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$ 1 : 16
For every $1 of value invested, One Young World Ambassadors deliver $16 of social value, based on a Social Return on Investment analysis of 42 Ambassador-led initiatives addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2022
SDG Impact Tracker
Interested in supporting impactful initiatives led by young leaders? Search this database of over 350 projects from the One Young World Community to find out more.
WSV
Bradley co-founded WSV as a sustainable approach to international development. With the support of Enactus and the University of Southampton, WSV has developed three main business models that have enabled people with low economic prospects to generate income, whilst providing a service that benefits the community.
The three ‘business in a box’ models have impacted more than 30,000 people to date. Right Light aims to provide low income families with solar lighting solutions that reduces their dependence on kerosene. Solar lamps, for example, are often too expensive for low-income households, so Right Light works on a rental system where families can temporarily rent out lamps. This allows them to benefit from access to clean renewable energy without having to put forward funds they cannot afford. Currently, 2,000 Right Light lamps are in circulation, preventing more than 2,000 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere through the use of kerosene. The second project, Roots, converts human waste into liquid and solid fertilisers, helping farmers to increase their crop yields by three-fold. Through this project, toilet cubicles are constructed in areas without adequate access to sanitation. The waste is then collected and converted into fertiliser, which is later sold on to farmers. This helps to address hygiene and sanitation needs whilst also increasing agricultural productivity. The Petal initiative enables budding entrepreneurs to make their own reusable sanitary pads which can then be sold. Petal entrepreneurs have sold 35,000 packs of reusable pads to date. WSV also has plans to roll out a new business initiative called Jua Maji, that distills drinking water from fish pond water, purifying water through the passive distillation process.
After attending One Young World 2017 Bogotá, Bradley joined forces with The Circle of Young Intrapreneurs and Enactus to organise the Action Accelerator programme at the Enactus World Cup in October 2018.
Casa de Aak
Anderson founded Casa de Aak in 2015 to preserve and protect the endangered populations of sea turtles in Guatemala. Casa de Aak has rescued almost 16,000 sea turtle hatchlings to date.
The organisation runs three main programmes to preserve the endangered sea turtle population. The first programme is the hatching and incubation programme. This is where turtle eggs are rescued from the market and then incubated until they hatch, at which point they are released back into the sea. Turtle eggs are a local delicacy and so fisherman will often collect the eggs from the beach and take them to the market for consumption. Casa de Aak steps in to buy the eggs so that fishermen sell 80% of the eggs and donate the remaining 20%. The organisation has chosen to work with the existing market system rather than around it, to re-educate the local fishermen and to advocate for greater care and sea conservation across Guatemala. This relates to Casa de Aak’s second programme, which is a formal education programme for fishermen to learn about the importance of sea turtles and ocean conservation. So far, 47 fishermen have been educated through this programme. A study by the WWF found that sea turtles bring greater economic benefits when they are alive than when they are consumed. Through this programme, Casa de Aak works to educate locals about the realities of the economic and social benefits of conservation.
The third programme aims to promote tourism to the local area by arranging public viewings of sea turtle hatchings and their release back into the ocean. Casa de Aak volunteers make projections on the estimated hatching period of the incubated eggs and then tourists are invited to come and observe the releasing activities. This encourages tourists to spend money in local businesses. So far 3,117 tourists have visited the project since it began in 2015
ForUsGirls Foundation
ForUsGirls Foundation - Canada
Aminka Belvitt
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:3
SROI
Aminka founded the ForUsGirls Foundation as a platform to develop the leadership skills and capacity of young people living in Canada and Jamaica. Since 2015, ForUsGirls has positively impacted almost 5,000 girls. The Foundation provides mentorship, leadership, empowerment and skill-based development for marginalised girls, helping them become a community and aspire to be global feminist leaders in all areas of society. It does this through a weekly 13 unit mentorship and leadership programme in local schools and community spaces. This programme covers a wide range of topics including entrepreneurship, digital literacy, career planning and web development. ForUsGirls tailors its programmes towards helping girls from underprivileged backgrounds, empowering them with knowledge and skills that are otherwise difficult to access.
