I’m always inspired by people who turn ambitious dreams into reality. Their story is a reminder for us all that truly, anything is possible. Dreams do not just happen on their own, of course. Nor do they happen as a result of the effort of one person. To make remarkable things happen, we need a community.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area on June 2nd, join a community of supporters for an elegant evening at the Stanford University Club in SF to raise funds for New Scholars, a not-for-profit global development organization that places Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in Africa to help early stage entrepreneurs start, grow and expand locally run businesses.

New Scholars is the dream of Stanford graduate and “Lost Boy” of Sudan Garang Akau, who together with co-founder, Darius Golkar, started the organization with the aim to share the entrepreneurial savvy of Silicon Valley with Garang’s community in Southern Sudan.

Bringing together best-selling authors, world-class athletes, Silicon Valley CEOs, a Nobel Laureate, venture capitalists, and a community of friends, the gala event on June 2nd aims to raise funds for New Scholars and their efforts to rebuild and stabilize Sudan through social enterprise.

To be a part of this magical event to help rebuild the world’s newest economy, register at nsgala.eventbrite.com. If you would like to be a proxy bidder, please send a note to Silvia at silviacb@auctionomics.com.

p.s. Thank you to gala chairs Silvia Console Battilana (Stanford economist and past chair of the Samasource gala), Richard Titus, and Robin Farmanfarmaian (Encore president and past chair of the SF ballet gala) for organizing this fabulous event!

We had a great time talking with Tammy Tibbetts of ShesTheFirst this week and appreciate the valuable insights she shared on how to leverage social media effectively to raise awareness of a brand and a cause. To hear more about these insights, be sure to check out  “Interview with Tammy Tibbetts, Founder of ShesTheFirst | How Can Social Media Support Girls’ Education?”.

In our interview with Tammy, along with sharing valuable online marketing strategies, Tammy talks about the importance of girls’ education worldwide and how educating a girl has a positive impact on a girl’s entire community. Tammy also tells us about an upcoming benefit concert for ShesTheFirst called Girls Who Rock New York. The concert, which takes place in New York City on June 10, 2010, aims to raise brand awareness for ShesTheFirst, and raise funds for selected beneficiary, The Kisa Project.

What is The Kisa Project? Check out the great video above to hear all about The Kisa Project, a digital storytelling and computer training program of AfricAid, founded by twenty-five year old Ashley Shuyler.

For additional background on Ashley and to learn how Ashley started AfricAid at eleven years old following a trip to Tanzania, be sure to also check out our previous interview, “Starting an Education NGO in Africa | Ashley Shuyler, Founder of AfricAid”, produced by talented filmmaker and envisionGood Field Producer, Jen Myronuk.

Ashley Shuyler, Founder of The Kisa Project and AfricAid

About: The Kisa Project is a new AfricAid initiative that will provide school scholarships and leadership training to some of Africa’s brightest young women. Website: www.kisaproject.org

How To Use Social Media And Savvy Marketing To Raise Funds For Girls Education Around The Globe: The Story of ShesTheFirst

Katrina: So here I am with Tammy Tibbetts, Founder of ShesTheFirst. Thanks so much for joining, Tammy.

Introducing ShesTheFirst…

Tammy: We started out as a media campaign. Our mission is dedicated to educating girls, specifically in the developing world and giving them opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise.

On our website you can find the directory of international 501c3 non-profits that have programs where you can sponsor a girl’s education. So through our social media and our marketing, we’re trying to appeal to young women, and show them they can make a huge difference, just by giving a little if they bring together their vast networks of friends.

Katrina: Why a focus on girls education?

Tammy: It started with the MacDella Cooper Foundation, and that’s where I was first exposed to the value of sponsorship programs and education in transforming the lives of abandoned children and orphans. MacDella Cooper Foundation does that service in Liberia.

I’ve always been personally interested in women and girls through media, through magazines and online. My day job is at Hearst Digital Media where I run DonateMyDress.org and work with Seventeen.com. But I think it was also just, reading Nicholas Kristof, my favorite journalist. And research that was done in the non-profit field, especially by the Nike Foundation, which produced the Girl Effect PSA that I found to be so powerful: showing that when you educate girls they’ll obviously make more money and get better jobs, and they re-invest that back into their families and the community.

How did travel abroad influence your desire to start ShesTheFirst?

