The CO-Fund mission is to facilitate the funding of higher education for deserving, college-ready students.  CO-Fund enables anybody to sponsor student’s college education through online, face-to-face profiles. Donors help students to afford and graduate from college and become a part of their social mission to “pay it forward” after graduation.  We have developed an efficient, accessible, and personalized approach that empowers both donors and students by aggregating direct, peer-to-peer donations of as little as one dollar, 100% of which go to the students. Started by Cody Simmons in the fall of 2009, the CO-Fund team is now comprised of nine talented entrepreneurial Brown students that have the shared vision of leveraging the power of micro-donations to benefit students and their communities. 
 
CO-Fund is launching its public website in the Spring of 2010 under the fiscal sponsorship of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education (RISE). CO-Fund has also received $5,000 in pro bono legal services from the law firm Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP, and is also working with the accounting firm Batchelor, Frechette, McCrory, Michael & Co.  CO-Fund is currently a start-up, non-profit organization that is launching with students from Rhode Island to demonstrate the effectiveness of its approach before scaling to work with additional partners and communities nationwide. 
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 Sustainability without Borders, borders have redrawn the way people interact with each other and their surroundings, now it is time to look beyond those borders to ensure the sustainability of the world's vibrant cultures.

A Chinese Proverb says; Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. This initiative is about empowering people in the developing world by giving them access to life altering knowledge. 

Our approach will include mission trips, and alliances with groups such as Engineers Without Borders, Habitat for Humanity and Water for People. The development of a simple laptop, much like the one laptop per child initiative, will contain open source information to help people in every economic class. 

 We are helping to build the future, sustainably. 

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In the developed world individuals and entrepreneurs have been able to take advantage of the internet to expand their reach to customers through new products and services.  In the developing world fewer individuals have access to the internet and entrepreneurs have been limited in their scope and reach.  However, where the internet is failing to make in-roads, mobile phones are taking off; now reaching nearly 4.6 billion phones globally. 

Bazari will provide individuals and entrepreneurs in developing countries (initially India) the advantages of eCommerce through a text-message based platform.  Through the platform customers can browse, purchase, pay, and arrange delivery for products; similar to shopping on eBay or Amazon, but all done via text messaging.

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Imagine trying to find and keep a job if you don’t own a car. NOW imagine the same thing if you don’t even know how to drive.  The only jobs available would be the ones within walking distance of a bus line – where driving skills weren’t needed.  You couldn’t even deliver pizzas!  No wonder the opportunities for those who don’t own an internet connected computer (or worse, are computer illiterate) are so bleak.  They aren’t on the information superhighway; they're left at the curb as knowledge workers get on the on-ramp.

US Census stats say that 56.6% of Hispanic households (calculating to a 43.4% penetration rate) do not have internet access at home -- the worst percentage of any race/ethnicity. Furthermore 53.7% of unemployed individuals and 66.8% of individuals not in the workforce are without internet access at home. And internet penetration is only 24.8% in Mexico, 22% in Central America, and 34.7% in South America.

Bridge for the Digital Divide (BftDD) is a non-profit effort dedicated to using for-profit business methods and a cutting edge business model to better accomplishing its mission of (1) maximizing the amount of computers, internet access, and training it can donate in the Hispanic Americas, and (2) achieving rapid and financially self self-sustainable growth.

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Imagine a relative of yours needing immediate medical help but his/her life is slipping out of control because of a traffic jam hindering the movement of the ambulance you and your relative is in. With things around us becoming smarter and smarter we need traffic too to follow the trend.

My idea proposes a smart traffic network which keeps all ambulances informed of where traffic jams are and alternative routes to avoid them.  Using traffic patterns/concentrations, satellite signals, GPS and other audio/video signals a potentially life saving decision can be made by the driver.
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How to develop a Complete Health Picture of a country? Is it possible to have comprehensive view of the continuum of the health system at one end and the patient profile at the other at once? If such a database can be developed with proper linkages, how can it be used to design an effective health care policy for a developing country?

 

I have an idea that addresses this issue. For the rural population of India, access to healthcare facilities is primarily through the state-run Health institutions. These institutions are often far away from tribal hamlets and villages. The limited resource setting, combined with low literacy, makes health care fragmented and ineffective.

 

It is my idea to develop a comprehensive database of patients, who accesse public or private health care. It can applied for a pilot project where a million population in a single administrative unit is taken as the target group. The prototype will be a module with essential details such as age, weight, family history, latest tests undergone, medicines used and diagnoses.

