$ 1 : 16
For every $1 of value invested, One Young World Ambassadors deliver $16 of social value, based on a Social Return on Investment analysis of 42 Ambassador-led initiatives addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2022
SDG Impact Tracker
Interested in supporting impactful initiatives led by young leaders? Search this database of over 350 projects from the One Young World Community to find out more.
Accept International
Accept International contributes towards Peacebuilding and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) in a world where violent extremism continues to persist, with certain conflicts seeing little to no progress towards ending. In 2011, Yosuke founded the organisation in response to this troubling trend. Accept International has developed the RPA (Re-define, Prepare, Action) model, an innovative approach towards counter-extremism, primarily targeted on the de-radicalisation and reintegration of ex-violent extremists in a penal institution. Accept has also been promoting the defection of current members in violent extremist organisations (VEOs).
Through the first step, Accept helps to ""Re-define"" a participants identity without denying their beliefs, helping them create values that both belong to the individual yet unharmful to society. This approach respects their held backgrounds and the reasons they took such actions but diverts these emotions to productive and non-violent means. In the ""Prepare"" step, Accept empowers each individual by equipping them with the knowledge and skills necessary to pursue their future, preparing for the difficulties of reintegration with useful life skills and reconciliation with the community. The final ‘Action’ phase involves continued support as they re-enter society, measuring their progress with follow-ups and continuous counselling.
Accept International has contributed to more peaceful and sustainable environments in Kenya, Somalia, and Indonesia. The organization has directly de-radicalised 89 defectors and 88 ex-combatants of VEOs, given indirect support on deradicalization of 1,070 former members, as well as defecting 107 active VEO members. Additionally, through its institution in Kenya, it has intervened to prevent radicalisation of 1,500 adolescents and 151 Somali gang members. Responding to a request from the UN-Habitat, Accept implemented Covid-19 response actions and 15 handwash stations for around 50,000 vulnerable people in Mandera and Nairobi, Kenya.
Green Hope Foundation
Green Hope Foundation - Canada [coordinating region]
Kehkashan Basu
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:72
SROI
Born on World Environment Day in 2000, Kehkashan is a global youth leader at the forefront of the climate justice movement. A Forbes 30 Under 30, Kehkashan founded her organisation Green Hope Foundation in 2012 after attending Rio+20 as one of its youngest international delegates and was also the youngest of the 193 youth representatives of UN Member States at the adoption ceremony of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015.
Green Hope Foundation combines grassroots action with advocacy at the highest levels of policy-making, to create a just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Its mission is to mitigate the adverse anthropogenic impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss which disproportionately affect regions and communities least responsible for it. Its activities have mobilised over 2,000 young volunteers since 2012. The organisation has established activities in 25 different countries and reached increased the environmental awareness of over 140,000 young people through its various programmes. During the Covid-19 outbreak, they have run numerous initiatives around the world. One such ongoing project in Bangladesh is empowering women and girls through sustainability educating, in particular on sanitation and hygiene, and protecting them from violence.
Since attending the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals, the impact of the organisation has accelerated, and in the past five years, the various projects have cumulatively planted a staggering 142,000 trees, restored over 200,000 hectares of mangrove forests, and collected 2000 tonnes of waste. This is just a snapshot of the organisation's impact which has been generated with the assistance of 2060 volunteers around the world, helping to educate more than 98,000 children of the need for sustainable action.
Kehkashan is also a dedicated member of One Young World's Community and hosted the YMCA Youth Leaders Conference and moderated One Young World's North America Climate Webinar.
Speetra Design Studio
Fashion is a highly, and rightly scutinised industry and there is general consensus that it needs to adopt more sustainable practices (1). Sara co-founded the Speetra Design Studio to provide a cost-effective solution for tech-savvy fashion designers to improve the sustainability of their process.
