Echoing Green Announces the 2006 Fellowship Finalists

Each year, Echoing Green places an open call for the best new ideas in the social sector. This year, 950 individuals from 75 different countries answered.  After five months of intensive vetting, only 20 finalists remain.  As a group, they are attacking a wide array of pressing social problems, proposing a number of innovative strategies for positive social change: the first school in Africa with a comprehensive focus on developing future African leadership; clean technology projects in rural Latin America; and support for farmers in totalitarian North Korea.  Click on the links below to read more about the 2006 Echoing Green Finalists.

Christopher Bradford and Frederick Swaniker
African Leadership Academy (ALA)
Johannesburg, South Africa
Since the 1960s, Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer during a period of unprecedented improvements in living standards around the world.  Recognizing the power of ethical leaders to drive positive change, ALA seeks to create a network of young leaders who will collaborate on and guide Africa’s future.  ALA will recruit the most talented 15-18 year olds from the Africa's 54 countries to spend their final two years of secondary school at their Johannesburg campus.  ALA will be the first school in Africa with a comprehensive focus on developing future African leadership.

Peter Haas
Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG)
Weston, MA (working first in Guatemala)
Rural communities in developing countries are critically underserved by large infrastructure projects, leaving them with little to no access to proper housing, electricity, refrigeration, cooking fuel, clean and hot water, and sanitation and communications systems.  AIDG will work with engineers in developing countries to establish micro-manufacturing enterprises, which will allow them to produce low cost, environmentally-sound infrastructure products such as windmills and water purification systems.  AIDG envisions a self-replicating model in which each incubated micro-manufacturing shop then donates worker time and a portion of its profits to help train and finance the next village’s or country’s shop.

Anthony Jewett and Michael Williams II
The Bardoli Global Initiative
Houston, TX
Leaders in a global economy and society must have cross cultural competencies and experiences.  While African American students represent 14 percent of the U.S. college population, they represent only 3 percent of students who study abroad.  The Bardoli Global Initiative will provide international academic and career development opportunities for African American students, using study abroad as a vehicle to create a new generation of global citizens succeeding in the highest levels of business, diplomacy and social advocacy.

Mathias Craig
blueEnergy (bE)
Bluefields, Nicaragua
Half of Nicaragua’s roughly 5 million inhabitants do not have access to electricity.  The situation is particularly grim in the Caribbean Coast region where nearly 80 percent of the inhabitants lack access to electricity.  bE will address the energy needs of underdeveloped communities in Nicaragua and the greater Central American region through the construction, installation and maintenance of inexpensive and environmentally sound hybrid wind/solar energy systems using locally made micro wind turbines.

Liana Tuller
The Boston Reconciliation Center (BRC)
Boston, MA
Boston is home to a number of crime-ridden neighborhoods whose residents collectively suffer from mass trauma as a result of the ongoing violence.  Around the world, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) have achieved national healing from political violence through truth-telling and social dialogue.  BRC will apply the principles of TRCs to street crime in a local setting.  By sponsoring public dialogues between victims of crime and people who have committed crimes, BRC will help community members affirm values of non-violence and coexistence.

Carrol Chang
Empowerment through Ownership for North Korea (EONK)
Rason, North Korea (via Tumen, China)
Unknown to most, a northeastern region of North Korea was opened to foreign investment in the late 1990s offering some small hope of catalyzing change within this totalitarian regime.  EONK aims to create a model community of sustainable development beginning with agricultural and medical infrastructures that will promote individual ownership and empowerment.  The ultimate goals of EONK are to replicate its model throughout North Korea and prepare its citizens for their eventual integration into the global community.

Maile Broccoli-Hickey
English at Work
Austin, TX
A 2004 Census Survey identified over 230,000 individuals living in Austin, TX, who speak a language other than English at home. A high percentage of these people are “linguistically isolated”—they cannot perform daily activities requiring English.  For workers and their families, this disadvantage results in low wages, reduced access to healthcare and a disproportionate risk of injury and even death on the job. English at Work will provide English classes at job sites in order to create a democratic workplace and community by improving communications between a largely immigrant workforce and their English-speaking employers.

Sukhman Dhami and Jaskaran Kaur
ENSAAF
Santa Clara, CA (working in Punjab, India)
Although human rights activists have estimated that hundreds of thousands suffered torture and death in Punjab, India, between 1984 and 1995, the State Department country report on human rights in India states that hundreds of perpetrators remain unaccountable for those crimes.  ENSAAF will hold these perpetrators of mass crimes responsible and secures reparations for victims by documenting and exposing human rights violations, bringing perpetrators to justice in India and abroad, and organizing and training exiled survivor communities to engage in advocacy.

Mark Hanis
Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net)
Washington, DC
GI-Net takes an unprecedented approach to empowering global citizens with the tools to directly protect civilians facing genocidal violence. It is also creating the first ever permanent anti-genocide constituency, which will foster the necessary will to prevent and stop genocide around the globe.  Initially, their work will focus on ending the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan, through material support for African Union peacekeepers and political action for a more robust protection force.

Sari Bashi
Gisha
Tel Aviv, Israel
A complex set of rules and sanctions control the movement of the 3.4 million Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank. Travel restrictions have stunted the ability of Palestinians to receive the education and training they need to achieve personal and professional goals and to build a prosperous and peaceful society.  Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement will use legal advocacy, public information and lobbying to help Palestinians, particularly residents of Gaza, who are subject to travel restrictions that block access to education. 

