Global Potential: Youth Empowerment for Community Development--Travel, Volunteering, Social Entrepreneurship, and Job Training
Low-Income minority Brooklyn youth transform themselves and their communities through travel to a rural village in the Dominican Republic and social entrepreneurship projects.
About You
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Your idea
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2007
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Plot your innovation within the mosaic of solutions
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Culture of no accountability: Neither society nor men at risk act accountable to each other
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Create credible choices and opportunities
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
We believe in the untapped capacity that at-risk youth and communities have to help themselves and each other. Rather than create problems in their neighborhoods, young men can create solutions. Connecting across cultures will give them the insight, self-knowledge, and experience, necessary to do that.
Name Your Project
Global Potential: Youth Empowerment for Community Development--Travel, Volunteering, Social Entrepreneurship, and Job Training
Describe Your Idea
Low-Income minority Brooklyn youth transform themselves and their communities through travel to a rural village in the Dominican Republic and social entrepreneurship projects.
Innovation
Describe your program or new idea in one sentence.
Low-Income minority Brooklyn youth transform themselves and their communities through travel to a rural village in the Dominican Republic and social entrepreneurship projects.
What makes your initiative uniquely positioned to create change in your community?
Global Potential is an innovative program that draws upon best practices and youth development techniques from many other programs. We have strong community partner organizations both in Brooklyn and in the Dominican Republic, and excellent trainers and facilitators who are able to provide the youth with a truly transformative life experience. We ensure that the skills and experiences that the youth gain get funneled back into their own communities, and put them on track to get better jobs and more education.
Describe how you organize and carry out your work?
We achieve our mission by providing selected youth with 3 months of mentoring and job and life skills training, 2 months of cross-cultural exposure, travel and volunteering in international community development work, and 6 months of social entrepreneurship venture design and implementation in the youth's own neighborhoods.
What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond?
Our pilot project begins in March, 2008, and partners with one high school. After the pilot, we have several other high schools lined up and plan to run the project for several cohorts of youth each year. After establishing ourselves in Brooklyn, we will expand to the Bronx, and then after two years of working in New York we will begin to work in other cities in the US. Eventually, we intend to bring the program to scale globally, giving at-risk urban youth around the world the opportunity to have such transformative experiences both in their own countries and abroad.
What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea?
We will need to solid and ongoing foundation and private sector support to both sustain and help to scale up this initiative. We will also need to affect a transformation in the youth development field--moving to recognize that best practices for privileged youth are also best practices for underprivileged youth--and that public and private support are needed to ensure this, and to create a new generation of globally and locally engaged youth.
Impact
Describe your impact in one sentence, commenting on both the individual and community levels.
Youth acquire new skills, apply those skills in a village internationally, gain invaluable new perspectives, and return home to contribute to their own neighborhoods.
What impact has your work achieved to date?
Thus far we have recruited, interviewed, and selected the youth. Our first training workshop with them will begin in March, 2008. Our impact so far is that the youth and their high school are extremely excited :).
Number of individuals served
Each project will serve 10 youth directly, and we plan to run a minimum of 2 projects per year, to start. Indirectly, through the efforts of those youth, we will serve a significant number more. The youth will be living in a village with a population of 600 people, who will all benefit from the community service and infrastructure development that the youth will provide. Upon return home, with the social entrepreneurship projects they have developed, each youth will provide tangible beneficial impact to their neighborhood, a projected 2000 per project, or 4000 per year.
We intend that upon program completion, at least 100% of the young men are engaged in employment, social entrepreneurship, or further education/training, and that they all participate in the ‘multiplier effect’: sharing their experiences with friends, family, community, and school.
Community impact
Through the efforts of our youth participants, we will serve a significant number more. The youth will be living in a village with a population of 600 people, who will all benefit from the community service and infrastructure development that the youth will provide. Upon return home, with the social entrepreneurship projects they have developed, each youth will provide tangible beneficial impact to their neighborhood, a projected 2000 per project, or 4000 per year.
We aim for communities we work with to develop the ability to identify the added value of incorporating youth into development solutions; increased awareness of and tolerance towards socio-economic and ethnic diversity of US youth. We also aim for at least 25 community-based companies, organizations, and mentors participating in the process. Based on community-identified goals, we aim to ensure that specific quantifiable project outcomes are achieved.
Society at large
As youth develop, communities develop. Challenges become opportunities, and those who might typically receive help, learn to help others, and therefore themselves. Our mission is to create positive socio-economic change for underserved youth and their urban communities, and for underserved rural communities. As young men learn about opportunities for themselves and their communities, they become active agents for positive change and growth, and leaders of the next generation.