 

The data is entered into a net-connected computer database by any medical/para-medical personnel that the patient consults and the chronological number in the list is issued as Patient No. The updates happen simultaneously across the whole spectrum of health institutions in the pilot area.

 

The aim is to develop an inclusive health profile, available wherever the patient goes, perhaps, eventually linking it up with India’s most ambitious Unique Identification Project to be started next year. Harsha Vadlamani110.0

BACKGROUND:

Investment in education always pays the best interest! Lack of quality education, poverty and underdevelopment are interlinked with each other. Secondary education bears tremendous importance: 1. It’s a determinant of an individual’s basic cognition and moral. 2. It is also a gateway to higher education.

 

Ground-reality:

In Nepal, rural students’ access to quality education is difficult, due to the lack of manpower and infrastructures. Further, the decade-long conflict has affected the national mechanisms. It will definitely take a considerable time to develop an efficient system to solve the problems. But then, can we afford to wait? NO! There’s a need of doing something effective that helps in addressing the problem.

 

IDEA:

Employing the miracles of technology to disseminate quality education to the rural students (Audio, Video resources: ‘Comprehensive learning with Ease and Fun’)

 

How will we do it?

We aim to develop learning resources and make it accessible to the students of rural areas. TV channels and FM radios will be used as the medium. Nepal has a good network of community radios; it’s the best medium for the places deprived of electricity. Similarly, audio and video materials will be disseminated to the rural schools.

 

How can we make a real difference?

When the materials get distributed, a large mass of students are likely to benefit. They get exposed to the simple and effective explanation of subject matter. Apart from the effectiveness and flexibility in learning process, the venture is awesome in terms of economy and time saving.

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  JeepNeed is a mobile computer center in the Philippines that serves to meet the invisible costs of education for promising youth on or below the poverty line.

This project redesigns local public transportation (the Jeepney). Among functional redesign features (pull out writing surfaces, storage spaces, tarpaulin extensions from the jeep roof, etc,) the jeepney will also use an engine that runs on vegetable oil, significantly reducing daily expenses by 90%. A single jeep will cost $6000, and cater to 15 students, hold 10 laptops with internet access, 1 printer and necessary project materials.

Outside of transportation to and from school, and after school resource availability, the vehicle is a for hire service for employees within the city. The for-hire nature assures sustainability and allows it to earn back initial investment within 6 months of maximum use. The mobile nature of the center will also allow it to take students on a program of leadership based field trip experiences aimed at building supportive peer communities, expanding social capital and extending learning experiences outside the classroom.
 
The pilot project will target graduates from an elementary in Manila (CENTEX) that the team has worked with in the past. Graduates from this elementary have been identified as high performing students with significant economic need. The pilot project will seek to build from existing efforts of CENTEX by supporting their graduates through high school. tantu20s230.0

Jokom Riak Foundation is a voluntary base organization formed to fight poverty in Southern Sudan by improving the region’s economic power through agricultural facilitation, environmental conservation to serve the biodiversity, educational assistance, health care through maintenance and sanitation awareness campaign, cultural reestablishment to store cultural values lost during the previous twenty two years of civil war.  Primarily Jokom Riak Foundation will support the people of Southern Sudan whose their lives had been affected by the civil war which occurred in the country during 1983-2005. Jokom Riak Foundation has visionary application to serve such affected people by providing an effort to restore or improve their economic power through rehabilitations by means of social entrepreneurship to empower social changes.



Jokom Riak Foundation will be further education in Southern Sudan, by purchasing books, use computers and other supplies that could be use for educational purposes and also build educational facilities as well and the above non good items services. Jokom Riak Foundation anticipates that 30% of its budget will use toward this activity and the activity will be carried on by employees or volunteers of Jokom Riak Foundation here in the United States as well as the volunteers or employees of Jokom Riak Foundation in Southern Sudan. This activity will be funded through donations and grants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HKBgfz2lV0

Jokom Riak Foundation will host reconciliation between communities in region by launching peace workshops among communities to educate the people, leaders, elders and activists of the respective community peace.

Jokom Riak Foundation will engage citizens of Sudan or of Southern Sudan to protect human rights. Jokom Riak Foundation will accomplish these goals by launching human right and health workshops in the region and through Youth forum in foreign countries. Therefore, Jokom Riak Foundation can host awareness conference in USA, Canada and Australia were Sudanese have immigrate order to better mobilize their help in restoring the war torn country of Sudan.