Speetra, founded in 2018, is a design-focused innovation firm working at the intersection of architecture, product, and fashion design. It specializes in digital design for 3D printing, an innovation that is eco-friendly and cost-effective. Integrating innovative technology into the design process allows designers to conceptualise their ideas on computers via cloud-based designs. Additionally, the production process itself has been improved by the adoption of 3D printing. Replacing unsustainable, unrecyclable materials, it is introducing a new bio-degradable plastic alternative as a replacement to leather. This prevents animal cruelty, as well as reducing the long-term environmental impacts of the materials.
The reduced costs, approximately 60% across the process, are hugely beneficial in reducing the costs of entry to the industry for young designers. It also speeds up the process by an average of 80%, allowing the designers to be more agile and get to the revenue-generating stage sooner. Whilst not lobbying for widespread changes in the industry, Speetra is leading by example and transforming the process designer by designer. As it becomes more financially profitable, the team hopes the environmentally-advantageous technology will be adopted by more and more designers.
mymizu
mymizu are on a mission to help people live more sustainably - in ways that are fun, easy and good for the planet. By co-creating tools and community - like our free refill app - they are building a world with cleaner oceans, healthier ecosystems and happier people. Mymizu was born on a tropical island in southern Japan. On a walk one day, co-founders Mariko and Robin came across an entire beach covered in litter. And amongst all of the scattered waste, there was one culprit that stood out in number; single-use PET bottles. That was the moment we decided to take action; to tackle the problem at the source and build a movement for sustainable living.
In 2020, the organisation started a campaign to save 1 million plastic bottles, and launched a feature that tracks the plastic and money saved, CO2 reduced and water consumed by the app’s users. The bigger mission is to engage more people in sustainability. According to a recent study, almost 90% of the total plastics that end up in the ocean come from rivers in Asia (1). Around 25 billion PET bottle products are shipped every year in Japan, averaging out to around 180 bottles per person (2). Refilling your bottle helps to reduce plastic consumption, which protects our natural environment, animals and human health.
Their core product - the mymizu app - connects people with 200,000 free water refill points around the world, eliminating the need for bottled water. Japan’s first water refill app helps you to access free refill points so that you can refill your bottle on the go, discover new places & eliminate the need for plastic bottles. The app guides you to the nearest water fountain or eco-friendly cafe that offers free refills. At mymizu, talks, workshops and other educational activities are core to achieving their mission, helping others to innovate and realise their potential when it comes to sustainability. Every year, they give over 100 talks and workshops on topics related to sustainability, circular economy and innovation for the SDGs.
iGoGreen
iGoGreen - Indonesia
Aprilya Lestari
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:2
SROI
"Indonesia produces a shocking 200,000 tonnes of rubbish per day, and perhaps most worrying is the lack of infrastructure capable to manage it (1). As landfill sits run out of space, and 'waste mountains' grow, an urgent solution is required. Aprilya created iGoGreen, a socio-entrepreneurship platform that empowers local actors with the autonomy, capacity, and incentives to tackle the issue themselves. It is a market-driven solution to solid waste management that reduces the burden of non-organic waste pollution on the city and in the ocean and strengthens the recycling value chain. On the platform, actors sort and sell recyclable waste to iGoGreen partners who bring the waste to one of iGoGreen's waste hubs, where it is recycled to products of value for factories as an alternative to newly produced material.
The organisation has engaged households in the programme, working with a partner to go door-to-door to collect the waste and take it to 25 waste banks for sorting, in 5 different sub-districts. Through this, they collect waste from 10 households per week. iGoGreen also partners with 3 restaurants, 3 stores, and 1 supermarket. Altogether, there are approximately 200 actors who regularly use the platform. These partnerships lead to the recycling of approximately 15 tonnes of non-organic waste per month. Another workstream is in education, through which iGoGreen aims to increase awareness of the issue in schools to encourage teachers, students, and institutions to manage their waste responsibly. It recognises performance in tackling the issue with the iGoGreen Award, given to institutions that consistently maintain sustainability through waste management programmes. The team has educated over 100 people on the challenge and the solution in 25 different educational institutions.
