By Gretchen Wallace | Founder and President
GLOBAL GRASSROOTS YEAR-END UPDATE AND LOOKING AHEAD TO 2011
2010 has been a turning point for Global Grassroots. We have endured hardship with the economic downturn, but are emerging leaner, more creative and more strategic. We’ve evaluated our social impact, repositioned our training program as the Academy for Conscious Change and integrated new mind-body practices for trauma healing. We’ve brought these holistic practices to earthquake survivors in Haiti and, by request, to American relief workers serving in disaster zones. We’ve doubled the number of civil society organizations our Academy has helped launch in Rwanda, and are investing in technology and partnerships to expand our reach. Today, our 300 Rwandan change agents have established 16 non-profit organizations, which are working at the root level of a social issue facing women and girls, benefiting an estimated 10,000+ people each year.
In June Global Grassroots hosted our 2010 Rwanda Academy for Conscious Change in the rural village of Byimana, inviting 7 new teams represented by 34 women and 3 men into the program. The teams are now in the project development phase, which involves 3- 6 months of hands-on high engagement support. They are working on the following issues:
We look forward to posting their project descriptions on GlobalGiving in early 2011 as they finalize their venture plans and budgets.
As we move forward into 2011, we have over 100 women’s groups in 40 countries requesting our programs. In response, we are expanding our hands-on approach into Northern Uganda next and possibly Haiti as well. We are developing new courses for a range of new audiences, including US students, donors and practitioners, to help generate revenue for our expansion. We are preparing to package and license our program model for partner organizations to implement in regions we have yet to explore. And finally, we are embarking upon a web-based eAcademy for Conscious Change to reach women worldwide through local internet cafes.
In partiular, Global Grassroots' web-based e-learning Academy will allow us to deliver our program via a free subscription service to grassroots teams throughout the developing world. The purpose is to provide training, skills and tools to support small-scale, grassroots-level social entrepreneurship among underserved women’s groups in poor countries, who have no other access to the training needed to start their own non-profit and design their own solution to the social issues of priority to them in their communities. Global Grassroots will require significant sponsorship to launch our eAcademy for Conscious change, and invite you to partner with us to make this innovation possible.
Global Grassroots needs engaged investors to join with us and our change agents in a three-part-partnership to actualize the possibilities in front of us. We invite you to read more about our progress in our 2010 Year-End Magazine (available for download on our home page: www.globalgrassroots.org) and consider a donation. Thank you for your continued support, which allows us to invest in the social ventures of grassroots change agents worldwide.
GLOBAL GRASSROOTS is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that supports conscious social change for women in post-conflict societies. Our Academy for Conscious Change is a 12-18 month social venture incubator, offering non-profit management skills, leadership training, personal transformation practices, seed grants and high-engagement support that enables vulnerable women change agents to launch their own grassroots solutions benefiting women and girls. JOIN US.
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By Gretchen Wallace | President
By Gretchen Wallace | President
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