Jokom Riak Foundation will be further education in Southern Sudan, by purchasing books, use computers and other supplies that could be use for educational purposes and also build educational facilities as well and the above non good items services. Jokom Riak Foundation anticipates that 30% of its budget will use toward this activity and the activity will be carried on by employees or volunteers of Jokom Riak Foundation here in the United States as well as the volunteers or employees of Jokom Riak Foundation in Southern Sudan. This activity will be funded through donations and grants.

Jokom Riak Foundation will host reconciliation between communities in region by launching peace workshops among communities to educate the people, leaders, elders and activists of the respective community peace.

Jokom Riak Foundation will engage citizens of Sudan or of Southern Sudan to protect human rights. Jokom Riak Foundation will accomplish these goals by launching human right and health workshops in the region and through Youth forum in foreign countries. Therefore, Jokom Riak Foundation can host awareness conference in USA, Canada and Australia were Sudanese have immigrate order to better mobilize their help in restoring the war torn country of Sudan.

• Provision of seeds and farming equipment, veterinary services, pesticides, insecticides and other materials of similar purpose.
• Provision of light bulbs and pump power generators, which provide electricity.
• Agricultural seminaries to encourage farmers and seasonal traders in promoting economic changes through orientations.
• Educational assistance in Southern Sudan
• Jokom Riak Foundation will buy books, computers and other basic school supplies for school children.
• Jokom Riak Foundation will be building school facility for education as well if possible base on funding Resources.
• Jokom Riak Foundation will hire teachers and facilitators to render this project.
• Jokom Riak Foundation will promote health issues in Southern Sudan by providing health education in local villages and schools.

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 VoiceRaising links university students to a refugee community living in a developing country through one-on-one online tutoring. Using web-conferencing software to deliver online classes, students help refugees improve their English. At the end of each semester, students and refugees together produce blog entries to inform the university community about the refugees' stories and demonstrate the refugees’ improved English abilities. 

VoiceRaising provides English classes to (1) improve the refugees’ job prospects, (2) widen the pool of potential community organizers who can appeal to the UN and others, and (3) prevent locals from exploiting the refugees by capitalizing on their inability to communicate. Additionally, by blogging, refugees improve their self-advocacy skills.  This enables the refugees to appeal to organizations which must deliver services to UN recognized refugees, and better enables unrecognized refugees to seek UN recognition.

Unlike other programs, VoiceRaising allows students to deliver direct services to the refugees on a long-term basis.  This unique quality provides natural information-gathering about the community, which is then enhanced by our focus on tutoring and blogging.  Information-gathering allows VoiceRaising or other campus groups to (1) generate effective services for the community or (2) develop plans for services that grassroots organizations abroad may then implement, thus improving the refugees’ welfare.  The information-gathering also benefits university students as it presents a contextualized understanding of the impoverished community that the classroom setting does not offer. 

 

This year we launched the program between Burmese Refugees in VikasPuri (near New Delhi) and students at Columbia University.

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Working with local community groups and leaders in rural areas of developing countries, we use storytelling with low-cost video and digital cameras (e.g., flipcams) to empower community members to produce their own health promotion and disease prevention materials on health topics they consider relevant to their lives. Our target community is one which typically is overlooked by officials and neglected in development of health policy. By providing them with a way to make their communities heard, we are helping to bring the issues important to them to the forefront. The end products will be used in photography exhibitions and local film festivals in schools, elderly associations and community centers as a method of conveying the message of care and need to the community. The generated material can also be utilized as political currency that can influence elected decision-makers to pursue innovative policy to benefit the overall health of the community. Additionally, it can be used to help engage the local, private sector to participate in the solution of the problem with positive exposure. tudoflui110.0

Kosh, a social venture, is an online knowledge repository that will aggregate and create engaging educational content in all formats. This virtual library will make educational media accessible at a nominal price and in regional Indian languages, to over 200,000 educators and school administrators , and through them to young students in rural India.

Kosh was recently selected as one of the top 35 semi-finalists in the 2010 Duke Startup Challenge.
http://sites.google.com/site/dukestartupchallengeorg/the-competition/semi-finals/results-2009

The basic summary of how Kosh will work and what problems it would is summarized below:

How will this work?

