that
premise, EUforIA is convinced that raising awareness and generating motivation go hand in hand.
Once people of our generation learn where and why their personal engagement is needed and how
problems can be solved, they will be ready and able to carry out Informed Actions. By informing and
encouraging young people to become active in a project of their choice, thereby building a movement
of young change makers, we multiply our efforts to contribute to the creation of a new, sustainable,
fair and peaceful society.

In order to evaluate the viability and success of our actions, we formulated a list of criteria linked to
our objectives. We wonder, can the euphoria we generate even be measured? With the purpose of
keeping track of the state of personal commitment of young people who attended one of our big
events, we are planning to send out an email-based questionnaire in two waves, the first wave coming
one month, the second one six months after the event. To make sure that a sufficient number of
questionnaires will be filled out and returned (i.e. high response rate), we will repeatedly stress the
importance of this feedback during the event in question.

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The following criteria are indicators of our future success:

1. EUforIA
a. During the events, EUforIA team members will try to recruit a certain number of
members for its own organizational growth (this number will be fixed as a goal for each
event = about 15-20% of the participants). Joining an existing local EUforIA group or
founding a new one are only two of the many possibilities for new members. In either
case, new members can collaborate in organizing EUforIA events such as workshops,
movie screenings, (video) conferences, social activities and so on.
b. Convincing a maximum number of participants of our concept of “Informed Action”, we
hope to be able to stage smaller events at different universities across Europe in the
near future. Therefore, we hope to motivate up to three quarters of the participants of
one of our events to continue attending our events, to subscribe to our newsletter, to
take part in discussions staged on the Internet etc.
2. Partner organizations
a. One of our most important goals is to motivate as many participants as possible (15-
30%) to become involved with our partner organizations to which we offer a platform
with our events. This includes finding information about our partner organization’s work
as well as committing oneself to the active support of and possible membership in one
of our partner organizations. Getting young people to support partner organizations,
thus serving as a mediator between these people and our partner organizations is one
of the primary functions of EUforIA.
3. Multiplier effect
a. We hope to convince 5-10% of the participants to write a report about the event they
attended, EUforIA in general or a derivative topic. These could then be published in a
university journal, an online magazine, a blog, and even in the local or national press.
b. Furthermore, our survey intends to determine to what extent the participants have
spread the word about EUforIA, the event they attended, our partner organizations and
the topics dealt with amongst their friends. Using the strategy of the snowball-
approach, this could happen via the participants’ blogs or their profile in social
networking communities.
4. Avioral changes

The parameter most difficult to measure is the number of participants who changed their behavior as
a result of their newly gained knowledge and euphoric spirit. ndicators of behavioral change include
but are not limited to the following: How many participants will pay attention to simple actions such as
buying fair trade, organic food or environmental friendly products? Will someone decide to change his
or her career plans? Will their political participation increase, e.g. will they vote more often? How
many will use their bikes more often, how many will think of turning off electronic equipment and start
recycling more? How many participants will decide to commit to a cause they are deeply concerned
about?

Apart from the online surveys, all participants of our events will fill out a questionnaire on the last day
of the event they attend. This will help us meet the individual interests of our participating students
even better during the next similar event.

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In the case of bigger events such as the EYS’08, the participants will be asked on the last day of the
event to write a letter expressing their feelings, citing what impressed them most, and trying to
anticipate their next steps. This exercise should help counter a possible loss of momentum once the
event’s final curtain has fallen.

Our idea is to have them hand in their letters so that we can send them back to their authors a month
later. Rereading their ideas, they will precisely remember the feeling they had when they were riding
the crest of a high and beautiful wave, knowing –possibly for the first time in their lives – that they
could make a difference. A month after the event, this experience should give them a new impulse to
continue their engagement and to integrate into the global community in a most favorable way. In
addition we will comment on their letters and insist on the concrete opportunities that exist for them to
realize their ambitions formulated during the event.

In the aftermath of our events, we will also offer an online platform where people can continue to
exchange and share information as well as encourage each other to be the young leaders of
tomorrow TODAY.

Obstacles: The biggest obstacle is probably money, to realize our ambitious plans we will need a lot
of financial resources. Then, we will have to invest a lot of time and efforts to actually get youth to
attend our events, so that we can begin working with them. Unfortunately, the threshold for young
people to invest their time resources for events that are not aimed at entertainment during their leisure
time is very limited and we will have to offer them very special and outstanding services to awaken
them from their passiveness.

Finance details: So far we have raised 1'000 US$ for our first event in November 2007 and more
than 80'000 US$ in monetary funds and about 10'000 US$ in in-kind donations for our second event
in October 2008. We are among the finalists of the youth contest in Bern to fund our event in
February/March with 15'000 US$. In addition, we got a major foundation interested in funding more
than half of our 1'800'000 US$ budget for the next three years.

Our team currently consists of the following people:

Raphael Jerónimo Calderón (24 years) - President EUforIA
Yoko Malbos (25 years) - Vice-President EUforIA & President EUforIA France
Martina Fortin (24 years) - Vice-President EUforIA & President EUforIA Italy
Daniel Mateos San Martín (25 years) - Head of Finance EUforIA & President EUforIA Spain
Matthias Kuhlmeier (25 years) - Head of Media EUforIA & President EUforIA Germany
Madeleine Imbeck (22 years) - Secretary EUforIA & Co-President EUforIA Switzerland
Lukas Etter (24 years) - Networking EUforIA
Nathan Lenzin (20 years) - Co-President ELAYS'09
Nayra Ugalde (20 years) - Co-President ELAYS'09
Aurélie Duret (22 years) - Head of Media & Finances EUforIA France
Mileva Demenga (24 years) - Co-President EUforIA Switzerland
Meret Reifler (22 years) - Secretary EUforIA Switzerland
Stefanie Rinaldi (24 years) - Treasurer EUforIA Switzerland
Luca Bernardi (22 years) - Head of Media EUforIA Switzerland
Annina Gonzenbach (24 years) - Responsible EYS'08

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Erland Moeckli (24 years) - Responsible EYW'09
Gaëtan Morel (25 years) - Logistics EUforIA Switzerland
Lukas Schützenmeister (22 years) - Head of Media EUforIA Germany
Toni Kretzschmar (25 years) - Head of Finance EUforIA Germany

& there is a group of 30 selected European students coming to the EYS’08 who will be trained and
instructed during 3-6 days in order to be integrated into the EUforIA Team right after the event.

Right now we are working together with 25 different partners to organize our workshops and events,
and receive financial as well as in-kind donations from 11 different institutions/.

Creative funding: So far the creativity has been "restricted" to the planning and conceptualization of
our events. We have paid a lot of importance to an appropriate, coherent and professional
presentation of our plans and invested considerable time resources to identify and convince partners
to support us, both financially and with in-kind donations. For the future we would like to launch our
own fair trade and ecologically friendly clothing brand and open fast-food vegetarian restaurants that
serve affordable take-away international cuisine on the basis of fair-trade products.

Other non finance needs: We are looking for organizations and institutions that can offer our team
courses to acquire new intellectual tools, know-how and management capacities to considerably
increase the efficiency and professionalism of our work. In addition, we are always looking to network
and be connected with other organizations active in the field of global change and youth activism or
that wish to support such initiatives.

Motivation: The idea to found EUforIA was born in Boston in spring 2007, while six European
exchange students of different nationalities, social backgrounds and political ideas were discussing
their views of the world until they began to question their own discourse: Why do we always complain
about what we do not like on this planet without actually looking at what we/YOUth could do in this
question? Can our ideas even be realized by discussing highly complex global systems that we can
barely influence? Why are we not undertaking more efforts to realize our ideals? What can we really
change in our world?

