Keep It! and Awava Team Up to Build Communities of Hope

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Keep It! is proud to announce its partnership with Awava, a women’s artisan group from Uganda that shares the Keep It! Campaign’s commitment to social entrepreneurship and empowerment. By providing access to resources and opportunities, Keep It! and Awava are giving people in Uganda and Ivory Park, South Africa the power to invest in their own lives and communities.

Awava is the Luganda word meaning source or origin.

Awava relies on the concept of free trade to empower women in Uganda to sell their wares at a fair price in the Western market. A fair price provides these women with access to the resources they need to create beautiful works of art – handmade aprons, accessories, jewelry, and purses that reflect the skill and artistry of each unique craftswoman. 

When an Awava product is purchased, the wholesale cost supports Awava and empowers the product’s creator to learn life skills, build a career, and provide familial assistance. And now, through the Keep It! Campaign’s partnership with Awava, the retail profit from these purchases will be used to support sustainable strategies that make life better for the people of Ivory Park.  

How can you help?

The holiday shopping season is right around the corner. Avoid the hustle and bustle by shopping Awava online. Creative, quality products benefitting the Keep It! Campaign for Ivory Park are available now through the following link: Keep It! at eBay Giving Works  

African Amata Apron (brown fruit) by AwavaAfrican Handmade Yimba Necklace (turquoise) by Awava African Owino Tote by AWAVA (big orange flower)

A little means a lot.

Hand-crafted Awava gifts are affordable, but even one purchase can result in big changes for someone in Ivory Park. The proceeds from a $20 apron can feed a child for an entire month. Accept the Keep It! Campaign’s challenge to act locally and reach globally.  Your gift for a special someone at home will have a positive impact on someone a world away.   

Click here to learn more about what your Awava purchase can do.
http://www.bobtryanski.com/pdf/Awavapurchases.pdf

Social Entrepreneurs "Kick It Up A Notch!"

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There is a significant difference between volunteerism and social entrepreneurship. Most community service projects ask individuals to volunteer their time, donate goods, or contribute funds to meet an immediate need. These are vital and important tasks.

Social entrepreneurs ‘kick it up a notch’ by seeking to discover and then implement sustainable solutions to long-term social challenges.

Social entrepreneurs go far beyond simply making a difference. They work to transform the lives of others by empowering them to take control of a significant public issue and actually solve the underlying problem. They work in partnerships with other people and organizations.  They start by identifying the need in a society or local community and then developing imaginatively conceived and sustainable projects with a growth strategy. These strategies change the rules on the ground to give people control over their lives and their future.

The results are measurable; the projects are sustainable; the outcomes are scalable; the models are replicable.

The old adage was…

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a life time.

Social Entrepreneurs seek to…

Build a fishery; everybody eats and more people have a job.

The rules on the ground change. The social fabric is stronger.

The Skoll Foundation has recently completed a short film about the field of social entrepreneurship. Its a great overview of the progress made over the last three decades:

For more information on these and other social entrepreneurs, visit www.skollfoundation.org

Our First Priority- Raising Visibility

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Of all the challenges we face, probably the most significant is to build a base of folks who are interested enough in our story to get involved not only as donors, but also as recruiters, volunteers, and ambassadors.  I think the key to making this work is online, social media, personal connection and regular communication.  We need to build a fan base and demonstrate quickly that we’re serious and capable of pulling off our major goal, which is to get the Community Center built.

Take a look at this terrific video from Seth Godin for a much better explanation of how to build “Tribes” of interested folks:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html

BT

How To Get The Community Center Built Quickly

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GO BEYOND THE POWER OF ONE!

 

We’ve all heard stories of the mythical “Power of One.”  A brave Chinese student marshals the courage to stand in Tiananmen Square and stare down a line of tanks in 1989.  An unknown seamstress in Montgomery Alabama refuses to give up her seat on a bus in 1955.  A gentle man from India seeks to raise consciousness without raising his voice in the 1950’s.  The images are moving; the stories are inspiring; the “Power of One” is a powerful myth and the stuff that self-help books, Successories posters and Youtube videos (like this) are made of.

Personally, I’ve never found “The Power of One” to be all that useful as an organizing strategy, especially if  the goal is to bring about lasting change.  The tanks in Tiananmen Square paused for that one student, but they eventually crushed thousands of others, thanks in part to a lack of organization and cohesiveness within the student movement.  Rosa Parks’ act provided the spark but millions of other equally courageous acts provided the momentum for the United States’ Civil Rights Movement.  Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy of non-violent resistance would have had little force if millions of Indian citizens had not been willing to embrace and employ it.

One person might be able to change the world, but they usually can’t do anything significant without support.  The true test of the “Power of One” is whether or not that individual has the capacity to develop the Power of  Ten by building a team of people that is committed to bring about lasting, significant, sustainable change.

Here’s how I think this principle can be applied to the Keep It Campaign for Ivory Park.

THE POWER OF TEN FUNDRAISING STRATEGY

If we could tap into our individual circles of influence to build a network of well-connected folks, and each of those folks could get 10 people to make a commitment to line up 10 additional people make a minimum donation of $10 each, we would reach our $50,000 building fund goal very quickly.  We could do it all with small contributions processed through the PayPal link on the website or through personal checks made out to The Keep It Campaign.

Think of the networks you’re connected with:

Your Family

Your School

Your Church

Your Neighbors

Your Community

Athletic Teams

Civic Organizations

Folks from work

Your Facebook Friends

What we want to do is challenge folks to identify their circles of influence and then to find one person in each of those circles to raise $100 each by finding 10 or more people to give at least $10 each (and their email address) to the project.  If they do this, each team will raise $1,000 and help us to build a fan base of 100 people.

Encourage folks to use the Pay Pal Link by clicking on the button below:

small-button

Or have them make a check out to “PASC Keep It Campaign” and give it to you. You can send the checks to

The Keep It Campaign,

174 Link Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15237

Are you in?  I hope so! Send us an email and let us know what we can do to help you to make this work in your neighborhood, school or community.

send an email to keepit@me.com

BT

A Letter From Bob

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While Hannah and I were in South Africa, we had the good fortune to meet Henny and Trees Stege, a retired couple from the Netherlands. Henny and Trees are spending their retirement creating and implementing sustainable social entrepreneurial projects designed to permanently improve the quality of life in one of the poorest townships in South Africa.

Henny and Trees partnered with local civic leaders, health care workers, and women’s groups. As a result of these partnerships, hundreds of children, many of them AIDS orphans, are being provided with outstanding daily child care at Sedimosang, a day care center right in the heart of the township.

Thousands of schoolchildren are also having their vision tested and receiving affordable eyeglasses at Ke Bona, an eye clinic Henny and Trees created.

Finally, groups of senior women are preparing and sharing a nutritious meal several times a week with other seniors. Currently, these women are working in a church with no running water or electricity. They could reach many so more people with a safe, fully functioning facility.

Henny and Trees are, without a doubt, models of successful social entrepreneurs. Each of their efforts has been designed to be a self-sufficient enterprise, managed, staffed and eventually financed by the residents of Ivory Park themselves. Their latest dream is to bring each of these projects together under one roof in a community center located right in the middle of the township. The community center will house the eye care clinic, the day care center, the soup kitchen, a library and after school study/tutoring center.

I believe that we can help with this project by tapping into our personal connections and the network of schools, student organizations and student leaders throughout the United States. By challenging them to refocus their skills and interests I believe we can teach students how to develop their capacity to be social entrepreneurs. The exciting thing is that we have the potential to have an immediate, direct, and personal impact by mobilizing students throughout the US and working together with individuals who are changing lives for the better every single day in South Africa.