Idealist Grad School Fairs: Coming Soon to a City Near You!

Jung Fitzpatrick from Idealist wrote in to announce an upcoming series of Idealist graduate school fairs. If you, or anyone you know, are thinking of going to grad-school next year for a degree with social impact, join the Idealist team at one of the 17 fairs they'll be hosting in North America this fall (registration is free).

At each fair you can meet representatives from 50-200 graduate programs in fields such as Nonprofit Management, Education, Social Work, Global Health, International Affairs, Law, Public Policy, Urban Planning, and many more.

Here is the schedule for this fall (in parentheses you can see how many schools have already signed up for each fair):

Sep 10 - New York, NY (200)
Sep 14 - Providence, RI (75)
Sep 15 - Boston, MA (175)
Sep 17 - Toronto, ON (50)
Sep 21 - Washington, DC (150)
Sep 23 - Pittsburgh, PA (50)
Oct 5 - Denver, CO (60)
Oct 7 - Minneapolis, MN (50)
Oct 12 - Chicago, IL (110)
Oct 13 - Phoenix, AZ (50)
Oct 15 - San Francisco, CA (120)
Oct 19 - Los Angeles, CA (120)
Oct 20 - Seattle, WA (90)
Oct 22 - Portland, OR (65)
Oct 29 - New Orleans, LA (60)
Oct 30 - Atlanta, GA (90)
Nov 3 - Virginia Beach, VA (30)

For more information, to register, and to see which schools will be at each fair, please go to:

http://www.idealist.org/gradfairs

Cocktails for a Cause 8.19.09 in NYC

BuildOn's New York Leadership Committee is hosting Cocktails for a Cause on Wednesday, August 19th.  

BuildOn is a nonprofit that empowers primarily urban U.S. high school students through in-class and intensive after-school programs. In addition to tremendous contributions of community service in their own cities and neighborhoods, buildOn youth actually build schools and bring literacy to children and adults in developing countries around the world. buildOn programs are designed to build confidence and real-world capabilities in American youth while also empowering communities world-wide to overcome the crippling cycle of illiteracy, poverty and low expectations by opening the door to education.

Event details:
Cocktails for a Cause
Wednesday, August 19th
7:00-9:00pm
Choice Kitchen & Cocktails
380 3rd Avenue (between 27th & 28th Sts.)

Enjoy:
$4 bottles and drafts
$5 glasses of wine
$6 cocktails and martinis
Complimentary light appetizers for the group

Contact karagaffney@gmail.com for more information.

DC Area FLiPs: Networking Opportunity at Mehaber Benefit

We at FLiP love to showcase the fundraising work being done by those in our ranks – particularly when it provides an opportunity for more FLiPs to get to know each other!  For those of you in the Washington, DC area, I invite you to check out this invitation from Kifle Bantayehu, President of nonprofit Mehaber.

Mehaber, a small 501 c(3) non-profit organization, was the brainchild of a second-generation Ethiopian immigrant whose passion and desire was to give back to his local Washington, DC/MD/VA community as well as inspire others to collaborate on ideas and initiatives to make the greatest impact on those men, women, and children around the world who have the desire to help themselves, but through hardship, do not have the means to do so. In fact, the name of the organization, Mehaber, derives from an Amharic (native Ethiopian language) word meaning a gathering.

Event details
Mehaber’s 3rd Annual Fundraiser Benefit will be held on Saturday August 29, 2009 at 7:30pm at Hominy Restaurant and Lounge located at 2001 11th Street NW, Washington, DC (11th and U Sts.)

This year’s theme is “Embracing Cultural Diversity: Together We Can Make A Difference” and the Facebook invitation page can be found here. 

Admission at the door is $20 all night including a buffet, with 100% of the proceeds going to three charities listed below.

The 7:30pm – 10:00pm component of the benefit will be a “meet and greet” themed session where guests will have the opportunity to not only network with each other but mingle with prominent invited guests who have local ties to the MD/DC/VA area and include artists, musicians, sports figures, celebrities, real estate developers, members of Congress, mayors, governors, political appointees, and community activists. This will be followed by an informal party from 10:00pm – 3:00am.