Based on these questions, the concept of EUforIA was developed, inspired by our individual, personal
world-views. We then noticed during numerous discussions with peers, that our notion seems to stand
for an entire generation: We do no longer want to talk about problems but prefer to identify personal
challenges; we are no longer interested in what is all bad in this world, but much more in what we can
change about this situation. The “defining moment” was initiated during an event on social
entrepreneurship organized by a US youth organization where a Ashoka fellow explained her work
and ideals to students from the greater Boston area. One of the founders realized that what was really
needed were more of those events where like-minded young people could find inspiration and coeval
partners to translate their euphoria unleashed by the realization that another world was possible and
that they could make it happen, into concrete projects of their own. And such events should not be
restricted to social entrepreneurship but address any issue of interest to YOUth that can contribute to
global change.

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Since then a lot has happened and the initial concept has been developed further, but the main idea
remained the same: we want to raise young people’s awareness of global challenges and encourage
them to get involved in order to include those concerns in the shaping of their local community.
The “defining moment” is still going on.

Awards: The founders and members of EUforIA have been awarded, on a personal basis, many
renowned prices and scholarships in recognition of their outstanding academic performances in very
diverse topics. At present, EUforIA is among the finalists of the Youth Price 2008 of the city of Bern,
capital of Switzerland.

Contact Information:
Jeronimo Calderón
President EUforIA - Europeans United for Informed Action
EUforIA - Europeans United for Informed Action
(Youth NGO)

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2. Fun Thursday (Le Jeudi des rigolos)

Country: France

Organization: AFEV

Sector Focus: Social Justice/Human Rights


Project URL: N/A

Project entry: http://www.changemakers.net/es/node/13712

(or planning to address it)? A Roma (gypsy) community has recently settled in a field close to us.
The children in this community are not well-integrated socially and do not enjoy the activities and
support offered to all other children in the area. They therefore do less well at school and are often
excluded by other children.

Project Description: Offer recreational activities to Roma children to integrate them better in the
community and also getting their families more involved in their upbringing.

Unique and different: The activities offered to children in the neighborhood are in general geared
towards children who are enrolled in recreational programs and schools. No specific efforts have been
made to reach out to the Roma children or inform and get their parents invloved.

Project plan: We led 2-hour activities once a week with these children from March to May. With the
start of the new academic year, we are mobilizing volunteers to continue these activities:
- sports and outdoor activities,
- singing,
- manual and practical activities,
- monthly field trips, for example going to the library for story time.

Partnerships: We are working with AFEV, the association we volunteer with. We have also worked
with local associations which have allowed us to use the premises on the field.

Impact: We hope that with time these activities will help the children to become more socialized and
better integrated. We have already observed some encouraging signs.

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Effectiveness:

The children really enjoy the activities. Week after week, they continue to come (when we ask them
what they didn’t like, they always reply “I liked everything!”). We have been able to bring together
children and young people of different ages (2 to 14 years old) and we are gradually beginning to
have mixed groups of boys and girls. The children have gained independence, they ask questions
when they do not understand instructions.

On trips to the library last year was a huge success. The children were very curious and very calm;
they obeyed library rules. However, we do not know if the children subsequently took out library cards
with their parents; this year we would like to track this and follow-up with the,
We decorated the premises with the children, which enabled us to show off the stuff the children had
made. Their productions were admired by their parents and the other Roma children who had not
participated in the activities.

Our activities are offered to all Roma children aged 3 to 15 on the Aubervilliers field. Some 15 children
currently participate in our activities; we hope to increase participation in the coming months.

Obstacles: The children are difficult to manage, they are quite unruly. They are not used to being in a
“recreational center”-type environment and it is hard to get them to obey the rules (for example, some
kids leave without letting us know, others don’t finish activities that they have started…). The children
sometimes find it hard to concentrate. In general, the girls and boys do not mix freely: the boys only
take part in outdoor activities while the girls only do manual activities. We have already noticed an
improvement in this area. It is also very difficult to establish a relationship with the parents (only one
mother has come to observe our activities). We have to manage the schedules of our volunteers in
order to plan field trips and activities.

Finance details: AFEV has given us some supplies, the premises were lent to us by a local
association and we have received additional funding from Ashoka. As the volunteers are studying to
become recreation counselors they are well-prepared for this type of project.

Creative funding: We work in partnership with town council organizations that provide the premises
for the children free of charge.

Other non finance needs: We need the parents to get more involved so that they can monitor the
activities we carry out in the workshops.

Motivation: We are studying to be youth animation counselors and were seeking a way of getting
involved; this led us to set up AFEV. We wanted to do more with this group of Roma children because
tutoring alone did not fully meet their needs. After much thought, we decided to set up this activity.

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Violaine Béry
Lead Venturer
AFEV
(Association)

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3. Gardens for Health International

Country: United States

Organization: Gardens for Health International

Field of Work: Environment

Year Project Started: 2006

Project URL: http://www.gardensforhealth.org

Hyperlink to Entry: http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/13100

What is the primary problem your venture is trying to address and how are you addressing it?
While antiretroviral therapy is now widely available at a low cost in Rwanda, such treatment is largely
ineffective in malnourished HIV-positive individuals. Food insecurity and micronutrient deficiency
result in both inadequate absorption of the drugs and poor adherence to treatment regimens. Further,
HIV-positive farmers are typically ignored by aid efforts and have extremely limited access to land and
agricultural inputs.

Gardens for Health International (GHI) is US-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that aims to
provide a sustainable means of nutritional support and economic empowerment to HIV-positive
individuals by establishing a network of community agriculture initiatives throughout Rwanda,
innovatively targeting malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, and poverty.

GHI's program comprises four integrated components for people living with HIV/AIDS:

1. Legal cooperative formation and land advocacy.
2. Provision of inputs for nutritional support gardens and home gardens.
3. Training in sustainable agriculture, post-harvest management, and HIV/AIDS specific nutrition
education.
4. High impact agribusiness opportunities for income generation.

GHI invests in the livelihoods of HIV-positive Rwandan individuals, working towards a more
comprehensive prevention, care and treatment program for HIV/AIDS and a better quality of life for
those affected by this devastating disease. Furthermore, GHI empowers Rwandans living with
HIV/AIDS to increase their income and access to nutritious food, encouraging self-sufficiency and
nutritional independence.

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As GHI’s model is easily replicated, the program is scalable. Through our partnership with the
Rwandese Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS (RRP+), the coordinating body for the country’s
over 1,000 cooperatives and associations of people living with HIV/AIDS, GHI plans to expand the
network of community nutrition-through-agriculture programs throughout Rwanda.

Project Description: GHI aims to provide a sustainable means of nutritional support and economic
empowerment to HIV-positive individuals by establishing a network of community agriculture initiatives
throughout Rwanda, simultaneously targeting malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, and poverty.

Unique and different: Our venture is unique in that it ties together HIV/AIDS, nutrition, and
agriculture -- breaking a cycle of poverty and disease. It does not promote reliance on long term food
provisions or packages that foster a cycle of dependency. GHI aims to improve the health and
socioeconomic status of people living with HIV/AIDS by equipping them with a different kind of
“package”: legal cooperative status, access to arable government land, basic agricultural inputs,
training in sustainable agriculture and HIV/AIDS specific nutrition, and income-generating agro-
business opportunities. This package is relatively low-cost and is guided by an ethos of autonomy and
sustainability.