 

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Internet access will provide children and young adults in Mayan communities the opportunity to improve their living conditions and allow them to contribute to a better world though the richness of their culture. The project includes the creation of two computer labs with internet access in Mayan rural communities in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo.
The labs will have a direct impact in several areas including:
Education: providing students in rural areas to continue their education beyond elementary school.
Development: providing access to information and allowing communities to benefit from low cost internet access to potential costumers and visitor.

Family and culture: providing communication between family members and allowing communities to share their rich cultural heritage with the world.

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The goal would be to match donors with schools that have needs as quickly as possible.

There would be little or no overhead required as the goal is not to produce a career or income for the founders.

 

The goal would be to match needs in any K-12 schools with potential donors.

Schools and/or teachers could ask for anything that would help the classroom experience. Requests would not get posted until vetted the following needs to be assessed

1)      is it a school

2)      is it the correct address for the school

3)      is it an appropriate request for a school/teacher

Once vetted the information would be posted on the website.

 

Funding would be required to

1)      build and support website

2)      pay for delivery of goods – without this support the schools would have to pay any delivery fees

3)      marketing and promotion – in the short run more funds would be required to support this new initiative – word of mouth would be the marketing tool long term

 

In the short run funding would be required for start up costs. The goal would be that other sponsors/funders would get on board over time and no further funding would be required once the site takes off.

 

Awareness would be driven through the teachers organizations in each province.

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 Initiatives A Plus: Cultivating Positive Change

Initiatives A Plus (IAP) is an organization that promotes social advancement in developing nations worldwide.  By supporting key business processes, IAP helps local companies fully realize their entrepreneurial potential. We also provide assistance to students and young professionals to help them capitalize on global opportunities. The IAP business model is comprised of four strategic elements described below.  

Global Mentoring Program (GMP)

The GMP provides aspiring youth with a mentor who can help them navigate their chosen career path and pursue global employment opportunities. Through an online social network(www.gmp.initiativesaplus.com), high school students are matched with university students, and university students with industry professionals in their field and region of interest. 

Talent Recruitment Program (TRP)

The TRP fosters skill development by placing university/college graduates in work placements for up to two years. By leveraging IAP’s network of firms and industry professionals, TRP participants are able to gain valuable industry experience and form lasting business relationships. 

Entrepreneur Development Program (EDP)

EDP participants are provided with IAP resources to assist in the planning and early implementation stages of their start-up ventures. IAP will also provide access to technology to grant entrepreneurs in developing nations a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.  

Marketing and IT Services (MarkIT)

MarkIT leverages a global resource pool to deliver high calibre Marketing and Information Technology services to clients. Drawing upon the skills and competences of GMP, TRP and EDP participants, MarkIT is able to tailor project teams to best meet a client’s needs. 

 

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The problem with Facebook  or Twitter is that they encourage people to give away their most valuable data set – the stories of their lives. Digital Storymakers is a cooperative social network site that returns the economic power of information to the people that own it. Digital Storymakers is the first social network site (SNS) to allow its users full control and ownership over their information. Currently, millions of low-wealth SNS users are lining the pockets of large corporations, when they could be reaping the economic benefits of their own SNS use.

Digital Storymakers’ mission is to empower anyone to find his or her place in the information economy by radically lowering the bar to participation. We accomplish this by facilitating revenue-generating digital projects created from the stories of our members’ lives (mobile applications, photo licensing, data set sales, competitive business information, etc.). Surplus revenue from these projects is returned to our co-op members. Digital Storymakers (DSM) combines the simplicity of online social networking with the power of digital storytelling to allow low-wealth members to participate in the lucrative knowledge economy.

Our unique social entrepreneurship model brings together principles of interactive digital storytelling, information science, and community development to empower our members through a collaborative, online, storymaking platform. By helping our members find ways to monetize their data and stories, we help them build economic capital in addition to the social capital afforded by other SNSs. splendidmike30.0

We want to bring speech therapy to people who don’t have access to one-on-one sessions with a therapist after receiving a cochlear implant, either because of location or cost.  Cochlear implants allow people who are deaf or severely hearing impaired to hear.

We envision an online tool for speech therapy.  There are two major steps to getting a cochlear implant: the surgery itself and rehabilitative speech therapy.  Once a cochlear implant is switched on, the sounds that come out of it do not really correspond to normal sounds.  Therapy is required for cochlear implant users to understand the robotic noises that they hear and for them to be able to speak correct sounds back.

