$ 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 45 Ambassador-led initiatives addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2023
SDG Impact Tracker
Interested in supporting impactful initiatives led by young leaders? Search this database of over 430 projects from the One Young World Community to find out more.
PODER
Juan founded PODER (Program of Opportunities, Development & Ethical Entrepreneurship) with support form The Resolution Project. It is a development organisation supporting disadvantaged indigenous communities in rural regions. It began in Costa Rica but is primarily focused in Belize at the moment.
Since studying Agriculture Science with a focus in Soil Microbiology at Delaware State University, Juan has started a new project remotely, to promote sustainable agriculture in his local community with the aim of improving livelihood.
Juan built a relationship with a cooperative of farmers in his hometown in late 2018. Through the collaboration, he developed the concept for agriculture, cultural and natural resource protection. Juan gained the support and partnership of a local NGO called Ya’axché Conservation Trust who offered their capacity to manage the project. This was the first project the cooperative had managed to get off the ground since their establishment 25 years ago. It launched in August 2019 having secured funding earlier that year from GEF/SGP Belize.
The cooperative developed a scheme of training on sustainable agriculture and biodiversity protection for 2,500 acres (1,102 hectares) which had previously been used unsustainably with a slash and burn method. The 30 farmers in the cooperative are participating in the project, which also trains their families in GPS mapping, conservation, farm management and organic methods. This aims to improve biodiversity and protect the area’s eco-systems, and provide stable and sustainable agriculture for a community totalling 900 people. The next stage the group hopes to implement is an agritourism initiative for the Community and its surrounding.
Juan has tapped into the One Young World Community in the Caribbean and Central America, speaking at events in Costa Rica and Trinidad and planning future initiatives with fellow Ambassadors.
Wish for WASH
Wish for WASH - United States
Jasmine Burton
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:3
SROI
Jasmine is a social entrepreneur who founded Wish for WASH (W4W), a social impact collective intended to bring innovation to sanitation in 2014. According to the World Health Organization, over 4 billion people in the world today lack safely managed sanitation (1). W4W’s mission is to bring more diverse minds, talent, and innovation to the problems of global health and WASH in our world through research, design and education because #everybodypoops.
She led W4W in conducting iterative toilet innovation pilots and research in Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Ethiopia and in an Atlanta-based resettled refugee community all with a human-centered design and social inclusion lens. Its first sanitation relief product is the SafiChoo toilet, an innovative toilet system that operates as a ‘toolbox of options’ allowing users to upgrade their sanitation system based on their current financial and community waste management options. The current version of the SafiChoo toilet includes a sit-squat toilet seat, a riser, a snap fit floor, and a series of inserts that change the functionality of the waste management features of the toilet. This was designed with feedback collected from W4W’s pilot programmes.
Through the pilot programmes, approximately 100 people in Georgia, 50 people in Kenya and 20 people in Zambia have benefited from innovative toilet options designed to meet their community’s needs. Other key outcomes include meaningfully engaging over 100 young people to lead vital and socially impactful work. They have also reached more than 1,000 people directly through educational reports and workshops and over 14,000 via digital educational content.
Jasmine has also been the formative member of several other global social enterprises. She has served as a communications/marketing and technical advisor of the gender equity startup Equilo. She also manages the world’s first Toilet Accelerator Program and leads social inclusion initiatives within the Toilet Board Coalition. Lastly, she is a health communications specialist in the Division of Global Health Protection at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is a division that is largely supporting the Coronavirus response.
(1) https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/water-sanitation-and-hygiene/
CLEAR RIVERS
Iris joined CLEAR RIVERS (formerly called Recycled Island Foundation) in 2019, a non-profit founded five years ago, to tackle plastic pollution in oceans at the source. Plastic disposed of in rivers forms 80% of all that which is found in the ocean (1).
The foundation implements “litter traps” which are passive floating devices that use no energy other than the tide, wind and current to collect plastic from rivers. It has an international scope, but the initial implementation was a 140m2 floating park in Rotterdam which provides a habitat for biodiversity.
This trap, along with another in Brussels, and regularly organised clean ups, has collected over 30,000kg of plastic (a conservative estimate) of which approximately 50% can be recycled.
All traps are installed along an education and awareness programme including workshops in schools, companies and universities. In 2019, CLEAR RIVERS reached an estimated 300 students through this initiative.
The organisation is also branching out to South-East Asia, Africa and Central America to target the world’s most polluted rivers together with the Audi Environmental Foundation, improving local recycling with more newly developed recycled products from the retrieved plastics such as furniture, Litter Traps and building materials.
Iris is personally responsible for establishing international partnerships, PR and online media efforts, and works with her team on education and awareness programmes.
As part of the Shell Scholarship for the London Summit, Iris is delighted to access a great network of potential partners and fellow Ambassadors working in her field around the world.
Sources:
(1) https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/how-does-plastic-end-ocean
Involúcrate
Emerson identified the issue of youth disenfranchisement with the political system. To tackle this, he founded Involúcrate, a youth-led organisation to foster citizen participation amongst their peers.