Katrina: You shared with me offline a little bit about your travel experience in Liberia and how that influenced the idea to start ShesTheFirst. Can you tell us a little bit about your travels in Liberia?

Tammy: Yeah, I’ve been to Liberia twice. And when I was there I would meet with the local children who we sent to local schools. There’s one young woman, in particular, whose name is Cynthia, and I am very proud of her because she’s graduating from high school this June. And we’ll see her on through her college education.

She’s actually from a remote village in Liberia, but she’s living in the capital of Monrovia with her grandmother so she can go to a good school that we pay her tuition for. And she wants to become a nurse so that she can move back to where she comes from, the rural community, and be their first female nurse.

Katrina: How much does a scholarship cost?

Tammy: It’s US$200 – US$300 on average (a year), I find in all of our partners. Haiti Outreach Program, a hundred dollars will send a girl to primary school for a year.

And then there are some tuitions like the Kisa Project is US$1,000 a year, but look at what you’re getting – a secondary school education, with a very high-tech digital storytelling and computer training.

Boarding schools like the Shanti Bhavan School in India are again in the thousand dollar range. Those options you can donate either a portion of a tuition towards a girl or if you’re having a larger scale event on a college campus, or in the city like Girls Who Rock, it’s a very attainable fundraising goal.

Katrina: How did you develop this model for ShesTheFirst? What opportunity did you see that wasn’t being served by existing non-profits organizations?

Tammy: I think the light bulb went off in my head when I was on the founding team of DonateMyDress.org at Hearst Digital Media, because I saw, that’s a media campaign, and we’re an umbrella for all of these dress drive organizations. And I saw the power you get when you take all of these smaller organizations that share a similar mission. And, team up with a celebrity spokesperson, design an attractive website, leverage the PR power of Seventeen Magazine and other publications. It was just a huge success.

And I thought, what if I took that structure and that concept of using really savvy marketing, digital media, and video PSAs, and target a message of supporting girls education. And, would I have similar success? And it turns out that we are, we’re growing so fast because young women identify with the ShesTheFirst brand, and what it means that when you have an education you can break barriers. And we’re here because we had an education, and now we have this tremendous desire to pay it forward.

Katrina: How do you find your partners?

Tammy: DoSomething.org. That’s how I found out about Maggie Doyne (Founder of Kopila Valley Children’s Home in Nepal). That’s how I found out about AfricAid. Another program is in Kenya which we’re about to add to our directory. And what’s so exciting about that is that these non-profits were launched by young people, young women!

But now we’re getting to a point with our brand awareness that non-profits are finding us. And we just got an email last week from an executive director of a non-profit that works in Sudan.

Katrina: How did you become interested in international development?

Tammy: I really didn’t get involved in international affairs or have an interest in it until I was a senior in college and fatefully, mistakenly stumbled upon the story of MacDella Cooper as a reporting assignment. That just opened up a whole new world to me. And that’s when I started reading Nicholas Kristof more.

And I think that’s what ShesTheFirst gives me a great platform to do. Like, no I’m not writing and reporting articles each day on the lead of the who, what, where, why, when, and you know, what’s going on. But this brings me back to the power of a story. And even in a more exciting way, because when we work with the Kisa Project we will be communicating with the girl who will be sponsored. And we’ll be transferring that relationship with her onto our blog. So that everyone who comes to the concert will be able to see her growth over the span of two years that she’s in the Kisa Project.

Katrina: Can you share with us, what is the Kisa Project, and what is this concert called Girls Who Rock in New York?

Tammy: Girls Who Rock is wonderful benefit concert, featuring really successful, established artists who are all donating their time. We have Kat DeLuna; Shontelle who is tearing up the iTunes and MySpace charts right now; Mozella – her songs have been in commercials and favorite shows like Greys Anatomy; Lenka, this international sensation who is becoming a big hit on the Sony label here in the U.S.; Cara Salimando, Kelli Pyle.

And we’re bringing them all together on one stage. And ticket prices are very affordable, US$20 and US$50. That’s important to me because I think that fancy galas that start at US$200, that’s very unattainable for young people who are just starting out in their first job, and I want this to be very accessible.

And the Kisa Project makes perfect sense to be our first beneficiary because, first, it was started by Ashley Shuyler, Founder of AfricAid, who is now twenty five years old and that shows that there are no limits to what you can do. You can come to a concert to support the cause, or you could build schools in Africa if you wanted to. You know, age is not going to stop you.

Katrina: How are you using social media to promote your event?