Project plan: GHI plans to provide inputs (irrigation support, tools, seeds, organic manure) to five
additional sites in the Gasabo District and expand the number of cooperative members participating;
to increase number and variety of high-nutrient fruit and vegetable seeds (broccoli, spinach, soy
beans, green beans, chick peas, orange-flesh sweet potato, squash, pumpkin, swiss chard, beets,
avocado trees, moringa trees, mango trees, orange trees, plum trees); to establish 180 home gardens
in the Gasabo District; to introduce an agrobusiness pilot project using greenhouse technology for
improved tomato production; to hold a week-long nutrition training session; to hold a week-long

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organic agriculture training session for cooperative leaders and agronomists; to develop a specialized
nutritional counseling home visit program for underweight members; and to design a booklet in
Kinarywanda with simple, pictorial guides on proper home garden care, cooking techniques to
maximize nutritional benefits, specialized recipes, and HIV/AIDS specific nutritional guidelines.

Partnerships: Gardens for Health has successfully formed partnerships with both the Rwandese
Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS -- a local civil society organization in Rwanda -- and the
Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative. We have received endorsements from the Rwandan National
AIDS Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture, and we hope to form long term partnerships with
them. Our long term goal is to integrate into Rwanda's national health protocol, and we hope to
establish many domestic partnerships across the sectors in which we work--health, environment, and
nutrition.

Impact: The primary beneficiaries of this project are people living with HIV/AIDS who are members of
agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda. We anticipate that their nutrition will improve substantially over
time. With improved nutrition, adherence to antiretroviral therapy is expected to improve. Families will
also gain new sources of income through small-scale agribusiness opportunities. The GHI program
hopes to have significant environmental impact in Africa’s most densely populated country, where
90% of the population relies upon subsistence agriculture by utilizing Biointensive agriculture
techniques to maximize the capacity of small plots of land.

Effectiveness: Approximately 4,000 individuals have become members of new agricultural
cooperatives through GHI's facilitation of legal training. Due to budget constraints, we now work with
683 direct beneficiaries, HIV-positive members who receive harvests and training in nutrition and
agriculture, and about 2732 indirect beneficiaries--participants’ families.

• How do you engage and impact the community?

Several Rwandan staff members orchestrate the programs operations and work directly with
the community on the field every day. GHI program staff holds community meetings to discuss
how to improve and responds to the needs of the community as best as possible; we are
constantly trying to improve our program model. GHI has recently received endorsements from
the Ministry of Agriculture and the Rwandan AIDS Control Commission and we hope to scale
up our impact on the national level.

• How do you measure this impact?

GHI’s monitoring and evaluation protocol is two-fold. First, data for program indicators is
collected on an ongoing basis and analyzed at the end of each quarter. At the beginning of
each planting season, a baseline report is conducted, describing the initial inputs, number of
hectares of land to be cultivated, and number of participants per cooperative and per site.
Over the course of each season, we measure crop yields, allocation of crop yields, amount of
surplus crops sold, income generated from the sale or surplus crops, consumption of crop
yields, dietary diversity changes among cooperative members, and attendance at nutrition and
agriculture trainings. Second, GHI conducts bi-annual health, socioeconomic status, and food
accessibility surveys.

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Obstacles: With a small budget we have not been able to provide the full program to all cooperatives
immediately. Additional funding would allow GHI to introduce its program into additional districts
throughout Rwanda, where the program has been demanded by PLWHA cooperatives. At the same
time, increased funding would allow GHI to provide a larger supply of agricultural inputs (seeds, tools,
organic manure) to all cooperatives. GHI would also be able to hold more frequent training sessions.
Lastly, GHI would be able to develop an animal husbandry component, improving dairy and protein
intake as well as providing a natural source of manure to improve soil fertility.

Finance details:

Approximately $100,000 has been raised to date.

The primary members of our team are cooperatives of people living with HIV/AIDS. Organizationally
speaking, Emma Clippinger and Emily Morell are the Co-Founders and Co-Directors; the GHI Team
also includes a Rwanda Country Director, a Project Coordinator, a Nutritionist to provide HIV/AIDS
specific nutritional counseling, a Community Garden Agronomist to work on the cooperative nutritional
support gardens, and a Biointensive Agriculture Assistant to work on the home garden program.

GHI has established an official partnership with the Rwanda Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS
and the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative. GHI is in the midst of establishing official partnerships
with the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture, the Rwanda National AIDS Commission, and the Rwanda
Agricultural Development Authority.

Creative funding: We have set up a website: www.gardensforhealth.org, which is linked to a PayPal
account so that individuals can donate directly online using a secure system. We have also applied
for, and won, some business plan competitions. We are currently trying to devise fundraising ideas
that will engage donors in advocacy efforts in the global problem of malnutrition especially HIV-
positive individuals, the larger movement for sustainable agriculture, and the broader need for
agricultural support for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Other non finance needs:

1) Technical Expertise in Organic and Biointensive Agriculture
2) Technical Expertise in Nutritional Monitoring and Evaluation
3) Non-profit consulting

Motivation: In the summer of 2006, Emily Morell and Emma Clippinger were interns for the Clinton
Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) in Rwanda. Morell helped conduct a national pediatric
HIV/AIDS care and treatment assessment, while Clippinger worked on the Foundation’s agribusiness
initiative. Through discussions with Rwandan healthcare professionals, Morell learned that the very
antiretroviral treatment CHAI had helped make available at low cost was undermined by pervasive
malnutrition. Malnutrition, she learned, was disrupting drug metabolism and worsening drug side
effects, making treatment adherence more difficult. Clippinger recognized that HIV-positive farmers
were typically ignored by aid efforts and had extremely limited access to land and agricultural inputs.

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In discussing the intersection of their work, Clippinger and Morell began to explore the possibility of
developing a nutrition-through- agriculture program designed specifically for people living with
HIV/AIDS. Gardens for Health International—an organization working to strengthen the
underappreciated link between agriculture and health—emerged as a result.

Awards:
Youth Venture grant
JP Morgan Good Venture Competition
Brown University Social Entrepreneurship Competition
Clinton Global University Commitment to Action Award
Goldman Sachs Social Entrepreneurship Fund Award
Kathryn Wasserman Davis Foundation Projects for Peace Award

Broader context: Malnutrition, food insecurity, and poverty are critical underlying forces in the AIDS
pandemic, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where malnutrition, food insecurity and HIV prevalence
rates are high. Food insecurity can increase susceptibility to HIV infection by forcing people to engage
in risky survival strategies. Once infected, malnutrition shortens the latency period of HIV infection,
hastens the onset of AIDS, and ultimately death, and increases the risk of HIV transmission from
mothers to babies. HIV/AIDS in turn heightens vulnerability to further food insecurity and poverty, by
eroding the ability of households to produce food, generate income, and care for and feed family
members.

In addition to documentation in medical studies, international bodies have recognized that malnutrition
should be addressed in the context of the AIDS pandemic, among them UN AIDS, the International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), and the World Health Organization (WHO). On May 27, 2006, the 59th World
Health Assembly approved a resolution that calls on member states to make nutrition an integral part
of their national response to HIV and to act quickly to identify and implement nutrition interventions
that can be integrated into HIV and AIDS programming. But while such policy pronouncements are
laudable, to date there has been little coordinated multi-sector sustainable nutritional support for
people living with HIV/AIDS.

As the recent UN Food Summit concluded with the need for "urgent and coordinated action" to raise
food production and increase investment in agriculture, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the
international climate has informed our own work with a greater sense of urgency and purpose. While it
is significant that support for small farmers in the developing world has now been recognized on the
global agenda, malnourished Rwandans cannot wait for international "calls to action" to be realized. In
Rwanda, HIV-positive individuals are especially prone to malnutrition, food insecurity and limited
access to land. GHI is working to enable people living with HIV/AIDS to grow their own way out of
hunger through a small investment package.