The capacity of the solution to deal with the challenge is growing. The team has built new partnerships with companies for 2021 which will exponentially increase the waste that can be managed sustainably. They are also expanding to process bio-waste as well, which has a significant environmental impact when disposed of in landfills."
eTrash2Cash
"Muhammad Salisu founded a first-of-its-kind social enterprise in northern Nigeria called etrash2Cash which embodies the use of technology to solve environmental problems in low-income communities. The Sub-Saharan Africa region generated 174 million tonnes of waste in 2016, at a rate of 0.46 kilogram per capita per day. It is the fastest-growing region, with waste expected to nearly triple by 2050. Further, about 69% of waste is openly dumped, although the use of landfills and recycling systems is becoming more prevalent. Underdeveloped waste management infrastructure may become a growing sign of global inequity as climate change advances. The open dumpsites in poorer countries can pose multiple hazards in the form of deadly landslides — which may be exacerbated by weather events — or pollution in waterways (1).
eTrash2Cash collects a variety of wastes, such as plastics & papers, from thousands of low and middle-income earning communities and commercial hubs in Kano through scrap dealers and mobile waste managers using technology, and exchange those wastes with direct cash incentives. They use the web, mobile app, and SMS technology to exchange wastes for direct cash incentives. eTrash2Cash also makes use of all wastes collected from communities to make reusable and sustainable end products, such as trash bags for cleaning companies & government agencies from plastics.
Overall, their work helps to reduce pollution in various forms, reduces flooding in local communities, reduces deforestation, and mitigates the effects of climate change. All the trash is taken to a centralised processing centre and is converted into pellets - the plastic raw material that can be used to make other plastic material. Some pellets make biodegradable trash bag and some shopping bags that are sold to earn revenue."
Compost Baladi SAL
Waste management is a contentious issue in Lebanon, an issue beginning back in 2015 when the government closed its biggest landfill (1). Since then the issue has persisted, even grown, despite the country spending almost 10 times more than its neighbours in Jordan and Tunisia (2). With Antoine, the Compost Baladi's founder, Marc has set out to alleviate the burden and negative environmental and health consequences of an under-attended aspect of the challenge, organic waste. They launched the enterprise to provide products and services that promote the local recycling of solid and liquid bio-wastes in households, restaurants, academic institutions, commercial establishments, municipalities, non-profit organizations, and refugee settlements.
Earth Cube is a novel and innovative solution which sustainably composts food waste at the source for approximately 30 beneficiaries, producing an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical fertiliser. This means that the solution to the issue also generates a profit-making product that initially incentivised the use of the solution. To scale its impact, the business structure changed so that Compost Baladi would use the solutions itself, operate them directly, and generate revenue from the compost. It secured a contract to install 12 composting stations, followed by three larger facilities the following year. Other impacts arising from the organisation's work have been on an education level. The team is working to change the stigma around food waste and odour. They have also provided training on bio-waste management to more than 3,000 people. Another avenue of impact has been job creation in rural areas. Through the solutions themselves, the compost produced, and the education work, Compost Baladi is tackling the issue at all stages of the solution.
Moving forward, the organisation is seeking foreign investment and revenue, developing a model to operate outside Lebanon. They are also developing a new technology to introduce in the coming years, a 'smart bin' through which waste can be monitored to identify sources of contaminations and improve biowaste management in more developed countries.
Wastezon
Founded in 2018, Ghislain Irakoze had a vision of creating a waste-free world, Wastezon is using its mobile application to trace, sort, and collect household electronic waste in Kigali, Rwanda. They created a win-win solution that encourages everyone to be involved in waste management. They have dedicated their efforts to conserve the environment while giving economical value to recyclable waste.
Only 4% of Africa's produced wastes are collected and recycled (1). The rest pose a great threat to the environment and sanitation. For recycling, recovery, and re-processing industries, one can use the Wastezon app to acquire resources efficiently and quickly. By using integrated mobile technology, they connect all parties that want to transact solid wastes safely and environmentally.