While the surgery is often covered by insurance, speech therapy rarely is.  The hourly rate for one-on-one sessions can be prohibitively expensive for many people who receive these implants, so they have to either find a way to pay or struggle without therapy.

We propose that an online tool could be used to complement one-on-one sessions for those who can afford a few sessions a month and can improve the rehabilitation of those who have no access to therapy at all.  By putting our system on the web, we can keep costs low, and also take advantage of social networking tools to allow cochlear implant users from across the country to connect with one another.  One of the most difficult parts of dealing with cochlear implants is that the community is widespread with low density, so it is hard to find other people in the immediate area with whom one might discuss aspects of the procedure.
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Idea: 

Many cultural heritages are endangered in the world because of the lack of information and educational resources.  Our idea is to create a website that serves as an international network with the purpose of promoting cultural awareness and social change through informal education.  People and organizations around the world would have profiles and be linked with the goal of cultural exchange in the form of enriching courses.  People of any background from any country would post courses in which they teach on anything from obscure languages to ethnic cooking to arts and crafts.  Travelers headed to a country could search for posted courses to enhance their trip or even be inspired to travel for the purpose of taking the course itself.

 

Current Problem:

Currently other websites offer a partial solution.  There’s a plethora of sites that offer social and professional networking, formal teaching exchanges, social tourism, international volunteer opportunities, etc.  As wonderful as the World Wide Web is, information fragmentation and overload can be impeding. 

 

Our Solution:

Enter: Global Exchange Network.  Our aim is to be the “Google” of all cultural awareness initiatives.  Aside from networking diversity-focused individuals, we will be the place where people can find various types of resources such as:

·         Information about courses posted by others

·         Teaching and learning through the web

·         Listing of NGOs and educational institutions related to cultural diversity

·         International volunteer opportunities

 

We don't want to compete with other sites, but rather be a site that centralizes this wealth of information.

 

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Every year, organizations lose almost $92 billion dollars in fundraising overhead, almost a third of every donation. Because fundraising is so expensive, fundraisers are forced to focus only on the top 10% of donors for 90% of the donations. Organizations want to fundraise better, but they don’t have the time, the money, or the tools to do so.

Speramus is an online fundraising platform that will revolutionize the way these organizations fundraise, using our proprietary HopeRank system to match individual donors with personalized support opportunities. Our unique fundraising approach breaks down an organization’s work into small, clearly budgeted projects that interact with donors on a personal level.  Relevant donors are then automatically identified through the HopeRank system, a proprietary targeting algorithm developed in conjunction with Decision Science experts at Carnegie Mellon University. HopeRank considers several factors, including the donor’s interests, giving history, and current context to create a portfolio of support opportunities uniquely tailored to the individual donor’s personality.

Unlike all competitors, Speramus’ HopeRank system allows organizations to target donors with a level of granularity never before possible at a cost lower than ever before dreamed. Our combination of small projects automatically matched with individual donors through extensive data analysis allows organizations to fundraise more effectively than any other approach, with Speramus donors giving 60% more than those solicited using traditional techniques. The Speramus fundraising platform uniquely allows organizations to improve the level of service and interaction offered to donors while simultaneously reducing the overall cost of fundraising.

 

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 Kenya has recently experienced a boom in communications technology, both mobile phones and internet access.  However, these technologies are not yet being adequately mobilized to provide information that could transform people’s lives, partly due to lack of public capacity to experiment with how to best take advantage of technologies for information sharing.  This project will seek to connect the potential of the Kenya’s digital revolution to its continued development challenges by networking 10 existing Kenyan public libraries to the internet and, crucially, to each other.  If funded, I will:

1.     Provide two computers plus IT training to 10 public libraries located all over Kenya.

2.     Connect these libraries to the internet and to each other through a shared server.

3.     Provide resources that will be digitally shared among these libraries, such as reference books, public health information, curricular materials, etc.

4.     Co-develop (with participating libraries) two related programs: One promoting a literary culture (i.e., through writing contests); The second promoting technical skills, (i.e., sharing agricultural or water management techniques). 

5.     Develop a directory of all public libraries in Kenya, including those managed by Kenya National Library Services, in order to scale up the project in the future.

Ultimately, the patrons of these libraries, many in resource-scarce areas with few public services, will benefit from increased access to each other’s library communities, and each others’ resources. I believe that this will critically enhance these comminutes’ residents’ opportunities self-empowerment for education, informed democratic participation, and economic development. 

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