by lwang | Mar 28, 2013 | m2m, Pratham
2012 Kravis Prize recipient organization mothers2mothers and 2010 Kravis Prize recipient organization Pratham have recently gained significant support from celebrities in the U.K. in raising attention for two upcoming charity events that will benefit their organizations. In honor of Mother’s Day, mothers2mothers will auction off designer clothing and other items donated by celebrities in order to support the organization’s work to improve the quality of life for thousands of HIV-infected women around the world. Celebrity donors include Annie Lennox, Colin Firth, and former Spice Girl Emma Bunton. “I’m delighted to support mothers2mothers by offering this autographed package of ‘King’s Speech’ memorabilia,” Firth said. “I have enormous respect for the work mothers2mothers is doing to protect babies from HIV, and hope this auction is a great success.” Pratham UK also announced an April 24 Fashion Event in London in order to raise money for the organization’s efforts to boost literacy and arithmetic skills among children in rural and urban India. Numerous Bollywood and local celebrities are expected to attend the event, which will also showcase clothing and jewelry by famous Indian designers (including designer Payal Jain) and feature a performance by the “Got To Dance” TV stars known as “Pulse Collective.” RELATED: “Pratham USA receives Times of India award” “m2m: Mentor Mothers”...
by lwang | Mar 27, 2013 | Johann Olav Koss, Kravis Prize, Right 2 Play
Right To Play, founded in 2000 by Olympian Johann Olav Koss (this year’s recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership), has spent the last decade empowering children through play in more than 20 countries all over the world. But the Canadian-based organization has never established a foothold in its neighbor to the South. Until now. In January, Koss and his organization announced the development of Play at the Core: The Right to Play New York City Play-based Early Learning Program. This partnership with the New York City Department of Education is Right To Play’s first domestic program in the United States. Soon the program will be addressing the achievement gap among low-income families in the Bronx. Currently, educators are being trained to bring Right To Play’s message of of building life skills to urban youth through the power of play. Work and play might be treated as mutually exclusive areas for adults, but current research from the child development arena demonstrates how the two are interconnected. Play is crucial to learning and identity development in young children: This offers a channel through which they receive early impressions of teamwork and other people’s responses to them. For Sophia Pappas, executive director of the Office of Early Childhood Education in New York City’s Department of Education, that means that the new partnership with Right 2 Play is nothing less than a golden opportunity to help local children. The partnership will support “strengthening problem-solving skills of young learners,” Pappas says, “so that children at the pre-kindergarten age level are positioned to be successful learners in later years.” According to the organization, Play...
by lwang | Mar 27, 2013 | Community Development, Female Empowerment, Landesa, Poverty Reduction
A garden grows more than vegetables. It also grows opportunities for women in impoverished Indian villages – that’s the message behind a pilot program developed by Landesa that’s the focus of a recent special report in the pages of the Sunday Seattle Times. That special report – titled “Seeds of Hope” – appears on the front-page of the newspaper’s March 16 edition and is devoted to Landesa’s program in West Bengal as well as to profiling Roy Prosterman, founder of the Seattle-based organization devoted to land access for the poor in India, China, Africa and other parts of the world. The Seattle Times visited the region and interviewed families whose lives have been affected by Landesa and Prosterman, the inaugural recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership in 2006. In particular, the special coverage examines the impact of teaching young women to garden and how this program’s goal transcends simply providing a useful skill. “The idea,” the article explains, “is that if [young women] are considered assets rather than extra mouths to feed, the girls might complete their educations and break out of the poverty cycle. Even if they do not, they will know how to grow food on even small plots of land, improving their nutrition and that of their future children.” An accompanying profile of Prosterman describes his many years of work as an advocate for land rights, from Central America and Africa to Asia and the Philippines. A law professor at the University of Washington, Prosterman told the Seattle Times reporter that he long ago realized that land ownership was the key to eradicating...
by lwang | Feb 11, 2013 | Community Development, Landesa, Poverty Reduction, Tim Hanstad
More than 25 years after inaugural Kravis Prize winner Roy Prosterman founded Landesa to focus on one of the chief structural causes of global poverty – rural landlessness – Landesa’s current president and CEO was inspired to re-focus his approach to leading the organization at the Sundance Film Festival. Writing at the Huffington Post’s Social Entrepreneurship blog, Tim Hanstad shared how the festival offered him more than a glimpse of the year’s best independent films. It also showed him how to leverage storytelling to achieve large-scale social impact. In what he termed a “confession,” Hanstad described how the festival helped him better understand the origins of his own passion for the cause of land rights: As a data-driven leader, for years I have carried a prejudice against the value and power of storytelling, often thinking of stories as too anecdotal, bordering on the shallow. I thought a powerful story was a relaxing respite from metrics, serving more or less as a colorful parenthesis within an analytical argument. Yet through our discussions, I realized that my own calling to global poverty began not with data, but through hearing the stories of fellow agricultural day laborers, whom I worked beside as I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. You see, I trace my initial interest and motivation for working on global poverty issues to a summer when I was 10 years old, working in the berry fields along with Mexican migrant families. Interacting with the Mexican migrant children opened my eyes to social injustice – they worked so hard, yet had so little. They migrated with the harvests, moving from farm...
by lwang | Feb 1, 2013 | Community Development, Education, Pratham
Since its inception in 1994, Pratham, India’s largest non-governmental advocacy organization for quality education, has opened doors of opportunity for millions of underprivileged children. The Kravis Prize congratulates Pratham USA as this year’s winner of the Times of India Social Impact Award in the category of “International Contribution to India.” In a press release announcing the award, Pratham includes remarks by Arvind Sanger, chairman of Pratham USA’s board of directors. “This award not only recognizes the efforts of Pratham USA, but most importantly, it recognizes the continued generosity of our donors, both large and small…Every donor to Pratham USA has a strong belief that education provides the foundation for individuals to raise themselves socially and economically. Our donors understand that they have succeeded because of education and they want their resources to support the children of India in their own path to success.” The release details Pratham’s immense contribution to India’s future through its range of educational programs, as well as the organization’s annual research study that tracks the educational investment across the nation. “Pratham USA should serve as a model for many communities in the U.S. as they support global, social and economic transformations,” says Dr. Molly Easo Smith, Executive Director of Pratham USA. “The Indian American community understands the concept of organized and impact-focused philanthropy as a basis for significant social change globally.” We applaud Pratham USA on earning this prestigious award and trust their efforts to redefine educational quality in India will continue to receive the international acclaim it deserves. Please read the full press release...