After attending the One Young World 2016 Ottawa Summit, ForUsGirls Foundation became international, bringing the programme from Canada to Jamaica. ForUsGirls sponsors five primary schools in rural Jamaica to help increase the opportunities available to the children studying there. Graduates of the ForUsGirls leadership programme have gone on to receive academic excellence awards and win higher education scholarships. ForUsGirls also runs a Tech Summit in New York City called ‘A NEW REALITY’, where girls from marginalised communities are encouraged to think innovatively to solve problems. The 2018 Tech Summit was attended by 200 girls and the second edition is due to take place in May 2019. ForUsGirls also runs summer camps to develop the leadership capacity of young girls, and to encourage them to take up STEM subjects at school.
Little Voice Books
Little Voice Books - Canada
Amanda Bernardo
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:5
SROI
In 2014, Amanda co-founded Little Voice Books to create a platform that would leverage the power of literature and illustration as a means to develop a meaningful experience that would create a dialogue at home and in the classroom, as well as create awareness for causes and initiatives across Canada.
After attending the One Young World 2016 Ottawa Summit, Amanda committed to using her platform to support the conversation on mental health. A year later, on World Mental Health Day, Little Voice Books published The Lighthouse on World Mental Health Day in 2017. The Lighthouse is a story that aims to educate, support, and remind all those affected by mental illness that they are not alone. The Lighthouse followed the company’s first self-titled book Little Voice, which teaches its readers about a growth mindset. Both books touch on the importance of mental health, and directly targets children, recognising that most mental health issues tend to start in childhood or adolescence. As well as raising awareness, each book sale supports fundraising efforts across Canada, including in support of the National Canadian Mental Health Association with each sale of The Lighthouse and the Alzheimer Society of Canada with each sale of Little Voice.
Today, you can find The Lighthouse in every public elementary school in Ottawa and Little Voice in every Catholic elementary school. Over 2,000 copies of the book have been sold since October 2017, reaching an estimated 110,000 children across Ottawa. The books are also available online and have found their way onto shelves across North America. Students find the books easy to read, with engaging illustrations that help keep their attention. The Little Voice Books team has received positive feedback from parents, teachers and book stores across Canada and continues to work closely with their community to leverage their platform to inspire others to make a difference. Little Voice has been translated into French and The Lighthouse is in the process of being translated as well. Little Voice Books has plans to work on a third title in 2019, with a wider goal to broaden outreach across Canada.
Moomken
Ahmed founded Moomken in 2013 to teach young people basic skills in technical media, and has trained more than 600 people to date. The organisation aims to grow the design and technical skills of young people so that they can work as freelancers in Libya following the 2011 uprising.
Moomken teaches young people how to use design software, shoot and edit videos and how to capture stories of interest through different media. Many NGOs and international organisations began working in Libya after 2011, but many would bring their own media specialists from abroad to report on local news. By developing the next generation of homegrown media specialists, Moomken enables these foreign organisations to recruit local young people into these media roles. This internally developed pool of talent is then able to earn an income through freelance work, whilst reporting on the situation in Libya with a deeper understanding of the local context.
Journalism is at risk in Libya, with many journalists fleeing the country to escape persecution. Libya was ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index. Over time, Ahmed has noticed the need for homegrown specialists in both conflict analysis and in monitoring and evaluation, since these have become areas of increasing interest for international organisations. Moomken thus expanded its offering to include practical training in conflict analysis and monitoring and evaluation.
Moomken then facilitated connections between these young people and international organisations to both fill a skills gap and to enable young people to access lucrative employment opportunities. Moomken has worked on several other projects such as establishing a national schools registry, a campus-based anti-harassment campaign and a debate competition for high school students. Moomken is also set to open a coworking space to encourage enterprise and innovation from its office in Tripoli.
Bean Voyage
Abhinav is the co-founder of Bean Voyage, a nonprofit social enterprise that provides training and market access to smallholder women coffee producers in Costa Rica.
Bean Voyage has worked with 112 women and more than 500 community members, with plans to impact more than 700 community members in the coming year.