Ongoing: We hope that the GHI model eventually will be integrated into the National Ministry of
Health Protocol in Rwanda, removing any need for GHI to exist as a separate entity. We hope that

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just as ARVs (anti-retroviral’s) become universal health policy for all Rwandans, so too will nutritional
support through agriculture. We hope to continue to be involved at the intersection of nutrition,
HIV/AIDS, and agricultural policy throughout our lives.

Emily Morell
Lead Venturer
Gardens for Health International
(NGO)

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4. Girls Helping Girls


Organization: Girls Helping Girls

Field of Work: Social Justice/Human Rights


Project URL: http://www.EmpoweraGirl.org

Hyperlink to Entry: http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/13564

The most fundamental problem affecting our world today is ignorance: the inability and the
unwillingness of distinct cultures to understand and embrace one another in a united quest for peace.
It is this ignorance that breeds and begets all other problems: fear, conflict, myopia, prejudice, and
inequality. Because so many are unable to appreciate all human beings as unique gifts, to cherish, to
cultivate, and to respect, we shackle ourselves to an insular worldview and thwart not only our own
self-realization, but the fulfillment of the dreams and hopes and full potential of the millions of people
who are even less equipped to articulate their voice and seize their destiny. Girls Helping Girls seeks
to empower the most marginalized, the most vulnerable, yet the most powerful because the most
instrumental to social change, sector of the global population: girls. By empowering girls to reach out
and unite with girls from around the world, they will be able to understand common hardships and
work together to transform their communities. We believe that in order to change the world, we must
first understand it, and this is a core principle behind our efforts to connect girls from different
backgrounds to learn about each other and the world and then transmute their knowledge to tangible,
collaborative action. By mobilizing and training girls to become social changemakers in our social
action programs, and teaching girls to learn from and share with each other in our cultural exchange
programs, we strive to "democratize the quest for peace worldwide by creating a sisterhood of
changemakers making their vision for the world a reality."

Project Description: Girls Helping Girls (GHG) empowers girls to transform their world by mobilizing
and training them to reach across cultural boundaries to learn about global issues, forge international
friendships, and launch and implement their own social change projects, initiatives, or nonprofit
ventures.

Unique and different: HG is the only international nonprofit worldwide that is run completely by girls,
for girls.

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Girls Helping Girls’ first initiative, Empower-a-Girl, is a grassroots sister-team program that partners
girls in the US with those in developing countries to dialogue about their lifestyles through cultural
exchange, to support one another in fostering their self-esteem, to learn about GHG’s four Global
Goals, and to conceive and implement their own social change projects that achieve these goals.
Empower-a-Girl raises funds expressly to invest in girls’ initiative, by providing funding to international
teams for girls to pursue their holistic education and fulfill their basic needs. Thus, the Empower-a-Girl
program not only endows girls with knowledge about important global issues, then inspiring them to
transmute this knowledge to action by collaboratively leading their own social change projects, but it
also more tangibly invests in their growth and their potential, by funding their development as life-long
changemakers.

Girls Helping Girls’ second initiative, Sisters 4 Peace, is a social-change movement that provides the
one-on-one mentorship, Transform Your World Toolkits, and support network to girls working
independently from a team to launch their own projects. Sisters 4 Peace is guided by a network of
Peace Ambassadors who provide additional mentoring, fundraising assistance, and expertise to the
budding peacemakers located in their region.

Sisters 4 Peace builds a movement of changemakers through four initiatives:

1. Transform-Your-World partners girls with a Peace Ambassador to mentor and train them,
using GHG’s Transform Your World Toolkits, to launch and sustain their own nonprofit,
business, or other social change initiative.
2. Raise-It-Up! is a unique micro lending initiative that trains girls to raise both awareness and
funds about the Global Goals and donate the funds to women in developing countries seeking
to launch a sustainable business.
3. Fund-for-Respect is a specialized program that informs girls about the issue of sex trafficking
and trains them to become speakers about self-respect and self-esteem in their local
communities while raising funds for holistic education programs for trafficking victims
overseas.
4. Empower-a-Girl is the fourth program.

Project plan: e plan to expand our initiatives to engage several hundred more girls, to create new
grant programs to fund the projects of girls involved in our programs, to create new training videos
and workshops to teach adult coaches how to mentor girls with whom they are working, and to
establish a new program that empowers girls to become environmental changemakers and
advocates. We are launching a dynamic community-based, social networking web platform within the
next few weeks to provide a more comprehensive forum for girls across the globe to connect with their
peers and collaborate to create social change, and to offer more resources and connections to our girl
participants to join grassroots causes worldwide.

Partnerships: We have had several successful partnerships in order to bring change and a better
livelihood to those with whom we work. To give you an example, three of our most recent partnerships
were with Singapore Airlines, Apne Aap Women Worldwide, and Girls for A Change to implement our
annual immersion program in Kolkata, India this summer.
This August, our team traveled to Kolkata, India to build a library and organize two Peace building
summits for women and girls victimized by sex trafficking and forced labor in the Red-light district and

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slums there. We raised thousands of dollars to buy several hundred books, backpacks, school
supplies, personal care products, and clothing for the girls, which we were able to transport to India by
contacting and generously receiving sponsorship from Singapore Airlines. We paid for the
construction and furnishing of the library, and worked with the girls to decorate the room with their
original art.
Every day, we worked both with women and girls who have been trafficked from rural India and East
Asia and who are now living in the slums, and with the daughters of commercial sex workers, teaching
them business enterprise and marketing skills (we provided funding for two groups to launch their own
businesses), microfinance skills, self-esteem and leadership and capacity building training, vocational
training and English language skills. Apne Aap identified for us the women and girls who would most
benefit from our training and support, and provided us with a workspace and resources. Girls for A
Change, a Bay Area nonprofit, partnered with us to provide toolkits and curriculum to execute a
special two-day social change training for the girls.

Impact: We have empowered and engaged over 5,000 girls from over 15 different countries across
the globe and have raised over $30,000 to support their basic needs and education.

Effectiveness: Though we directly work with and impact girls, by investing in their initiative, we
benefit entire communities: as our motto aptly declares, if you Empower A Girl, you Empower Her
Nation. All the girls we work with overseas and many in the US come from vulnerable backgrounds--
from families made destitute by poverty, conflict, violence, or disease.


Girls Helping Girls and Sisters 4 Peace have empowered thousands of girls from over 15
different countries to make a lasting difference—from promoting peace and eradicating
poverty, to increasing access to education and healthcare and saving the environment.

Empower-a-Girl

- Empower-a-Girl has raised about $20,000 to support girls’ scholarships, food, water, and
education across the globe.
- Empower-a-Girl has provided a table and chair for every girl in its school in India.
- Empower-a-Girl has increased access to education and improved the health of girls in India,
Ghana, and Kenya.
- Empower-a-Girl has purchased uniforms for the girls in each of its sites.
- Empower-a-Girl has provided a holistic education and cultural exchange program for over
1,000 girls in all of its sites.

Fund-for-Respect

- Fund-for-Respect has raised over $7,000 to advocate against sex trafficking around the
world.
- Fund-for-Respect has built a library for the daughters of commercial sex workers in Kalighat.

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- Fund-for-Respect has purchased school supplies and personal care items for girls at-risk for
sex trafficking in India.
- Fund-for-Respect has organized two Peacebuilding Summits to provide self-esteem
building, vocational training, business and leadership skills to victims of prostitution and the
sex trade in India.

Raise-It-Up!

- Raise-It-Up! has raised over $1,000 to provide in loans to women to launch their own micro-
businesses .