Wastezon provides households and recycling actors with a mobile app technology for efficient waste collection, sorting, and traceability. Wastezon's integrated technological system uses GPS and Blockchain to speed up the reverse logistics. Subscribers of the app can upload information like how much waste they have and their address to understand how much they can earn from their waste household waste. Recycling actors can use the app to search for waste products and use the built-in features to negotiate prices, pay through Mobile money, PayPal or credit cards and create transportation plans.
Ingenieros Top Internacional
Ingenieros Top Internacional - Peru
Jose Luis Vilcahuaman Tovar
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:44
SROI
"Having grown up in a small town in the Peruvian Andes, Jose has experienced first-hand what it means to not have access to essential infrastructure. In his town, people didn’t have access to electricity, drinking water, schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Jose’s motivation is to change this reality for millions of his people. The world infrastructure gap is expected to be 15 trillion USD by 2040 (1).
Peru’s gap in infrastructure, in 2025, will be 110 USD billion (2). This means that millions of people in Peru and other developing countries are without access to basic public services associated with essential infrastructure. Jose understood that is critical that each infrastructure project have the best possible outcomes. However, one of the biggest weaknesses in doing so is human capital(3). There is a lack of appropriate skills, and shortages of skilled professionals.
That is why Jose launched an online platform to train human capital within the infrastructure sector. They empower them with effective online education to deliver better project outcomes, contributing to the improvement of the quality of life for millions of people, developing a more sustainable and resilient futures as well as addressing the crises of inequalities.
So far, Jose’s project has trained more than 9000 people from Peru, Mexico, Colombia, and Paraguay for free. They also offer premium paid courses."
Yunus & Youth
Yunus & Youth - USA 1 [coordinating region]
Cecilia Chapiro
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:29
SROI
"Frustrated with the short-term impact of charities in Argentina where Cecilia is originally from, she decided to act. Having read Professor Muhammad Yunus’s work on social business, she was inspired to help young people start and scale effective social businesses to tackle the world’s most pressing issues and started Yunus & Youth.
Yunus & Youth believes that connecting young people from all corners of the world and giving them the tools and resources they need to develop social business solutions can successfully tackle issues that have been left unsolved for far too long. Yunus & Youth believes in combining the next generation’s passion to change the world with the knowledge and experience of traditional corporations to promote sustainable global development and economic growth. Founded with the support of Professor Muhammad Yunus, Yunus & Youth combines social entrepreneurship training with technology to remove educational barriers between countries and generations. It is on a mission to promote youth employment and to foster local economies through partnerships with governments, international development organisations, and grassroots movements. Based on their four-stage intervention model, several different programs have been designed and implemented in more than 50 countries since 2014 with the main goal of empowering young people with the knowledge and resources they need to positively change the world.
Yunus & Youth’s ‘Global Fellowship Program’ for Social Entrepreneurs is designed to support early-stage social business leaders in the development of financially sustainable solutions. It is a six-month online program designed to empower young social entrepreneurs and to help them develop their full potential by strengthening their business models, helping them measure their social impact, and defining a scaling strategy. The Social Impact Mentoring for Business Executives program is an active online leadership training for professionals who want to empower young people and promote positive impact. It is an online skills-based mentoring program that enables business professionals to apply their knowledge and expertise to empower young social entrepreneurs anywhere in the world while enhancing their managerial skills at the same time."
Ecobora
Ecobora - Kenya
Justine Abuga
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:7
SROI
Through his project, Ecobora, Justine is using green energy as a catalyst for poverty alleviation. Ecobora is equipping rural, marginalized, and under-funded schools with their innovative solar-powered cooking stove that permits around-the-clock cooking, by tapping into the sun’s energy and storing it. This eliminates the need for firewood making it a much safer and cheaper alternative.
Justine’s mission is to build resilient and empowered communities that can thrive. He was inspired to build solar boilers when he noticed that 99% of schools in Kenya were still using firewood to cook their school meals. Cooking with wood is extremely dangerous and is a major contributor to many preventable diseases. It is linked to respiratory illnesses like chronic bronchitis and reduced lung function (1). Justine wanted to challenge the idea that firewood needed to be used.