Abhinav and his team support smallholder women coffee producers to turn their pre-commercial coffee cherries into commercial products, ready for the market. Typically smallholder women in Costa Rica sell coffee cherries to processors and end up with around 5% of the final coffee sale price. Bean Voyage works with smallholder coffee farmers, enabling them to process and package the coffee and sell it online so that they end up with a significantly greater share of the sale price. Abhinav and his team manage the sales and marketing side of the operation, so that the finished products can be sold at a fair price and the producers earn as much as 40% of the final revenue from coffee sales. The training that Bean Voyage runs focuses on the coffee journey from bean to cup, and has three main pillars of economic development, environmental protection and gender justice. The economic pillar consists of teaching farmers how to improve crop yields, increase coffee quality and making the final product globally competitive. The environmental pillar complements this training by ensuring growth methods minimise reliance on harmful fertilisers and use climate smart agriculture techniques. The gender justice pillar focuses on agency, enabling women to learn business and conflict resolution skills in a stable and supportive network. Bean Voyage also attempts to have conversations with men in the community to ensure that they are aware of the work the women are doing, and that they engage with them as allies.
Abhinav was selected to attend the 2016 Ottawa Summit as an Emma Watson Scholar. Bean Voyage has received support from partners of One Young World such as the Western Union and Firmenich, in the form of financial support and opportunities to present its work around the world.
In 2018, Bean Voyage won the grand prize in the Facebook Social Entrepreneurship Award of $55,000 worth of advertising credits, access to a Facebook marketing expert, and executive mentorship from Carolyn Everson, VP of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook. The Award helped Bean Voyage to develop its online marketing strategy through advanced strategic advice as well as hands on training on how to maximize return on investment of digital advertising. This resulted in Bean Voyage reaching over a million potential customers, thus increasing sales, and enabling more services for more female farmers.
Positive Society
Abdelhamid founded Positive Society to help children in underprivileged areas to access educational and psychosocial support in their own neighbourhoods.
Positive Society hosts study sessions for 600 children each week in 24 Studiezalen centres across Amsterdam. Studiezalen are study rooms that are set up in low-income neighbourhoods to provide students with a quiet place to study and access to tutors and mentors when required. The Studiezalen are located as centrally as possible in each neighbourhood to ensure they are accessible to any child in the area. Coaches are often adults from the children’s personal networks that they have identified as people they look up to. These coaches develop personal relationships with the children while encouraging them to develop academically, personally and socially. Studiezalen also promotes a healthy lifestyle by providing fruit to the students in attendance, donated in-kind by Albert Heijn. Coaches also work with the parents to develop a relationship of trust and mutual understanding. Positive Society has also set up a weekly support group for fathers of children in the Studiezalen, to fully understand the needs of their children and to provide a safe space for fathers to voice concerns and share experiences of fatherhood. Currently 80 fathers attend weekly group meetings.
Positive Society prides itself on developing each of its programmes through building relationships with and understanding the needs of the communities it wishes to serve.
Positive Society also runs a programme for children who are bullied both inside and outside of school. The PEST life coaching programme works with both the victims and perpetrators of bullying, teaching them about self confidence, self awareness and the impact of negative actions. PEST life coaching has helped 100 children so far.
Additionally, Positive Society runs a summer school for children before they enter high school, teaching them about the challenges that they may face in their new school. The summer school covers topics such as cyberbullying, periods and feminine hygiene, puberty and grooming. To date, 180 children have been educated through these schools.
Abdelhamid attended One Young World 2018 The Hague as a Shell Scholar. Attending the Summit hugely enhanced the exposure and visibility of Positive Society, contributing to Abdelhamid winning Amsterdammer of the Year in 2018. Since then, Abdelhamid has been approached by a variety of news outlets, further boosting his profile which has spread awareness of Positive Society’s mission.
How to use to the SDG Tracker
Search for projects by the following case study categories:
- Ambassador-led Initiatives: qualitative and quantitative analysis of the social impact of projects which are led by young leaders in the Community.
- Business for Social Good: written case studies for initiatives ran by corporate partner organisations, led by young Ambassadors/employees.
- Leadership Stories: short biographies of Ambassadors who are growing into influential leaders for social good in some of the world’s largest companies.
- Covid Young Leaders Fund: detailed case studies of grant recipients from One Young World's 2020 funding opportunity for projects tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Lead2030: detailed case studies of the Lead2030 award winners and how their projects have generated impact from participating in the programme.