Enable volunteer consultants tackle global issues

In this report, we will feature our project with More than Me (MTM), an organization empowering girls and social change in Liberia.

The past few months have been exciting for us as our teams in Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco have completed projects and started the strategic planning process for the upcoming year.

We were also excited to have Katie Meyler as a guest speaker earlier this month. Katie is the Founder of More than Me. She shared her story and the story of MTM with us as well as tips on how we can stay close to our passion and better support our partners.

Featured Project

Today Liberia’s education system is in a state of emergency with approximately 65% of primary school age children out of school. More than half of young people aged 15-24 are illiterate and approximately  73% of all women and girls are illiterate. Nearly 50% of the youth population in Africa is either unemployed or inactive [1].

More than Me is addressing this challenge by focusing on several different activities: 1. MTM Academy, a tuition free, K-6 girls school providing high quality education and wrap around services e.g., healthcare, family planning. 2. Public school support, working with the Ministry of Education to ensure all children in Liberia have access to a safe, holistic education, 3. Systemic change, actively working to drive systemic and lasting change that improves Liberia’s education system.

Our DSO project team (Amir, Anusha, Bian, Chung-Yan, Hannah, Joshua, Mark, Rosie, Sean) consisted of Stanford Students and professionals from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The objective of the project was to identify and test how to optimally position MTM’s social and web strategy to increase its digital presence, deepen engagement with its audience, and increase awareness of MTM’s powerful mission in Liberia.

For each platform, DSO measured MTM’s current baseline, compared that to other nonprofits, researched best practices, and determined MTM-specific recommendations to improve MTM’s digital marketing efforts across several channels: website, Facebook, Twitter, Newsletter, and Instagram. The end recommendations included some low-hanging fruit recommendations as well as recommendations that would require iterative A/B testing. The A/B testing methodology will help MTM become more agile and allow for faster digital marketing improvement based on data from their desired audiences.

Join Us

Join us in tackling the world’s challenges, enabling each other to achieve our professional and personal development goals, and boldly pursuing meaningful social impact outside of our day jobs.

We are actively recruiting Engagement Leads in Los Angeles.

See this position description: http://www.dsoglobal.org/international-development-engagement-lead-la.html

Your impact potential as a DSO Engagement Lead could include:

• Applying the expertise from your day job into projects that make a global impact
• Enabling nonprofits and social enterprises to make life-changing products that empower those in need
• Joining a team of like-minded volunteers driven solely by making an impact, and developing professionally  
• Making a difference in university students’ careers, through project guidance and mentorship
• Growing as a leader in social impact

Apply now, forward to someone you think may be a good fit, and/or share these tweets:

• Make a meaningful social impact outside of your day job. Join @dsoglobal. Apply nowhttp://bit.ly/2bcvQDD
• Passionate about international development? Join talented students + professionals @dsoglobal making a difference.http://bit.ly/2bcvQDD
• @dsoglobal’s Los Angeles team is recruiting an International Development Engagement Lead. Make an impact, apply now http://bit.ly/2aHgtJ5
• If you are interested in joining our Pittsburgh, San Francisco or DC international development hubs, check out the position here: http://www.dsoglobal.org/international-development-engagement-lead-all-locations.html

Have any questions about any of the open positions? Contact Amy amy.badiani@dsoglobal.org.

[1] “Who We Are”; http://morethanme.org/who-we-are/#why-liberia

Links:

• Read our blog for our stories and insights from other projects.

As we wrap up the academic year and along with it most of our projects, we are excited to share with you our recent growth, as well as our plans for the summer. In addition to the Pittsburgh team’s Kiva project mentioned in our last report, the San Francisco team is wrapping up several projects, including Girls Helping Girls, a non profit that empowers underprivileged girls to go to school and Gooru, a group that uses their online platform, to help teachers create customized and personalized learning experiences for their students and More than Me, a non-profit that uses education as a catalyst for transformative social change for Girls in Liberia.  

This summer, we will prepare for the fall academic semester with new projects and team members. We will continue to grow the Los Angeles and San Francisco Tech hubs and improve on the great work in our other Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington DC hubs. Stay tuned for future expansion plans!

In this report, we will feature our project with the Disrupt Team of Derek Caelin and Giselle Lopez from the US Institute of Peace’s PeaceTech Lab. This project was completed with our Washington DC DSO team.  As we mentioned in a past report, this partnership came as a result of last September’s Peacehack DC (video).

Featured Project

The mission was to help our clients create a game that incentivizes online disruption of pro-Islamic State messaging and propaganda through the generation of pro-peace content. Our student team of Ellen, Jesse, Maxine were led by professionals Anthony and Sonum in helping the Disrupt team with market research for the game in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region.  This included reviewing the potential player and game demographics, potential revenue models, marketing and social media, and current ISIS messaging along with counter extremism efforts.

A Testimonial from Disrupt

DSO was wonderful to work with. The team helped us to refine our project concept - using game design and social media listening to incentivize online disruption of extremist messaging and amplify pro-peace narratives.

To better understand our audience and the market, DSO conducted research on internet and mobile penetration, social media use, and the gaming industry across our region of interest. They also worked with us to identify key behaviors and trends that we would want to take into account. Their support was definitely beneficial to our efforts and we would be happy to work with them again!

– Derek and Giselle, Team Leads, Disrupt

Join Us

Join us in tackling the world’s challenges, enabling each other to achieve our professional and personal development goals, and boldly pursuing meaningful social impact outside of our day jobs. In particular, we are recruiting students for the Los Angeles hub as well as Engagement Leads for all hubs.

Your impact potential as a DSO Engagement Lead could include:

• Applying the technical expertise from your day job into projects that make a global impact
• Enabling nonprofits and social enterprises to make life-changing products that empower those in need
• Joining a team of like-minded volunteers driven solely by making an impact, and developing professionally  
• Making a difference in university students’ careers, through project guidance and mentorship
• Growing as a leader in the intersection of consulting, technology,  and social impact

For more information see http://www.dsoglobal.org

If you are interested in joining any of our international development hubs, and/or have any questions about any of the open positions contact Amy at amy.badiani@dsoglobal.org.