Jeff Merritt
Grassroots Initiative
New York, NY
Since the mid-1960s, Americans have become 25 percent less likely to vote, 35 percent less likely to attend public meetings and 40 percent less engaged in party politics.  Most disturbing, political disengagement is most heavily concentrated in communities that have the most to lose, including low-income, minority and youth populations.  Grassroots Initiative is a non-partisan organization that aims to rebuild democracy by empowering citizens to fill local vacant elected offices and therefore establishing effective dialogue between communities and public decision-makers.

Mardie Oakes
Hallmark Solutions
San Francisco, CA
New housing solutions are needed more than ever in the face of the California housing crisis.  Only 15 percent of California households can afford a median-priced home compared to 49 percent of the U.S.  At the same time, the demographics of California are changing fast, with a massive increase in immigrant and low-income populations putting increased pressure on the affordable housing supply.  Hallmark Solutions will develop and utilize creative financing tools to enable the scalable construction of new affordable housing opportunities for Californians. 

Parag Gupta
IDEAS
San Francisco, CA
There is a pronounced failure in the delivery of basic services in many developing nations.  In India, for example, 24 percent of the population is undernourished, only 28 percent of the country has access to improved sanitation and more than 350 million people are illiterate.  While many governments in developing countries are unable to provide basic services, small community based organizations are delivering effective programs.  But the funding mechanisms and capacity-building resources that will allow these effective organizations to scale are not in place.  IDEAS will work with these organizations to advocate for and shift government appropriations while simultaneously building their capacity to expand in the best possible manner.

Mushin Hendricks
The Inner Circle
Johannesburg, South Africa
Gay Muslims face severe suffering and challenges within this religious community.  For example, Muslim clergy refuse to grant burial rights to gays especially if they died of AIDS-related illnesses and also block them from being buried in Muslim cemeteries.  Working in South Africa, the first country to safeguard freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation in its Bill of Rights, The Inner Circle will not only work to reconcile Islam with notions of sexuality but will also provide public education and training, research and outreach services to the South African LGBTQ community and beyond.

Matthew Flannery
Kiva
Palo Alto, CA
Half of the world's population lives on less than $2 per day.  Microfinance and microcredit programs have proven to be effective tools for raising the income of self-employed poor and alleviating poverty.  While in recent years there has been a tremendous movement toward investing in microfinance by large foundations and finance institutions, this capital is directed at less than 5 percent of the existing microfinance organizations.  Kiva has created a platform that facilitates the flow of debt capital to the high percentage of microfinance institutions that cannot receive commercial investment by using technology to connect them to individual investors.

Sasha Chanoff
Mapendo International
Somerville, MA and Nairobi, Kenya
Over 400,000 refugees reside in Kenya and up to 150,000 live in Nairobi.  For some minority groups within this population, the refugee camps are fraught with dangers including rape, violence, torture and death due to gaps in humanitarian assistance. Mapendo International will work to identify, rescue and protect people fleeing conflict in Africa who have fallen through the net of humanitarian assistance.

Andrew Youn
One Acre Fund
Bungoma, Kenya
In too many regions of Africa, the “hunger season” is an annual occurrence, causing severe and widespread food shortages.  In Kenya, 19 million people, or 44 percent of the population, are chronically hungry, the vast majority of whom are children.  Programs that hand out food, which are politically popular and have been run for decades, are a temporary solution and only address 10 percent of the problem.  One Acre Fund will work toward a sustainable way to end hunger in rural Kenya by making small investments in farm inputs to alleviate starvation and aid in the growth of bumper crops.

John Adcock
The Prisoner’s Advocacy Center
New Orleans, LA
Orleans Parish Prison is the largest prison in Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country with 816 people incarcerated per 100,000 state residents.  Mentally ill and poor prisoners routinely spend months or years in prison without counsel, often serving time in excess of the maximum allowable for their charge.  The Prisoner’s Advocacy Center will focus on remedying the plight of poor people trapped in the criminal justice system of New Orleans through direct litigation to enforce Supreme Court mandates that are being violated, such as the setting of high bail without a hearing.

Sally Lee
Teachers Unite
New York, NY
Most public school teachers in New York City work with low-income children of color who are being failed by the educational system.  Only a third of low-income African American and Latino students receive a high school diploma.  Half of these teachers quit in their first five years or leave to teach outside the city, many because they are frustrated by the effects of policies that fail their students.  Teachers Unite will be a resource center dedicated to developing and supporting an educational justice movement of New York City teachers by providing professional support, organizing tools and networking opportunities

Farajii Muhammad
Youth Empowerment Movement
Baltimore, MD
More than 50 percent of Baltimore 9th graders drop out of school.  Of those who advance to their senior year, 11 percent drop out.  Shifting budget priorities in recent years caused the city to close several recreation centers and a current proposal by the school system will close several public schools.  City and state programs to address high school drop out rates, juveniles in the justice system and unemployment have not effectively engaged youth and are frequently run by adults who cannot relate to the population they intend to serve.  Youth Empowerment Movement will engage Baltimore youth as decision makers in their communities.  This hands-on, youth–driven approach to leadership and community development will use a four step process that involves engagement, training, strategizing and action.

This information was first posted at http://www.echoinggreen.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageID=644.  For more information, visit Echoing Green’s Web site: http://www.echoinggreen.org/index.cfm.