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!

At last week’s DiasporaCamp DC in Washington, DC we had a great time chatting with Rad Shakur, co-founder of CasaDiCulture. Check out the video above to learn about Casa di Culture (a mix of Italian and English meaning ‘house of culture’).

The online company was started by three sisters in 2007, as the brand for the modern nomad. Items combine culturally inspired designs paired with flight-friendly and travel-comfy items like t-shirts, wrap skirts and tube scarves. All of the designs are inspired by the sights, smells and sounds of their travels. Each item is thoughtfully designed; most of the t-shirts are 100% organic cotton and are printed with non-toxic inks, and all of the accessories are handmade and/or hand-casted. To join the Casa Di Culture community, you can also visit their online blog and join them on Facebook.

Thanks for your time to chat with us, Rad!

Rad Shakur: At CasaDiCulture we call ourselves the brand for the modern nomad. It was started three years ago by three women, originally from the Washington, DC area, but our experiences took us abroad. We’ve lived, studied, and traveled, and just have friends from many different places. So when we came back here it was hard to find others who were just interested in traveling or just getting to know other people. So that’s why we originally started the company – to promote diversity and then in our products we use organic cotton and non-toxic inks to promote social awareness as well.

So we have a platform on Facebook and you can find us on Twitter. We also like to do blogs and write about current things like international fashion, write about environmental issues, so we try to be holistic in our approach. But our items – we carry t-shirts because we figure that’s kind of the most global thing that young people wear. In our t-shirts we use international and global images that remind us of the places we’ve been – the sights, the sounds, the smells. So, that’s what we do.

We design in-house. Like the skirt I have was designed in-house: this is Batik sourced from Africa. But everything we do, these earrings (for example) – we have a jeweler … so everything we do we try to work either with entrepreneurs but most of the stuff is done in-house. We have a printer and they use non-toxic inks. Everything else – we have button earrings, we have soaps that we make handmade. So we do it ourselves.

We carry t-shirts, we carry skirts, earrings, and also bamboo tea which is very good for blood circulation. So we carry several different products but we’re all online so it’s accessible. We do have some wholesalers like on here in DC and there’s a boutique in Switzerland that carries our stuff and we’re expanding. We’re based online and the url is www.CasaDiCulture.com, and it’s a combination of “casa” “di” “culture”, three languages that we put together.

Thank you so much Rad!

Rad Shakur | Co-Founder, CasaDiCulture

About: Started by three sisters in 2007 as the brand for the modern nomad, CasaDiCulture is an online company featuring items that combine culturally inspired designs with flight-friendly and travel-comfy items like t-shirts, wrap skirts and tube scarves. Website: www.CasaDiCulture.com