We measure this impact directly by the number of girls we are supporting, by their reviews on
the evaluations that we send out twice a year, by the scope and success of their social change
projects, and by the level of understanding and passion they display in the activities that they
complete for our curriculum (We have written and developed special Global Goals curriculum
and social change toolkits for all of our programs). We also measure our impact by the amount
of funds we are able to raise and how we maximize those funds in provision of school
supplies, books, scholarships, food and water in order to achieve one of our organization’s
goals, to provide a holistic education to all girls.

Obstacles: It is always difficult, as high school students, to juggle all of our responsibilities with our
passion and commitment to Girls Helping Girls. It is doubly difficult because we are operating an
international nonprofit that aims to bridge cultures and meld together diverse and eclectic
backgrounds to forge a common humanity: coordination and communication are both key priorities
and hefty issues. Oftentimes, being youth, it is furthermore taxing for us to convince potential donors
and partners of our legitimacy or sustainability, yet eventually we tend to succeed, because our
sincerity radiates through our work.

Finance details:

1. We have thus far raised about $30,000 of funds and school supplies.
2. There are four girls on our executive team:
a. Sejal Hathi: Founder, Executive Director
b. Angelica Teng: Vice President, Creative Director
c. Hanna Kim: Treasurer, Development Director
d. Jianni Je-Lewis: Outreach Coordinator
3. We have about 10 partners presently working with us.

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Creative funding: We have in the past organized several grassroots fundraising campaigns like
"Trick-or-treat for Change", charity balls and dances, bake sales and garage sales, candy gram sales,
movie nights, and book and school supply drives. Because we believe in holistic social change and
social responsibility, we have also worked with Cartridges for Kids to organize e-recycling programs in
our community to encourage people to recycle their e-waste; in exchange for mailing all the collected
ink cartridges, toners, cell phones, iPods, laptops, and other items to Cartridges for Kids, we receive
some funding. Thus, we are both helping to save the environment and obtaining funding to bolster our
cause!

Other non finance needs: We need people power, media consultants to help us spread our mission,
marketing specialists to help us develop our programs further, fundraising specialists who can assist
us in acquiring more grants and funds to implement our programs, and of course, volunteers who can
help us to become even more efficient than we now are.

Motivation: One of my deepest passions has been my commitment to the organization Girls for a
Change, which helps girls like me to identify local challenges and implement creative solutions under
women coaches. Three years working with GFC had always inspired me that any girl, however
disadvantaged, could leverage power to make change. However, the more I campaigned and led, the
more I painfully realized that most of the girls in the world do not even have the global awareness and
tools necessary to define their own mission and transmute that passion to action.

One project in particular that I performed with GFC to support a women’s group in Darfur showed me
the vast chasm between girls like me and those in developing countries without the resources or
support network I enjoy to become leaders for change. And then I realized: The most pressing issue
facing youth today is not drugs or violence, nor poverty nor health disorders, but rather a blighted
education: the lack of a diverse and cosmopolitan cultivation that empowers youth to recognize their
potential, their unity, and their significance as leaders for change. There is a renowned Chinese
proverb that declares, Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed
him for a lifetime. However, there is more to the solution for this problem than simply such passive
education: It is indispensable to the progress of humanity to empower youth- especially girls, who are
often less advantaged- to not only learn their rights and potential, but to also seek and implement
ways that they can change their communities to improve their life. It was through this thought process
that I determined to muster my experiences to establish an organization that empowers aspiring girls
like those I encountered from Darfur to fulfill their dreams by making a difference.

All girls can transform their world, if only given the power and opportunity. Without the requisite
knowledge and resources, however, their dreams are stifled and they remain stymied in their social
state because they do not have the power to make a difference. This organization, Girls Helping Girls,
gives girls this power, the knowledge and the resources, to make their vision for the world a reality.

Awards:
- We Are Family Foundation’s Global Teen Leader Award and scholarship, accorded to only
30 youth worldwide for their commitment to building peace and making change
- Kohl’s Kids Who Care Regional Award,
- IMF/World Bank Group Annual Meetings Youth Delegate (one of 17 youth globally invited),

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- Silicon Valley IT Girl Award 2008,
- ElleGirl.com Teen Hero,
- Think MTV/Taco Bell Foundation Teen Hero Award,
- Discover Card’s Tribute Scholarship (selected with 9 others from over 20,000 applicants),
- Soroptimist International’s First Place Violet Richardson Award
- President’s Call to Service Award, for over 4,000 hours served,
- Youth Venture USA Ambassador

Broader context: We believe that all girls, and therefore all youth, are a movement: a united and
unstoppable force that can pioneer global change; our organization, Girls Helping Girls, strives to
empower and train and equip this movement to solve major global challenges. This mission, purpose,
and impetus render us a quintessential contributor to the youth social change community because our
work is gradually sculpting a new generation of global citizens who will change the world organically
and comprehensively.

Ongoing: I plan to operate this venture for several years in the future and to recruit and mobilize
more youth to work with me to amplify its mission and programs.

Sejal Hathi
Founder, President, Executive Director
Girls Helping Girls
(NGO)

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5. Gumball Capital


Organization: Gumball Capital

Field of Work: Microfinance


Project URL: http://gumballcapital.org/

Hyperlink to Entry: http://changemakers.net/en-us/node/13023

One billion people live in extreme poverty, struggling to survive on less than $1 a day. Microfinance –
financial services including microloans to the poor – has successfully helped 150 million people
improve their quality of life. The Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus won the 2006
Nobel Peace Prize for work in “giving a hand up, not a hand out”. However, 1.5 billion people could
still benefit from microfinance support.

Gumball Capital tackles this issue by engaging students to fight poverty through microfinance. We do
this through three ways: 1) The Gumball Challenge, a competition where students experience
entrepreneurship first hand, and raise money for… 2) the Gumball Fund, which allocates Challenge
revenue into microloans for the working poor in the developing world; and 3) Gumball University, our
free online portal which functions as a guide for social entrepreneurship and microfinance.

We believe these three programs, the Challenge, Fund, and University, are the best way to teach
students about social entrepreneurship, and in turn raise a new generation of entrepreneurs to break
the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

Project Description: Our mission is to engage students in entrepreneurship for social change
through microfinance (small loans to the poor).

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Unique and different: Our flagship campaign the Gumball Challenge (www.gumballchallenge.org) is
unique in its model, as we give student-teams $27 loans and educational booklets on
entrepreneurship and microfinance. The teams have one week to pursue entrepreneurial ventures
with the loan, and can win awards for exemplifying things like innovation, risk-taking, and of course,
value-generation. The revenue they generate goes to fund the working poor through Kiva.org- a
website that allows us to make loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. Afterwards, the
competitors are guided to our social entrepreneurship portal GumballUniversity.com, where they can
learn more about how to start and grow their own venture.

The beauty of the competition is its simplicity. It’s a quick, high-energy setting to experience social
entrepreneurship first hand. In Fall 2007 alone, we reached 5 universities where student teams
produced on average a 10X return on their initial $27 loan. The overall process, we hope, will inspire
the ingenuity and creativity in every student entrepreneur to help the working poor around the world.

Project plan: Over the next 6 months, we will focus on driving the Gumball Challenge at our 13
registered schools. We will help them set up their respective chapters, launch publicity campaigns,
and recruit competitors to participate in the Challenge. In so doing, we will both increase our impact to
students and the number of microloans we can raise (285 so far and counting). We’re also working on
writing content for Gumball University, as well as working on a possible merger with Campus Kiva.

Partnerships: Our most successful partnerships have been with Campus Kiva and Women 2.0.
Campus Kiva is a subsidiary of Kiva.org, and works on grass-roots campaigns to raise money for
microfinance on college campuses. As our missions are so aligned, Campus Kiva and Gumball
Capital have been ironing out a potential partnership for the past couple of months, where Campus
Kiva will handle the recruitment of new chapters and Gumball will provide the Challenge as a medium
for those chapters to raise money for microfinance.