Tammy: We’re going to be tweeting all during this concert. You know, that’s how we’re marketing it. We’re going to have video, its going to be live streamed so even if you’re not in New York City you can be a part of it. And the Kisa Project, that’s what it’s founded on – digital storytelling. And the whole event is during Internet Week New York.

So, all around, it’s a great story about Elizabeth, the young girl in the Kisa Project program who will receive a scholarship thanks to this benefit concert. It’s a great story about Ashley and starting AfricAid and the Kisa Project. And ultimately, it’s a great story about New York City and young people coming together and using social media and digital media to change the world.

Thank you Tammy for your generosity of time to meet for this interview.

Tammy Tibbetts | Founder, ShesTheFirst

About: ShesTheFirst is a media campaign that uses the power of social media and savvy marketing to support the education of girls worldwide. Website: www.ShesTheFirst.org

Related Articles

• UN Looking For Ways To Keep Girls In School (VOANews.com)
• Three Proven Steps To Advance The World’s Women, On International Women’s Day (On The Ground: Nicholas Kristof’s Blog)

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, describes how graffiti and broken glass can change people’s social values and lead a neighborhood to go swiftly downhill if the environment is not repaired.

To “tip” a neighborhood back into a positive direction therefore, Gladwell suggests that one of the first steps needed is to actively repair broken glass and clean up graffiti in the neighborhood. According to Gladwell, when residents take pride in their environment, studies show that crime rates and vandalism drop.

Given the impact that a positive environment can have on a neighborhood, we’re especially excited to hear about an upcoming show on NBC that applies this principle to the school environment. Airing this fall, NBC’s School Pride aims to make an impact in education nationwide by giving schools a makeover. Check out the fantastic video above for a preview of NBC’s School Pride and see how a school in Compton, California was transformed in ten days by the community.

What are schools like in your neighborhood? In what ways can students, teachers, parents, and the community come together to give your own community’s schools a makeover? Share your story by leaving a comment below or sending us a note.

SCHOOL PRIDE Overview: From executive producers Cheryl Hines (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and Denise Cramsey (“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “True Beauty”), “School Pride” is a proactive, alternative series that tells the stories of communities coming together to renovate their aging and broken public schools. While transforming the school, the community also restores its sense of value and school pride. The cameras follow students, teachers and parents as they roll up their sleeves and rebuild their own schools, concluding with the unveiling of a brand new, completely transformed school. They are motivated by a quartet of community organizers and personalities — SWAT Commander Tom Stroup, interior designer Susie Castillo (“House of Payne”), comedian and former substitute teacher Kym Whitley (“Til Death”) and political correspondent Jacob Soboroff (“AMC News”). Together, the team of experts will lead the community through the makeover process. Months later, cameras will revisit the school to discover the lasting effects of the transformation — a renewed sense of school pride and an increase in student achievement scores. “School Pride” is produced by Horizon Alternative Television.

Thanks to Noel Cunningham of the Cunningham Foundation, I was recently introduced to Ashley Shuyler, the Founder & Executive Director of AfricAid, a Colorado-based non-profit focused on providing sustainable educational opportunities for girls in Tanzania.

Ashley is a vibrant and dedicated social entrepreneur who is currently returning to Tanzania to continue the work of AfricAid as they prepare to launch the Kisa Project, a new venture focused on capturing and sharing the stories of African girls through digital storytelling.  At twenty four years old, Ashley was inspired to start AfricAid following travels to Tanzania with her family when she was eleven years old. Her passion to use her skills to make a difference in the lives of others is an example of a new generation of up and coming social entrepreneurs who are pioneering new methods of community engagement and economic development on a local and global scale.

In support of its mission, AfricAid provides funding for scholarships, school building projects, leadership training, vocational and teacher training, school supplies, school lunch programs, and works in conjunction with the local initiatives of Tanzanians and other African leaders committed to education.

Ashley Shuyler, Founder of AfricAid:

About: AfricAid supports girls’ education in Africa in order to provide young women with the opportunity to transform their own lives and the futures of their communities. Website: www.africaid.com

Want to learn from successful entrepreneurs for free? Want to develop new technology skills in WordPress or PHP, or gain insights on social media marketing and other areas of technology?

An amazing new start-up in San Francisco, eduFire, is helping people gain the insight they need to start a company, ramp up quickly in tech skills, get a job, and share expertise and knowledge – all in a social setting on the web via live, interactive online classes. The most exciting thing about this is that through the eduFire platform, teachers and students from around the world have an opportunity to connect, help each other out, and develop global partnerships via learning.