About the host
Mehaber is dedicated to serving as a portal for providing visibility and financial support to legitimate philanthropic organizations serving towards improving the lives of disadvantaged men, women, and children world-wide. Established in July 2006, Mehaber’s mission is to provide financial support to charitable organizations focused on four key areas of:
1) Healthcare – Access to free or discounted mental and physical care services, life saving drugs and immunizations, health education (HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention)

2) Education – Access to free or subsidized education via grants and scholarships to cover the cost of books, tuition and school uniforms

3) Community and Social Development - Programs, particularly aimed at youth (such as orphaned children) yet inclusive of sustainable development, access to job/work opportunities

4) Poverty/Hunger Eradication and Disaster Relief efforts – Programs supporting food, clothing, and shelter efforts for those affected by famine and other natural disasters

Beneficiaries
Proceeds from the 3rd Annual Mehaber Fundraiser Benefit  will be donated to:
1) The Livingstone Tanzania Trust - Works with rural communities in Tanzania to alleviate poverty. Projects include school building, teacher training and establishing volunteer youth groups.

2) Yele Haiti - A foundation started by Grammy-Award winning musician, producer, social entrepreneur and Haitian Goodwill Ambassador Wyclef Jean that is changing thousands of lives in Haiti. Yéle Haiti  supports projects  making a difference in education, health, environment and community development. 

3) Vision on Africa - VoA's mission is to alleviate the abject poverty and appalling health conditions by re-developing the conditions of mother and child health care centers, enhancing youth development through training programs and expanding the sponsorship of orphan vulnerable children in underprivileged areas of African countries. VoA creates partnerships with Non-Governmental and Community Based Organizations to implement health, education, poverty reduction, self-governance and skill enhancement programs to benefit immigrants from Africa.

Too Much/Too Little?

 By Adrienne Villani

Re-posted with permission from http://beyondprofitmag.com/

Ed. Note: Enjoy Adrienne from Beyond Profit's post about one of the world's more intriguing disparities -- the information overload felt by those of us who work in the sector, due to overwhelmingly easy access; vs. the lack of access to information and education experienced by those the sector seeks to support.

Today, the amount of information flowing in and out of the international development space is mostly overwhelming.  In fact, ‘mostly’ does not cut it. It is incredibly overwhelming. Even if I decide to focus on one small facet of international development, whether it is social enterprise, aid, reproductive health, or any other worthy cause, I often feel as though I simply cannot keep up.

I spend the better part of every day (including weekends) cursing the invention of Twitter, blogs, online 24-hour-a-day-updated-by-the-minute media. Life used to be so simple - i.e., my source of information used to be in print - The New York Times, select semi-academic publications such as Foreign Policy, the Atlantic and The New Yorker. End of story!

I now have 2,289 unread articles on my Google Reader from 47 different blogs. Living in Mumbai, I have to check Twitter in the morning to keep up with tweets from the North American workday and evening, then keep track of the Indian/European workday, and, when that is finally over, I once again get the North American morning barrage. Borders and time zones no longer matter. Honestly, I’m worn out.

But, when I think about those who lack access - access to education, access to employment, access to a better life - the common denominator being access to information - I thank my lucky stars. 

In the brilliant documentary “The Name of the Disease,” produced by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, we are confronted with the voices of patients, shamans, doctors and various health officials in some of the poorest parts of rural Rajasthan, the desert state in western India. This documentary is an attempt to understand the complex and multi-layered narratives of the poor and the sick. What comes out most forcefully is that when family members fall ill, these villagers simply don’t know why and don’t know what to do about it. They rely on uninformed hearsay in caring for their sick family members because they lack access to verifiable, potentially life-saving information. Fatalism becomes the predominant attitude, tragedy the predominant occurrence.

Today, I read an article on ethnic minority communities in Kosovo and their struggle to break out of the cycle of poverty in which they find themselves entrapped. They lack information on a different level. While many of these ethnic minorities - the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians - understand that better education will break the cycle (also, some do not), they are not in a place to do anything about it. “Their main concern is eating, and when you don’t have enough to eat, you don’t think much about education.”  In the story, Mr. Hasanik is among those who are focused mainly on survival. He knows his children should go to school, but he says he cannot afford the books they would need. If his children cannot go to school, they will not learn and their chance of bettering their lives in the future diminishes. This is an urgent problem, for Kosovo, and for the world. Globally, with millions, if not billions, being left behind, being uninformed, simply “not knowing,” the future has the potential to appear grim, with progress slow and despair growing.