With Women 2.0, an organization focused on improving women’s presence in the business and social
entrepreneurship arena, we have been in collaboration to hold co-sponsored entrepreneurship events
at Stanford and UC Berkeley. As microfinance has uniquely helped women to achieve greater
independence and stability, it was natural for us to seek a partnership with Women 2.0 as well.

Impact: Gumball Capital aims to engage and inspire student youth to get involved with microfinance,
and in turn assist the working poor in attaining self-sufficiency and stability in the developing world.

Effectiveness: We’ve funded 285 entrepreneurs from Cambodia to Nigeria, and reached over 100
students at Yale, Stanford, Sewanee, St. Olaf, and UC Berkeley.


We engage and impact the community by getting high school and college students involved in
entrepreneurship and microfinance through the one-week Gumball Challenge. We depend on
the next generation of do-gooders to make a difference on global poverty, and we take the first
step by educating them through investment and experience. By giving teams a $27 loan and
27 gumballs, not only do we influence participants directly, but we’re able to reach out to the

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community through those same students who publicize their cause by creating websites,
printing banners, or making promotional materials.


We measure our impact by the number of schools involved in the Gumball Challenge, the
number of students we engage in the Challenge, and the number of loans we distribute to
microfinance.

Obstacles: Though Gumball Capital has been in operation one year strong, the most foreseeable
obstacle is the possibility that a recruiting cycle is short one year, and we have insufficient capacity to
carry our operations forward. With an entirely student-composed staff, this is a concern as our annual
turnover may be high as students graduate. Hiring a paid Executive Director will hopefully negate this
effect, as he/she will serve as a stable driving force for the Gumball’s operations regardless of the
current cycle.

Finance details: From March-August 2007 we raised $2,586.51 in donations to lend out to the
working poor through Gumball Fund / Kiva.org. In Fall 2007, we raised $2,644.75 through the Gumball
Challenge at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and St. Olaf College. The combined $5,231.26, in
addition to repaid loans from the working poor, has gone on to fund $7,125.00 and over 285 loans to
the working poor.

With regards to our operations funding, we have raised $2,556.00 in donations. We have also raised
$500 through the DoSomething Gamestop grant and $1000 through the mtvU Youth Venture Grant.
Lastly, Gumball.com has donated 5800 gumballs to our organization for distribution to student
competitors in the Gumball Challenge.

Our organization is composed of an Executive Director and Operations Director leading 17 members
in 7 Departments: Outreach (1 Director, 3 Officers), Marketing (1 Director, 1 Officer), Design (1
Officer), Finance (1 Director, 1 Officer), Gumball Challenge (1 Director, 3 Officers), Web Development
(1 Director, 2 Officers), and Gumball University (1 Director).

Creative funding: Gumball Capital was started by students in February 2007 to compete in the
Stanford Entrepreneurship Week Challenge. The mission was to take an ordinary, everyday item like
post-it notes and create value. Realizing that microfinance was near inexistent on a campus known for
social activism, the team created Gumball Capital to ask for pledges on post-it notes. Pitching to
fellow students the power and message of microfinance, we raised over $2000 in donations,
supported 76 low-income entrepreneurs worldwide, and took home the grand-prize.

Other non finance needs: For every challenge at each university, we have multiple categories such
as Most Innovative and Best Champion for Microfinance. We award prizes accordingly that range
from lunches with social entrepreneurs in the area to gift certificates to different restaurants. Because
we reach schools across the nation, any opportunities for publicity or motivated individuals to run
challenges are especially welcome. We're constantly on the lookout for kickoff speakers, judges,
corporate sponsors, or anyone else that wants to volunteer their time or service!

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Motivation: Though I am one of several co-founders of the organization, my motivations for creating
Gumball Capital were my experiences in the developing world. Having lived in Pakistan during my last
two years of high school, I witnessed a world of impoverishment and destitution. Yet what was most
disheartening was that the major problem plaguing the country was not poverty itself, but the feudal
and corrupt system that limited the population’s educational and employment opportunities.

When I heard about microfinance after the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize went Muhammad Yunus and the
Grameen Bank, I was immediately enthralled by its potential for social change. As a medium that
allows the working poor to achieve self-sustainability and avoid around the corrupt mechanisms
limiting their profits, I saw this is an amazing solution to Pakistan’s problems. Though I realize it is not
the answer to all of Pakistan’s problems, and may actually still not work there given the pervasively
corrupt system in place, I was still inspired by the impact microfinance can have on the rest of the
world. It was under this inspiration that I sought to create Gumball Capital, and motivate my fellow
students to get involved in the cause as well.

Awards: Last year, we made it to the semi-final round of the BASES Social-E Business Plan
Challenge and the Uuni Big Idea Competition. We received the DoSomething.org Game Stop Award
and the MTVu Youth Venture-Ashoka Award. We were featured in the movie Imagine It!, interviewed
on two radio shows, “Here on Earth – Radio without Borders” and “Women's Public Radio”. We
presented at two SD Forums on microfinance in emerging countries and on teens and technology.
We've been mentioned in numerous blogs, magazines, and newspapers.

Broader context: Gumball Capital motivates a generation of students to get involved in alleviating
poverty through entrepreneurship. Through the Gumball Challenge, students are engaged in a
microfinance model, where they learn about the power of microfinance and its effect on entrepreneurs
in the developing world. In the process, they also learn their own potential to make a difference and
create social change.

Through Gumball University, students can learn about social entrepreneurship itself. The online
resource portal allows students to blog about their causes, learn more about how to start their own
venture, or grow an existing one.

Bilal Mahmood
Co-Founder, Operations Director
Gumball Capital
(Nonprofit)

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6. Muss Fila: Women from Here and Afar (Musso Fila: Femmes d'ici et
d'ailleurs)

Country: France

Organization: Afrotchekani



Project URL: http://www.dailymotion.com/search/afrotchekani/video/x5eyo3_afrotchekani_webcam

Project entry: http://www.changemakers.net/fr/node/13084

(or planning to address it)? We are tying to address the intricacies of a dual culture. It is difficult for
those of us born in France but have Africa origins. In a sense we live in two different communities. We
want to understand the lives of our mothers, how they grew up, and what their native countries are
like. When we travel to the country of our parents origin we have to come to terms with a culture that
is unknown to us even though it belongs to our heritage.

Project Description: Comparing and educating people about the life experience of Malian women
immigrants in France to that of women living in Mali, in particular with regard to the mother-daughter
relationship, in a documentary.

Unique and different: Our project is close to our heart. This type of project is usually carried out by
older people. The fact that this one is carried out by young people makes it different. We spoke to
these women about taboo subjects, and brought them face-to-face with these issues – it was not
easy. We raised topics that other people would not have dared to raise.

Project plan: We went to film the documentary in the summer of 2007. This September we had
exhibits, neighborhood parties and forums to discuss immigrant women’s issues in France.

October: Video editing our film

November: Communication on and presentation of the project at the Café la Pêche in Montreuil

December: Organization of a festival with another association. Work on our next project, which will
focus on orphans.

January: Drafting the second project

31

February: Fund raising

March: Participation in/ co-organization of a Miss Solidarité Afrique parade

Partnerships:
Café la Pêche: drafting the project, requests for funds, editing, flyers
Ashoka: Grant
Via le Monde
DDJS
Association des femmes maliennes (Association of Malian Women) of Montreuil
Mairie de Montreuil (Montreuil town council)
Service municipal jeunesse (Youth Municipal services)
BIJ

Impact: Raising young people’s awareness on their culture and their relationship with their parents.