I had the good fortune to meet up with Jon Bischke, Founder of eduFire, this week in San Francisco to learn more about how his company aims to revolutionize education. In our chat, Jon explained how the eduFire platform works, how teachers are vetted through crowdsourced teacher reviews, and how social media tools like Facebook and Twitter specifically are used by teachers and students alike to spread the word about eduFire classes as they take place in real-time.

The big news this week for eduFire is that they just launched a new Tech Channel to compliment the other classes they offer through their Language and Business Channels. Given the continued demand for technology skills among jobseekers, Jon explained that eduFire hopes to address this need for skills development through a wide variety of tech classes online, including courses related to WordPress implementation, social media marketing, PHP, and beyond. Keep in mind, all the classes are community-driven and are quite affordable, ranging from five to fifty dollars (and some classes are free).

Imagine taking an “Underground SEO Tips for Startups” class taught by Neil Patel, co-Founder of KISSmetrics. Or, if you are a nonprofit professional, imagine taking a class on “Engaging Your Supporters Through Micro-Volunteering” by Sundeep Ahuja, Co-Founder and President of The Extraordinaries, the micro-volunteering platform that allows people to volunteer by mobile phone. Essentially, eduFire provides an opportunity for teachers to reach a global classroom of students, as well as a way for students to learn from a worldwide pool of teachers across an unlimited variety of topics. For more info on how to take a class or teach a class, be sure to check out eduFire.com. You can also reach the eduFire team on Twitter @eduFire.

We had a fun chat with Daniel Epstein and Teju Ravilochan, Co-Founders of The Unreasonable Institute this past weekend. In this video interview, Daniel and Teju share the background story on why they started The Unreasonable Institute to provide training and mentorship for young social entrepreneurs. In this interview, learn about The Unreasonable Institute’s Fellows Program, who they are looking for, how to apply, and more. Applications open November 15th and run for one month. Twenty five high-impact young social entrepreneurs will be selected from around the world to join in an intensive 10-week training program taught by seasoned social entrepreneurs. Learn about the investor’s pitch, The Unreasonable Institute’s pipeline parters, seed capital for young social entrepreneurs in the Fellows program, and more.

The Full Transcript

Katrina: Hi, here I am with Teju and Daniel of The Unreasonable Institute.

Teju: Thanks Katrina. Well, first of all, it’s just a pleasure to be here, we’re really happy to share a little bit about The Unreasonable Institute with you. The Unreasonable Institute is basically an international incubator for early-stage social ventures. We’re focused on young people around who hunger to create systemic social change. And we bring them to Boulder, Colorado for ten weeks where they live under the same roof, undergo rigourous entrepreneurial training, receive mentorship from fifty of the world’s most seasoned social entrepreneurs, and ultimately connect them with the seed capital they need to launch social ventures that are gloablly scalable and that can improve the lives of millions of people.

Daniel: Nice. [laughter]

Katrina: This is an amazing incubator for young social entrepreneurs and I’ve been hearing around the blogosphere that this is being referred to as an MBA crash course for young people who want to make a difference. What inspired you to start this?

Daniel: I think we were inspired by an obsession, actually – an obsession with the belief that entrepreneurship is the answer to the greatest challenges that we’re facing today. Our entire founding team – we’re a group of young social entrepreneurs. We are the very customers, clients, or constituents that we’re looking to attract to the Institute, and we recognize the shortcomings right now in supporting early-stage social ventures. There’s a lack of extensive incubators. There’s a lack of access to expert mentors. And, and there’s a lack of access to capital and these are all the things that we’re looking to drive into this ecosystem.

Teju: I might add that we’re after unreasonable people. You know, people who create change in the world are often called crazy. And you know, no one is probably crazier than a 20-something who says, “I’m going to put poverty in a museum”, to quote Muhammad Yunus.

Katrina: This is so inspiring. Let me ask you, how are you attracting seasoned experts to become the mentors for the program?

Daniel: We’ve teamed up with key organizations all around the world, from Ashoka to Endeavor in Chile to NYU University and a number of other award-deeming pipeline partners, which are organizations that believe that this is a very valuable experience.