An added benefit of using solar boilers is that children will no longer need to spend time in the forest getting firewood before school. He would often see school children in uniforms in the morning collecting firewood. Children will no longer have to make a tough choice of either learning hungry or dropping out of school. So far, they have built 15 solar boilers supporting 5 schools and 5100 students. For every solar cooking boiler installed in a school means that schools can save money and redirect that towards building libraries, computer labs, and other learning facilities. They have also built one safety kitchen for cooks that allows them to enjoy a decent cooking experience away from smoke emissions.
Helen's Daughters
Helen's Daughters - Saint Lucia
Keithlin Caroo
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:28
SROI
Despite the high participation of women in agriculture in St. Lucia, it remains a male-dominated industry. This is due to women’s greater involvement in the informal sector and subsistence farming (1). In 2016, Keithlin began the Helen's Daughters campaign to support rural women with the use of adaptive agricultural techniques, capacity-building and improved market access.
What began as a campaign became a social enterprise in 2018, launching the Rural Women's Academy. The organisation has run workshops that train rural women in innovative agricultural techniques and business capacity building. They also facilitate collaborations between the women in the form of supportive unions. The Academy's goal is to transform small, female farmers into agri-preneurs. Participants are trained by senior, St Lucian mentors over a 6 month period who provide them with seminars and weekly classroom hours. One such mentor is the Head of Perishables/Produce at the nation's largest supermarket chain. The curriculum covers agribusiness development, dealing with suppliers and the government, and financial literacy.
The second incarnation of the Academy concluded in March 2020, when the pandemic struck, forcing them to move their operations online. This helped the project to reach more women, especially those in the south of the island. Helen's Daughters partnered with community centres to ensure participants had access to the necessary facilities. In total, 300 rural women have graduated from the various editions of the programme. As a result of the pandemic, the government accepted the Rural Women Academy's certification in lieu of its own, as it was incapable to carry out its own training. Keithlin has also recently secured support from Ashoka, to enable her to pursue enterprise full time in 2021.
Usalama Technology
In Kenya, the emergency phone line often goes unanswered due to a lack of resources since being reinstated in 2013, and there are over 50 numbers for various emergency services in Nairobi (1). To rectify rising morbidity and mortality rates an integrated command and control structure is essential, as well as more resources in the relevant departments (2). Through his enterprise Usalama Technology, James is addressing the challenge in Kenya and abroad with his two co-founders, Edwin and Marvin.
The flagship mobile platform is a personal safety companion that links vulnerable people to urgent emergency assistance. It enables users to quickly and simply send emergency messages to emergency service providers. The application makes use of GPS to capture users' exact geographical locations, which is relayed together with the emergency scenario to the responders to ensure that response is fast and efficient. An additional feature is the 'crime distress call' which allows victims to communicate quickly with predefined contacts of close family and friends. Users also receive security-related news updates relevant to their area, can view and connect with nearby users, and can choose to share their locations with selected users to provide additional comfort and protection. The service has grown steadily, serving 1,200 users in its inaugural year, and now 30,000 just 4 years later.
During the Covid-19 outbreak, Usalama launched a new platform to connect people with places of worship and help the places of worship to manage their capacity in a responsible and 'Covid-compliant' manner. Users register as members for their respective place of worship, and additionally, they use contact tracing to make sure that if there is a recorded case of the virus the spread is controlled and people are made aware. The platform was launched and 111,000+ members have registered, making a cumulative 330,000 bookings at 89 different venues. An additional pandemic-related service was to send over 120,000 Covid awareness messages to users and contacts of Usalama. In 2021, the group is looking to expand through East Africa once it has established a stable base in Kenya.
Konservation
As a predominantly agricultural region, East Africa is set to suffer a significant and disproportionate impact, due to climate change. With 70% of the population obtaining their primary income source from farming, climate change threatens the very livelihoods of farmers dependent on rain-fed crop for sustenance (1).
