Dec 1, 2014 | BRAC USA, Entrepreneurship, Escuela Nueva, FAWE, Helen Keller International, INJAZ Al-Arab, Kravis Prize, Right 2 Play, Soraya Salti
What are you doing next summer? Since 2006, the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership has been building a special community among its recipients, whose premier organizations are dedicated to improving the lives of millions of people around the globe. That community also extends to Claremont McKenna College’s students, who will have a chance to learn about working with past Prize recipients in the summer of 2015 during the Kravis Prize Internship Fair, which will be held this Thursday afternoon, December 4, 3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., in the Freeberg Lounge. Find out about Kravis Prize internships offered both domestically by BRAC USA and Helen Keller International (both in New York City) and internationally by Right To Play, Escuela Nueva, FAWE, Pratham, and INJAZ Al-Arab (Canada, Colombia, Tanzania, India, and Jordan, respectively). The internship program, which is the result of a partnership between the Kravis Prize and the Kravis Leadership Institute at CMC, has enabled CMCers like Carolyn Islam ’16 (pictured above during her internship last summer with BRAC in Dhaka) to receive firsthand experience in problem-solving and applied entrepreneurship as it’s practiced by leaders in the non-profit sector. Students attending Thursday’s internship fair will receive additional internship details, information about the application process, and also have a chance to listen to the stories of classmates who have already participated in this singular internship program. What does Pratham do? What is the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) all about? What organization interests you? Learn more about these past recipients and others by visiting the home page of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership at Claremont McKenna College. Are you... read more
Nov 5, 2014 | Community Development, Education, FAWE, Female Empowerment, Kravis Prize
Educational materials in Kenyan classrooms still portray old stereotypes of “boys as heroes and girls as weak,” says the executive director of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE). “The current methods of teaching carry a lot of gender bias to the boy,” FAWE Executive Director Hendrina Doroba told the Kenyan newspaper The Star in a recent interview. Doroba outlined the efforts of FAWE, which is the 2008 recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Nonprofit Leadership, to empower school-age girls across the African continent. That includes depictions of women in picture- and textbooks, which FAWE has been able to address thanks to several successful partnerships. “We engaged with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development … vigorously and they looked at removing some of the pictures and set up a committee to ensure books are gender responsive,” Doroba explained. The organization has also teamed up with teachers to “improve their gender pedagogical skills” as well as their awareness and compassion for the circumstances of young female students. Founded in 1992, FAWE’s mission has been to educate and empower an estimated 24 million school-age women in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past 22 years, FAWE has expanded its operations into 32 African countries. Despite the organization’s progress, however, Doroba acknowledged that there is still much work to do, many obstacles to confront that are not always obvious. Schoolbook gender bias, for example, can be very subtle even though it leads to more disruptive situations, including school-related gender violence, she said. Doroba’s interview with The Star also reports on the organization’s other efforts to improve educational opportunities. Such improvements are not... read more
Oct 22, 2014 | BRAC, BRAC UK, BRAC USA, Fazle Abed, Kravis Prize
Once a program has been successfully implemented, the work isn’t over: It’s only just begun. That was the message brought this fall by Sir Fazle Abed to New Haven, Connecticut, where he addressed a group of students in the Yale School of Management. One of the more crucial aspects of any NGO project is its sustainability factor, said Abed, who became the second recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Nonprofit Leadership in 2007 (the first was Landesa’s Roy Prosterman in 2006). If sustainability isn’t tested and confirmed, longterm success on a much larger scale will be harder to achieve. “We make the programs effective first, then we want to make them efficient by routinizing tasks that are essential and discarding those which are not essential,” he told students during a lecture as part of Yale School of Management’s Leaders Forum Series. “Then, we can scale up.” Abed founded the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee in 1972 to address poverty in remote parts of Bangladesh. That mission has grown to touch lives in so many other areas as well — Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Uganda, Tanzania, Southern Sudan — largely because BRAC has been careful to do exactly what Abed described for his Yale audience. Thanks to a research division, BRAC has been able to test and assess every micro-finance, educational reform, and women’s empowerment program for strengths and weaknesses before scaling up these efforts. Such testing can be costly, however, which is why BRAC has also developed social enterprises (micro lending, printing presses, craft shops, schools) to generate funding that enables BRAC to support new projects. In fact, charitable... read more
Oct 6, 2014 | FAWE, Female Empowerment, Health, Helen Keller International, Kravis Prize
Teenager Abigail Mortey has a clear vision: to manufacture a mosquito repellent aimed to control malaria in Ghana. The Forum for African Women Educationalist (FAWE), a non-governmental organization founded to support education for girls across Africa and a 2008 recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership, selected Miss Mortey as the winner of this year’s FAWE Science and Technology competition, according to VibeGhana.com. Mortey was among 18 other contestants who invented various technologies on FAWE’s theme this year: “Enhancing the study of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Among Girls in Ghana.” FAWE hopes that competitions and programs like this one will help unearth undiscovered talent within the country’s female population. Seeking to inspire girls to take a role in their education, FAWE aims to help girls assume their integral role in solving the urgent problems affecting Ghana and the rest of the African continent. Founded in 1992, FAWE is now the leading non-governmental organization directly confronting issues of girls’ education in Africa. The threat of mosquitoes and malaria is an issue that FAWE has in common with many other organizations, especially Helen Keller International, which distributes Vitamin A capsules to children and breastfeeding mothers to boost their immunity against the risk of infection. Like FAWE, HKI is also a recipient of the Kravis Prize, which it was awarded earlier this year. RELATED: More about the Kravis Prize Kravis Prize Blog: More ‘bucks’ for Landesa Kravis Prize Blog: Victoria Beckham empties her closets for mothers2mothers... read more
Aug 29, 2014 | Civil Society, Community Development, Kravis Prize, Landesa, Poverty Reduction, Roy Prosterman
Say you find an old dollar bill in a pair of jeans … where does that dollar end up? Paying for your morning coffee? Carefully deposited in your bank account? What is the best way to invest a single dollar? Melissa Warnke, author of “Bang for Your Buck,” an article featured on The Morning News, interviews two dozen people—from a street performer to a head fund manager—about how they would invest a single dollar. Rena Singer, Communications Director of Landesa, a Rural Development Institute founded by Kravis Prize recipient Roy Prosterman, weighs in on the question. Singer outlines the way a dollar goes through Landesa’s Girls Project, a program which educates girls in West Bengal about “their rights to attend school, to not be married as a child, and to one day inherit land.” The project teaches girls the gardening skills needed to create and sustain a home—“a kitchen garden…roof of their house…food that boosts nutrition.” The program is a mere dollar per girl per year. Landesa was also recently named NGO of the Month by Funds for NGO’s. The organization is commended for their work to secure land for the world’s poorest populations and for their inspiring vision of “a world free of extreme poverty,” a vision which earned Prosterman the Kravis Prize in 2006. RELATED: More about the Kravis Prize at Claremont McKenna College A list of past recipients of the Kravis Prize ... read more