Teju: We’re bringing to the Institute the brightest, hungriest young people. And these seasoned social entrepreneurs know the struggles that they’ve faced in trying to launch their social ventures, so they’re very excited about the opportunity to help the next generation of young people who are hungry to create that change.

Katrina: Fantastic, fantastic. So let me ask you this, what are you looking for? How will you determine of all the applicants you receive who will be invited to join you?

Teju: We’re looking at two different categories: one is the idea, and one is the person. So in terms of the idea, we’re looking for ventures that can meet four criteria. One, they have the potential of addressing a social or environmental problem. Two, they can financially self-sustain themselves within a year, meaning they have some kind of internal revenue mechanism for covering their cost of operations – so that three years after they launch they can scale beyond their country of origin. And finally, our fourth criteria is that they reach the needs of at least one million people.

In terms of the person, we’re looking for primarily three characteristics: unreasonablity, impatience, and boldness. So what do I mean by that? By unreasonability, I mean people who have the ability to persist through failure, who are willing to endure scathing scepticism and whatever challenges they face in launching a social enterprise, and are relentlessly determined to solve one of these problems at any cost. We’re also looking for people who feel a strong sense of urgency and who are impatient to create this change – who we can ask, “what is the world’s biggest problem today?” and “what are you doing about it right now?” and they have an answer for us right away.

And then finally, we’re looking for boldness. We’re looking for people who are willing to take risks, who are willing to try models that have never before been implemented, who are willing to think on the scope of millions, and even billions, of people, and risk failure in pursuit of that. And we’re looking for people who really have the entrepreneurial ability, who can make people believe in them, who have rallied the support of at least one team member, who are between the ages of twenty and thirty, though that is not a hard and fast rule.

Daniel: One thing we’re really looking for, and Teju touched on it, are teams. We’re looking for teams for a couple of reasons: one is to show that your idea is at a certain stage in development where you’ve been able to inspire people to come onboard and work on it full-time. Also, we’re looking for teams so that one of the members can come to the Institute, while the other one is back on the ground interacting with the market so that they can test prototypes and proofs of concept while their other team member is at the Institute. We think that this is absolutely critical.

Which gets us to another point, which is really quite simply, that we believe that entrepreneurs do stuff. So we’re looking for entrepreneurs who have done stuff. And if that means you’ve got a prototype to market, you’ve been working on your venture for six months, one year, three years, even if it’s just been two weeks, we want to make certain that you’ve got in on the ground, that you’re relentless about this, that you’re dedicated to it, and that you’re passionate about it.

Katrina:What are some of the things that applicants who are invited can expect to learn?

Teju: We’re bringing mentors to the Institute, for example, Mark Mathieu, who is the head of global brand marketing at Coca-Cola. We’re bringing Bob Pattillo, who started Gray Ghost Fund, a four hundred million social investment fund, for example, who can teach our Fellows, for example: “how do you reach remote rural customers?” “how do you market to them?”, who can say, “this is how you pitch to investors”.

We’re bringing someone who’s lifted millions of people out of poverty who says “this is how you communicate with people who live in poverty in rural Cambodia”, for example. “These are the kinds of questions you ask, these are the kinds of things you should be looking for when you’re out there on the ground. In addition to that, we’ll be bringing Tom Suttas, for example, who has started nineteen companies of his own, and has rasied over a billion US dollars in funds for those companies. So how do you raise that money? So everything it takes from putting together a team, to pitching to an investor, to marketing, to branding, you know, all those things are things our Fellows will learn from the mentors we bring to the Institute.

Daniel: More practical needed tools are assets. So, we’ll work with them [Fellows] to build websites, free legal consultation throughout the Institute, access to capital to build prototypes over the ten weeks. At the culmination of the Institute, we’ll be having an investor’s pitch fest and conference, where our Fellows will go on-stge in front of two hundred investors and enlightened philanthropists, and be able to say “these are the ideas that are going to change the world in the next generation and the coming years, and invest in them.”

Katrina:Awesome. And how much does this cost? For someone who wants to attend, how much do they have to pay?

Teju: The cost of attending the Institute is US $6,500 but we don’t, in fact, allow our Fellows to pay it. In fact, what happens is, we’ll get applications and we’ll narrow it down the initial pool of let’s say, a couple hundred, to forty or fifty we hope. We’ll put those forty or fifty entrepreneurs on what what’s called a finalist marketplace, which is a platform inspired by kickstarter.com, where these entrepreneurs can profile their ventures and their ideas to the world.