Effectiveness:

We have reached to 30 women in our pilot project: 15 women in Mali and 5 in France. Reached out
200+ people for the first showing of our film. Over 1,000 people impacted.

Obstacles: Lack of confidence, but together we encourage each other. Raising funds, and delays in
receiving funds. The language barrier in Mali. The editing process, which is long and difficult!
Translation and sub-titles, choosing the right excerpts,
Finding more places to show the documentary. The Café lent us a camera, but at the last minute, the
owner changed his mind and we had to film a large part of the film with our cell phones.

Finance details: We have organized dances for young people and adults, themed events on Mali,
Senegal and Vietnam. We have run refreshment stalls at the town fair. We took part in a hip hop
festival in Montreuil. We have had stands at a few flea markets.

Creative funding: Dances for young people that raise awareness.

Other non finance needs: In putting our project together, we have had a lot of help from different
people in the town of Montreuil. We were able to borrow a camera. We are getting help with the
editing and sub-titling. We will need this kind of help in the future.

Motivation: In the beginning, we were a dance group. Something clicked and we became convinced
to do more than dance. We organized a solidarity meal and raised funds for a family in Montreuil. We
organized other meals and realized what a difference they made. We wanted to do more; we took part
in the town’s youth conference, which motivated us. At first, we wanted to develop a project on forced
marriages but it was too difficult a topic. We nevertheless wanted to do a project on women, because
it is a subject that is very close to our hearts.

32

Awards: Prize for the best initiative – Youth projects, May 2008 (Prix de la meilleure initiative – projet
jeunes) – Place publique junior

Halimatou Diabira
Lead Venturer
Afrotchekani
(Junior Association)

33

7. Reading Support (Accompagnement vers La Lecture)

Country: France

Organization: Accompagnement vers La Lecture (AVL)



Project URL: N/A

Project entry: http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/12868

(or planning to address it)? Inequalities start right from pre-school: all children do not have the
same outward signs of success, such as having many or few books at home - or none at all -, or easy
access to places like libraries and multimedia centers. This observation is shared by schools, various
people involved in education, social organizations, and “political” partners such as town councils and
their educational services, who are our partners. It is therefore important to make children’s
introduction to the world of books both entertaining and recreational. This has led to the idea of
developing a project within AVL. It is a project that encourages expression and brings people
together.

Project Description: Help a group of children in a homework club to create a book for children in
kindergarten in order to familiarize them with books.

Unique and different: Our project puts children who have difficulty reading at the heart of the project
– they choose the texts and work with the illustrator. This activity gives them a different perception of
reading. The texts that have an impact on them are more likely to have an impact on other children.

Project plan: The texts were chosen last year by the children, who then took part in a workshop
headed by an illustrator. The book will be printed and distributed in pre-schools and kindergartens and
to children in homework clubs. We will also use it to mobilize volunteers. An improved version of the
book will be produced during the school year.

Partnerships: The project is supported by the volunteers of AFEV, a homework club run by students,
who worked with the children to produce the notebook. We also worked with an illustrator, who helped
on a voluntary basis, and a printer.

Impact: In addition to helping children to discover books and promoting expressive reading, the
project enables children to express themselves, to make books their own and develop a love for
reading.

34

Effectiveness:

24 student-child pairs participated in the project last year, and just as many this year. The book will be
distributed to children in all the kindergartens in the neighborhood.

Obstacles: It has been difficult raising funds because the project cannot be easily slotted into specific
categories. It is not easy to convince illustrators to work on an unpaid basis. It is important to motivate
volunteers and to renew their enthusiasm, especially at the beginning of the school year.

Finance details:
A grant from Ashoka’s Youth Venture
Funding from CROUS and DRDJS.
An illustrator participating on a voluntary basis.
The commitment and involvement of 24 students volunteering in the project.

Creative funding: We have contacted and got help from companies that work in the publication of
children’s books.

Other non finance needs: We need the support of an illustrator, a graphic designer and a printer to
lead workshops with the children.

Motivation: My commitment to providing reading support to children quickly led me to think about
how to expand on early-learning activities, and how to provide books to the children, who often had no
books at home. This is how the idea of producing a book was born. I also launched children’s
workshops on philosophical thinking to help the children to form their own opinions and look at the
world differently.

Coralie Duby
Lead Venturer
Accompagnement vers La Lecture

35

7. Tennis For Fun


Organization: Tennis For Fun

Field of Work: Health/Sports


Hyperlink to Entry: http://www.changemakers.net/node/10278

Because of physical, emotional, and social difficulties, the intellectually disabled are often segregated
from and stigmatized by mainstream society. Tennis For Fun is trying to provide opportunities to
individuals with intellectual disability that they might not have access to otherwise. Through the game
of tennis, they get to try something new, have fun, build confidence, be more socially integrated with
the mainstream community, and develop valuable relationships with the non-disabled members of
their community from whom they are so often isolated. Meanwhile, their participation in this activity in
the community helps raise awareness about the intellectually disabled, break down barriers, and
reduce social stigma

Project Description: Tennis For Fun offers free weekly tennis clinics to adults in Rockport, Maine
and Amherst, Massachusetts and organizes and runs annual Special Olympics Maine tennis coaches
clinics and competitions.

Unique and different: It is especially significant Tennis For Fun reaches out to the intellectually
disabled through the game of tennis, a sport that has historically had significant economic and social
barriers. Furthermore, Tennis For Fun is unique in the way in which it has grown while sustaining its
existing programs over seven years. We started the program in our high school community in Maine
for adults, expanded throughout the state through the Special Olympics, and introduced a new
program in our college community. Each program has been passed on to younger kids as we have
moved on to the next stage of our lives as we continue to think of ways to grow the program. It
involves weekly hands-on involvement with the same intellectually disabled members of the different
communities it works with, such that the original participants have been playing tennis for seven years
now.

Project plan: Over the next six months, we want to continue to hold clinics in our high school and
college communities, as well as continue to plan and run the Special Olympics Maine events. We
would like to expand participation, both within the existing clinics and by getting others to start similar

36

clinics in new locations. We would also like to do as much as possible to make the program
sustainable over the long term, both in terms of personnel and funding.

Partnerships: We started by creating local partnerships with the agencies that serve the participants,
sharing with them our idea and our plan of implementation. Without these partnerships, we could not
have gotten participants for the program. We also formed a similar partnership with Special Olympics
Maine when we realized tennis was not an official sport in Special Olympics Maine competition. This
partnership expanded our commitment and reach most dramatically. We also contacted local
businesses to donate money for funds for the program. Furthermore, we created a partnership with a
local tennis club, which has donated indoor court time to the program for seven years. When we
wanted to expand the program when we went to college, we established a partnership with Youth
Venture, which allowed us to jump start our program there. The Amherst College Center for
Community Engagement has provided continued support for the clinic there. We have received
continued support from many of the same businesses by maintaining regular contact, sharing our
progress with them, and showing our appreciation for their support. All of the partnerships have been
successful because of frequent communication, a clear idea of our mission and needs, and
appreciation for the efforts of those who have supported us.

Impact: We hope that the intellectually disabled benefit from the opportunity that playing a
mainstream sport with non disabled youth offers, and that Tennis For Fun raises awareness of the
needs, abilities, and value of the intellectually disabled in mainstream society.

Effectiveness: The project has served over 100 participants, as well as their families and friends.
Furthermore, it has had an equally significant impact on the volunteers who have made the program
possible.


We engage and impact the community by obtaining support for the venture from members of
the community, businesses, and locales. Furthermore, the Tennis For Fun clinics are held in
community places that allow for interaction with the non disabled beyond the Tennis For Fun
volunteers themselves. We try to advertise the program as much as possible, through such
means as newspaper articles, photographs, and shirts for the participants and volunteers.