In 2017, Unelker Maoga founded Konservation, a local non-profit organisation working in south-west Kenya to tackle the climate emergency and facilitate rural community development. The Climate Change Education programme in collaboration with the Kenya Community Development Foundation and the Green Belt Movement has educated 3,200 children in 40 schools in rural agricultural communities in Nyamira County about climate change, and is now supported by National Geographic Explorers. Unelker also launched a Women and Energy social enterprise to increase access to clean energy technology in homes that lack access to electricity. With the help of the Global Greengrant Fund, it has established a retail outlet in Keroka Town which supplies solar lamps to women who run their own kiosks, providing income to female entrepreneurs and clean energy to rural villages. In 2020, Unelker and her sister Sylvia partnered to start another initiative to help marginalised women to secure financial independence. The Inuka Project employs rural women and collaborates with local farmers in the production of sustainable all-natural cosmetic products. It connects young women to education to help counter gender-based violence and teenage pregnancy. During the pandemic, Konservation and Infused Bath and Balms established a workshop with local women and distributed handmade soaps free-of-charge to vulnerable members of the larger community, as part of their Covid-19 response.
Unelker attended the One Young World Summit in London in 2019. In a seminar exploring coffee farming, fair trade, and exploitation of farmers, she sparked up a conversation with Daniel Holod. Daniel joined Konservation, and together they have launched the Regenerative Agriculture project. The project, currently funded by Purpose Earth, seeks to establish locally sustained seed banks for indigenous crops and build capacity on climate-resilient husbandry. The goal is to promote food sovereignty, provide crop alternatives to a monopolised tea framing industry and increase the bargaining power of small-scale farmers in the trade of their own indigenous produce.
Environmental Network Malawi
Environmental Network Malawi - Malawi
Sue Whisky
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:14
SROI
Malawi has been in a state of environmental crisis due to rates of deforestation which threaten to strip the country of all trees by 2079 (1). In 2015, responding to the deforestation at the hands of national charcoal businesses in a village in Dedza, central Malawi, she founded the Environmental Network Malawi (ENM) to protect the community and environment from being exploited.
Through a mixture of advocacy, social entrepreneurship, and education, Sue has revived lands in the region and protected vulnerable wildlife. Sue produces an agro-waste alternative to charcoal, reducing the demand for charcoal which drives a significant proportion of the deforestation in Malawi. These Yatsa briquettes are affordable (0.10 MWK per briquette) and provide local communities with access to clean energy sources. The organisation has sold 5,500 bags of briquettes nationwide, and demand for charcoal in 2,000 local households has dropped by 96%. In the summer of 2020, Sue rounded up all the villagers, village chiefs and local authorities to plant trees in Chigaro village, southern-central Malawi, to plant trees, clean up the local lake and distribute free briquettes as an alternative to charcoal. She also ran educational sessions to equip the communities to maintain the restored ecosystems. Initiatives like this have helped ENM to tackle the rapid deforestation in the region. Forest coverage had dropped as low as 30% when the initiatives began, and is recovering year by year, and coverage is currently estimated at 50%.
Another successful initiative has been the founding of a farmers' cooperative to support elders who are vulnerable in a rural community in Chileka. ENM has also run separate programmes to promote inclusivity in sport for young women in rural villages, people living in extreme poverty, and people with disabilities.
How to use to the SDG Tracker
Search for projects by the following case study categories:
- Ambassador-led Initiatives: qualitative and quantitative analysis of the social impact of projects which are led by young leaders in the Community.
- Business for Social Good: written case studies for initiatives ran by corporate partner organisations, led by young Ambassadors/employees.
- Leadership Stories: short biographies of Ambassadors who are growing into influential leaders for social good in some of the world’s largest companies.
- Covid Young Leaders Fund: detailed case studies of grant recipients from One Young World's 2020 funding opportunity for projects tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Lead2030: detailed case studies of the Lead2030 award winners and how their projects have generated impact from participating in the programme.