The world then can come to this marketplace and vote with their dollars on the ideas that they think are the most viable for creating deep social impact. So the first twenty five finalists to raise sixty five hundred dollars through this platform are the ones who become Unreasonable Fellows. This is perhaps one of the best tests of their enterpreneurial ability. Can they go out and get people excited enough about their idea, and get people to believe in them and their idea enough to support them with their dollars?

Daniel: We know the difference between receiving a full-ride scholarship to an organization or to a fellowship, versus having, say a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred people support you like Teju said. With that amount of excitement, ownership, and accountability when you’re attending the Institute and hundreds of people have said, yes you deserve to be here, yes your idea is viable, we believe will truly be incredible.

Recently we realized a slight issue with this model which was that it wasn’t going to be fair for applicants and finalists coming from more impoverished backgrounds. And so, we’re actually staggering the amount of sponsorship you can receive over a fifty day period. So in the first week, anyone in the world can come and sponsor their way to the Institute, but you can’t give more than ten dollars.

The idea behind that is, if you can get six hundred and fifty people to support you in one week and say that you should come to the institute, then you should come to the Institute because that’s absolutely incredible. The second week it will be fifty dollars, the third week it will be a maximum of a hundred, and so on and so forth. And the idea here is to really level the playing ground.

Katrina:With the staggered voting model that you’ve shared, we can expect applicants from all over the world, right?

Teju & Daniel: Yes, yes you can.

Teju: In fact, Katrina, we already have two hundred fifty people signed up to apply actually, which is really exciting. And they’re from all over the world. You know, we’ve got applicants from sub-Saharan Africa, from Southeast Asia, from Latin America, and from Europe, and of course from North America and the United States. So, we’re really excited by the people signed up to apply because it reflects that there is international interest.

Katrina: Is there anything you would like to share with everyone, any tips you can give to applicants?

Teju: We want the best entrepreneurs to apply, and to be very honest and transparent with us about what they know, what they don’t know, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and what they’re looking to do.

Katrina: Thank you so much for your time, and I’m really excited to hear what emerges with The Unreasonable Institute. Thank you so much. It’s always so fun talking with you two.

Teju: It’s been a blast, thank you so much.
Daniel: Thank you too.

Teju Ravilochan & Daniel Epstein – Co-Founders of The Unreasonable Institute:

About: The Unreasonable Institute unites up to twenty-five high-impact young social entrepreneurs from around the world for an intensive 10-week summer institute to provide skills training and expert mentorship to give new social ventures wings. Website: www.unreasonableinstitute.org

At Africa Social Enterprise Forum in NYC, Katrina of envisionGood.tv spoke with Fred Swaniker, Founder of African Leadership Academy. In this video interview, Fred highlights achievements from the inaugural first academic year at African Leadership Academy, located in Johannesburg, South Africa. With 180 students from 40 countries, the Academy serves as a training institute for Africa’s next generation of leaders.

“Leadership”, says Fred Swaniker, is the key to a peaceful and prosperous Africa. Watch this video interview to learn more about the Academy, and hear what Fred has to say about characteristics needed for the “making of a social entrepreneur”. Thanks for watching!

Fred Swaniker, Founder of African Leadership Academy

About: African Leadership Academy (ALA) seeks to transform Africa by developing and supporting future generations of African leaders. Website: www.AfricanLeadershipAcademy.org

Scott Clarke, Founder of Amandla Development, met up with us at Africa Social Enterprise Forum in New York City this past week to share with us how his organization was founded and how his team is working with local communities in South Africa to support and develop social entrepreneurs in education. Watch this video to learn directly from Scott about the amazing work taking place in South Africa by Amandla Development! Many thanks to Scott for time to share these great insights, as well as to remind us of the historical context responsible for the current state of education in the country.

Scott Clarke, Founder of Amandla Development

About: Amandla Development works for a South Africa in which everyone can access empowering education opportunities leading to equitable development. . Website: www.AmandlaDevelopment.org

We had a delightful chat with Bill Carter, Vice President for Africa Programs at Ashoka, at Africa Social Enterprise Forum in NYC this past week. Bill shares insights in this video interview on the 5 Selection Criteria that Ashoka looks for when selecting its Ashoka Fellows. Learn from Bill the 5 characteristics of successful young social entrepreneurs! Thanks Bill!

Bill Carter, Vice President for Africa Programs at Ashoka

About: Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Website: www.ashoka.org