We measure this impact by the continued support and enthusiasm for Tennis For Fun.
Furthermore, we appreciate the increased sense of belonging that has been created for the
participants within the mainstream community. They have gotten to know many people outside
of Tennis For Fun itself because they have been playing tennis in the same community setting
for many years. They appreciate seeing and saying hello to the same people week after week,
who likewise appreciate the connection they have established with the participants.

Obstacles: The greatest obstacles to maximizing our impact are primarily logistical, in being able to
coordinate arrangements with the service agencies of the participants for the clinics to occur. They
often need special permission and arrangements for participation. Other than that, we need to ensure

37

that young people continue to have the same enthusiasm for running the individual clinics to sustain
Tennis For Fun in the long term.

Finance details: In the seven years of Tennis For Fun, we have had indoor court time donated for the
weekly clinics and Special Olympics events, approximately $5,000 donated for racquets, balls, t-
shirts, events, and general operating expenses, as well as individual donations of used balls and
racquets. Three people primarily oversee Tennis For Fun as a whole, but the team includes
approximately ten people who plan, organize, and run the weekly clinics and Special Olympics
events, as well as dozens of volunteers for specific events. There are currently over a dozen partners
who offer support and financial advice.

Creative funding: We have had drives for donations of balls and racquets from members of the
community.

Other non finance needs: Personnel to run the weekly clinics.

Motivation: I have played tennis competitively since the age of eight, and it had taught me many
important life lessons and been a big part of my identity. I decided I wanted to use the game to reach
out to members of my community who wouldn't normally have the opportunity to be exposed to the
game. Since nursery school, I had seen intellectually disabled members of my community at the local
YMCA but never had the opportunity to interact with and get to know them. Furthermore, I had
experienced ridicule for riding the bus with an intellectually disabled neighbor of mine during grade
school. Tennis seemed like the perfect tool for reaching out to and getting to know these segregated
and stigmatized members of my community, as it had been such a big part of my life so far.

Awards: Prudential Spirit of Community Honoree; Toyota Community Scholar; USA Tennis New
England Top Seed (for growing the game of tennis); Association of Amherst Students Student
Community Engagement Leadership Award; Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation
Official Citation; Massachusetts State Senate Official Citation; Kraft Foods Celebrating 100
Extraordinary Women Honoree; Amherst College Charles Hamilton Houston Scholarship (for
commitment to humanitarian ideals).

Broader context: Tennis For Fun always has been entirely run by youth. It relies on the actions of
youth to reach out to socially marginalized and stigmatized members of the community. The
relationships the youth have developed through Tennis For Fun have eased relations many non-
disabled adults have with the disabled in their community and make relations between disabled and
non-disabled seem natural.

Ongoing: I would like to start a similar program when I go to medical school next year. I hope that
Tennis For Fun continues to be passed on to youth with similar enthusiasm in the long term, and that I
am able to offer financial assistance, time, and input that may be helpful. Also, I plan on supporting
Special Olympics throughout the long term, both with time and money.

Laura Stein
Founder and Director
Tennis For Fun

38

8. The Hunger Brigade (La Brigade De la Faim)

Country: France

Organization: La Brigade De la Faim

Sector Focus: Social Justice/Poverty


Project URL: N/A

Project entry: http://www.changemakers.net/fr/node/13713

(or planning to address it)? There are two main problems we are trying to address. First, every
night, hundreds of food establishments (bakeries, fruit sellers, etc.) throw away kilos of unsold food
and even go as far as to spray foodstuffs with gas in order to make them inedible. Why? Because, for
health reasons, French law does not permit these bakeries to give away their food. The second
problem is that every night, hundreds of homeless people are hungry, cold and alone in the streets.
These people need attention and support.

Project Description: It’s two-fold: First, trigger and develop students that desire to participate in non-
profit and charity organizations and second go in groups of 3 to 4 young people, to meet street
people, give them something to drink and eat and spend time with them.

Unique and different: The idea is to help those that are most disadvantaged. An increasing number
of organizations now invite homeless people to share meals, but sometimes it seems difficult for some
street people to come to terms with their situation and to have the courage to attend these events.
These people remain in the streets without any social support. The idea of the Hunger Brigade is to
go out to meet the most marginalized street people. Meet and talk with them, offer them food such as
sandwiches, fruit, pastries, salads, coffee, tea and hot chocolate, as well as sleeping bags. We
believe that this emotional contact and social interaction with the homeless can be very powerful and
makes a difference in their lives.

Project plan: The project plan for the next 6 months is to develop the Hunger Brigade, improving and
increasing its social impact on homeless people. This will mean diversifying the service that the
association offers. A potential project would be to offer street people meals that could keep for several
days. In addition, we plan to contribute to helping the maximum number of students discover social
and humanitarian activities. Giving their time and meeting people who are different makes this an
enriching experience for everyone that is involved.

Partnerships: It is more relevant to talk about sponsorship. We met a man who for 2 years spent
most of his evenings distributing sandwiches from a bakery to street people in Paris. This man, Jean-

39

Claude Michel, allowed us to benefit from his closeness to the mayor of the 16th arrondissement in
Paris, enabling us also to be authorized to collect sandwiches that had not been sold at end of day in
the same bakery. We then negotiated the right to collect not only sandwiches but also salads, bread
and baguettes which we then made into sandwiches, adding ingredients bought by the association.
Winning Jean-Claude Michel’s trust and that of the bakery, and carefully maintaining these relations,
certainly provided us with the most important outside assistance to the association throughout the first
year.

Impact: In its five months of existence, the Hunger Brigade has to date met 150 homeless people.
We would like to double or even triple this number in the 2008/2009 school year.

Effectiveness:

The Hunger Brigade has distributed sleeping bags, over 400 sandwiches and as many cups of coffee
and tea to close to 150 street people. These numbers are increasing constantly. In addition, close to
70 students have had the experience of spending time in with other students and with disadvantaged
people. Many of them have come back.

Obstacles: The main obstacle we face is time. As students, we don’t have time to organize more
“missions”. In addition, the lack of funds will also become a problem. We haven’t had much time to
focus on fundraising. In my opinion, the search for partners such as bakeries was and has been more
fruitful than the search for financial partners. But this problem needs to be reconsidered now if we
want to take our social impact to a higher level. Lastly, we will have to increase the number of
students if we want to meet more homeless people.

Finance details: Our association currently has 13 members but we are going to recruit more in the
next couple of months because we underestimated the number of students that can be full-time
members of the association. Each member belongs to a committee: the board is in charge of the
general management of the association, a committee organizes the missions, another works on
relationships between the association and the corporate world, and another is in charge of
communication. We have four bakeries that are more or less active partners. We also work in
partnership with a bar, which serves as a meeting place after our missions.

Creative funding: We have written a simple and enthusiastic outreach letter to companies. As
regards our other partners, we simply went to meet them and made our proposal after presenting our
project.

Other non finance needs: We need more partners that could provide us with a variety of foods in
order to expand out operations such as butchers, produce sellers or drink brands. We also need
sleeping bags, clothing and health care items.

Motivation: A friend and I were lucky enough to be able to offer sandwiches to homeless people in
Angers by chance one evening. Too much food had been prepared by the organizers of an event at
our school and we offered to distribute the sandwiches in the town of Angers. It seems pretty obvious
today: we came upon a group of 15 street people with whom we shared a long and memorable

40

evening - memorable because the evening was so joyful. This brief experience pleased us
immediately; offering meals to homeless people in need and the easy and simple relationship
established with them were very enriching from a human point of view. This is the moment that made
us want to develop this initiative and encourage students to participate in it.

Nicolas Macabéo
President
La Brigade De la Faim
(Association loi 1901)

41

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