So, while I crib about my information overload, I should instead be thankful for it. The proliferation of social media outlets has actually empowered ordinary people like me. I am no reporter employed by a newspaper, nor am I a member of a government or a university faculty, but, I have quick, easy access to a multitude of sources of information that previously I would have had to dredge out of library and archive basements scattered across continents. Or, even worse, the kinds of material that I am bombarded with on a daily basis would not have been written at all. A forum in which it could be published would have not existed.

Even more empowering is the fact that I’ve been given a soapbox and can express my opinions at any time. Imagine if we could give everyone these powers - both access to information and a forum to create and share their voices!

Young Professionals for Acumen Fund Fundraiser a Smash Success

 

Nina Sharma West followed up to tell us that last week’s photography auction and benefit event hosted by the Young Professionals for Acumen Fund (YP Acumen) and Nuru Project was a hit!  The sold out event brought together over 250 socially responsible young professionals in New York City and featured an exhibition of 30 prints sourced from regions where Acumen Fund invests, including India, Pakistan and East Africa.  The collection was donated by a variety of renowned photographers, such as Robert Capa Gold Medal winners Susan Meiselas and Steve McCurry, recent Dorothea Lange-Taylor Award winner Teru Kuwayama, and more.

“It’s truly inspiring to see so many young professionals who believe in Acumen Fund and who want to get involved to help make a difference,” said Yasmina Zaidman, Director of Knowledge and Communications, Acumen Fund.  “This event, organized and run solely by the founders of the Nuru Project and engaged YP Acumen volunteers, is the first of its kind and really proves what can be accomplished together as a community.”

“All of us at Nuru Project were thrilled to be able to present the images to benefit Acumen Fund,” said JB Reed, co-founder, Nuru Project.  “Our mission is to help unite photographer, audience and subject, and the genuine enthusiasm and interest of the crowd at last week’s event affirms that principle.  Beyond the funds raised, which will directly enact positive change for the communities represented in the prints, we hope the audience took away the ability to see the human face and dignity behind the dramatic images of the developing world often featured in the press.”
 
A selection of the images that were on display for auction at the event can be viewed at www.nuruproject.org.

About Acumen Fund
Acumen Fund is a nonprofit venture fund that invests in market-oriented approaches to deliver critical, affordable goods and services to the world's poor.  Acumen Fund focuses on the convergence of philanthropic capital and business expertise to produce sustainable, scalable enterprises that reach underserved markets and increase access to the opportunities of the global economy. For more information on Acumen Fund's activities and investments, visit www.acumenfund.org.

About Nuru Project
Nuru Project leverages photography as an agent for social change in the developing world, raising charitable funds and public awareness by auctioning donated photographs at gallery exhibitions.  For more information, please visit www.nuruproject.org. 
 
About Young Professionals for Acumen Fund
The Young Professionals for Acumen Fund (YP Acumen) is a growing community of more than 600 volunteers who seek to alleviate poverty through innovative, market-oriented approaches.  YP Acumen organizes happy hours, educational events and fundraisers to support Acumen Fund.  Additionally, the group encourages its members to get involved in their community by connecting them to volunteer opportunities and events at like-minded organizations.
 
For more information about Young Professionals for Acumen Fund, please visit http://ypacumenfund.blogspot.com/.

Comcast New Media Exchange

FLiPs, as you all know I work (as a consultant at Changing Our World) by day and blog by night.  Scott McNulty, however, is proof positive that you can blog, day and night, as your real, live, full-time and very cool job!  Scott is chief blogger for Comcast, where he oversees and contributes to Comcast Voices, "a place for conversations with Comcast."  It's chock full of all sorts of neat stuff on topics from technology to philanthropy.

Comcast is a standout in the corporate social engagement space for using its blog for good.  Scott wrote to tell us about a free event for nonprofits on August 5th, in conjunction with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater!).  This Social Media Seminar for Nonprofit Executives, being held in Philadelphia, bring together experts from around the country to discuss the dynamic and expanding opportunities for nonprofits to capitalize on social media.

The sector sure is changing -- and there are all sorts of interesting angles for nonprofits to take in leveraging social media for fundraising, programming, and communications.  I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my consulting firm, Changing Our World, has a fabulous Interactive Services practice
-- check 'em out!  And if your nonprofit or company is using social media in a snazzy way, we want to hear from you -- drop me a line at eanderson@changingourworld.com.