What measure do you use to gauge your impact and why?
We are outcome-driven, and beginning with baseline data collection and assessments, will measure the effectiveness of our activities through participatory performance-based evaluations. Evaluations will be participatory and inclusive, quantitative and qualitative, and will incorporate program participants and all stakeholders (community partners, parents, teachers, staff, homestay families, host organizations, and mentors). We have developed a series of indicators to measure impacts on both participating youth and beneficiary communities.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative currently being financed and how would you finance further expansion and/or replication?
So far we are financed through individual donations and fundraising events that we have organized. We have held 4 fundraising events: the first was small and raised $250, the second also small, raising $400, the third, medium-sized, raised $2000, and the fourth, the UBS holiday party, raised $600. The Latitude Lounge New York donated a $3500 space for the third event, and all proceeds are went directly to Global Potential. We will be having at least one more event in the spring to finance our pilot.
We will finance future expansion with support from private foundations, private companies, and a growing community of young professional individual donors. In the future we will also aim to secure federal and municipal government grants.
Provide information on your current finances and organization:
Since officially initiating operations March 1st, 2007, we have had no major expenditures or funds received. We have been operating as a volunteer-driven organization, utilizing donated office space and internet, and the computers of our volunteers. As such, we do not yet have any financial statements of significance. We project having 3 paid staff: a program director, a program coordinator, a part-time DR coordinator, and 2 contract staff to provide training and international trip leadership.
Our annual budget, which includes work with 2 cohorts of youth and two 6 week trips to rural Dominican Republic, is $129,612. The budget per project is $49,056. However, because this is an innovative start-up project, we recognize that it is difficult to obtain a major funding source before having proved our impact and program model, therefore we have designed a 'bare-bones' budget for our pilot, which is $14,596. So far, through individual donations and fundraising events, we have raised $4,100 of that sum.
Who are your potential partners and allies?
Current Primary Partnerships: Ashoka Youth Venture (curriculum and training), The International High School @ Prospect Heights (source of youth for pilot project), Globalhood Inc. (organizational development), the Instituto Dominicano de Desarrollo Integral (primary partner in Dominican Republic), and the Columbia University Partnership for International Development (graduate Interns).
Current Associative Partnerships include: Summer Search, The Peace Corps Fund, The Baraka Youth Empowerment Fund, The Earth Institute, NYC Outward Bound, Reto Juvenil Internacional, ZoomLab/Kids Connect, Where There Be Dragons, freeDimensional, and The Pangaea Project.
Who are your potential investors?
Our potential investors include: The Blue Ridge Fund of New York, Ashoka Youth Venture, Echoing Green, the Third Millennium Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Travelzoo Foundation, The Dominican Diaspora Community, The New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, The Open Society Institute. We also project revenue through fundraising that the Youth do themselves, and through contacts with Airlines or Travel Agencies donating flight tickets or Airmiles. We have been cultivating with numerous foundations and anticipate positive outcomes.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
I have worked for many years working in the field of youth development, with a diverse range of youth--from very wealthy and privileged youth to very low-income underprivileged youth. Programs for the former are so often better quality than for the latter. Should it not be the reverse? Shouldn't the most innovative, best designed programs, go tho serve the youth who have the greatest need?
Along with many colleagues in international youth travel programs, serving primarily middle and upper class youth, we have always discussed how amazing it would be to create such a program to specifically serve at-risk youth. I have also had the privilege, through the Summer Search program, of working with a select few at-risk youth on those programs, and seen the incredibly powerful impact that the experience had on their lives. I designed Global Potential while in graduate school at Columbia University, and began building it after I graduated in late 2006. We wanted a program that could provide at-risk youth with the transformative life experiences that tens of thousands of other youth are able to pay for each summer. We also wanted a program that would provide long-term benefit to these youth, in the form of employment and education outcomes. And finally, we wanted a program that would provide long-term benefit to communities, both rural villages internationally, and urban neighborhoods locally. That program is Global Potential.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material.
MSW Columbia University, specializing in International Social Development and Social Enterprise Administration. Originally from Canada, Frank has worked for over 10 years with marginalized youth and communities, with NGOs, CBOs, and the UN, in 11 countries. He is the Founding Director of the Columbia University Partnership for International Development, and of Globalhood, Inc., a start-up NGO working to improve international development work by increasing multidisciplinary and multicultural collaborations. He speaks fluent French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, and intermediate Hindi.