The organisation fosters youth participation in politics through three main avenues. The first are education workshops run in schools and universities. They host them in different towns around Guatemala about citizen participation, the importance of voting, the electoral process and a simulation of voting activity. They have reached 700 young people from over five towns.
Additionally, they ran forums during the election campaign called #TuVotoCuenta to provide direct contact between prospective candidates and young voters, educating and informing them about the political system and situation. These events attracted 900 participants all together, as well as 2,900 virtual attendees who joined via social media live streams.
The most recent project the organisation has launched is an internship in the Guatemalan congress. The first iteration was launched in January 2020, and 13 interns have been selected for the placement. This was made possible, in part, by Emerson being awarded with the Resolution Project’s prize and funding at the One Young World Summit in London.
Green Venture Tanzania
Edgar identified a solution for the damage caused to houses by flooding in Dar es Salaam. By creating durable housing materials from recycled plastic, the material responsible for pollution which exacerbates floods, he could deal with the cause and the consequence of the issue.
Aged 15, Edgar founded Green Venture Tanzania in 2015, to offer plastic shredding and extrusion services. They shred different types of plastics at a large scale, which are then melted into a form to be upcycled.
The organisation creates construction materials including paving blocks, lumber, roofing tiles and interlocking bricks from the recycled material as alternatives to wood, sand and cement which are more susceptible to rain and flooding. Through this operation, Green Venture Tanzania has recycled over 40 tonnes of plastic waste.
The plastic is collected by approximately 110 free-lance plastic collectors who Green Venture train to remove plastic pollution from the environment, categorise it, and then sell back to Green Venture or an alternative recycling organisation.
To tackle the source of pollution, Green Venture Tanzania has also educated 5000 students in 6 hour sessions on waste management. The young Tanzanians are challenged to innovate and create their own recycling solutions.
The next step for Green Venture Tanzania is to build a relationship with the government with the aim of scaling up the organisation’s vital work as effectively as possible throughout the country.
Espaces Verts du of Sahel
David joined the NGO “Espaces Verts du of Sahel” in 2013 as the head of the educational programmes. Its main purpose is to tackle the climate crisis through early intervention, by promoting sustainable development awareness in schools. David came through this education himself, and with the awareness he gained, he was eager to give back.
Through the organisation, David runs education programmes in 54 schools in Chad, running lessons twice per week over a six month period. Once the course is completed, the five highest achieving children have the opportunity to pass on their learnings to others in their school and community as peer-to-peer educators, checked on once a week by David’s team.
The lessons themselves vary from PowerPoint assisted lectures and theoretical training, to practical education interacting with nature and their environment such as planting trees. This is a highly successful programme, but limited to children in the schools.
As such, David launched an ecological residency in 2015, which is a one-month long summer camp whereby children from outside the school system can access the education. Approximately 3,000 children have received this education, aged from 6-15, and have gone on to spread the environmentalist message throughout their communities.
David is engaged with the One Young World community in Central Africa, and is working towards establishing a group of SDG Ambassadors to collaborate with other young leaders in the region in pursuit of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Timbuktu Youth Empowerment Programme
Timbuktu Youth Empowerment Programme - Mali
Bilaly Dicko
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:4
SROI
Youth unemployment is a staggering 24.4% in Mali, and is particularly high in areas of conflict (1). Bilaly is involved in various ways to support young people in the conflict zones. Bilaly has led two separate organisations.
The first is “Les Leaders de Demain”, a non-profit he founded in 2015. The programme it offers teaches fundamental leadership skills which are necessary for finding a job, but also believes in holistic, personal development, and has successfully helped to develop 200 young Malians. Of the participants, 50 have secured internships, 85 have got a secured job and 35 have created their own employment opportunity through entrepreneurialism.
Bilaly is also the Executive Director at Timbuktu Youth Empowerment Programme (TYEP). They run a 10-day training in Timbuktu for young Malians on the subject of disruptive innovation, followed up by a one-month long mentorship where they pair the participants with leaders in the private sector. There have been 25 people come through the programme, and continually receive support and advice from the team at TYEP. To date, 5 have started their own for-profit enterprises in the city since participating and 5 have been taken on for internships.
During the programme, the organisation uses local goods and service providers, contributing approximately $20,000 to the local economy over the 10 day period. The social impact grows day by day as indirect benefits exponentially increase. One of the enterprises born from TYE has already employed 500 local inhabitants.
Bilaly works on TYEP alongside fellow One Young World Ambassador El Hadj Djitteye. Since the Summit, Bilaly is looking to align their work closer with climate change and the 2030 agenda, as these are present and significant issues in the Sahel.
Sources:
Let's Step Together
Let's Step Together - Bosnia and Herzegovina
Alen Gudalo
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:6
SROI
Bosnia has struggled to repair the societal rifts wrenched open by the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s. As a result, the country is host to many schools which are home to homogeneous ethnic-groupings of students and teachers alike. Such segregation breeds prejudice from ignorance.
Projects such as “Let’s Step Together” are essential in the nation’s long-term peacebuilding process. Alen serves as Project Coordinator and leads various inter-religious projects for Youth Centre St John Paul II. These initiatives all seek to provide a Bosnian solution for a peaceful society, aiming to erase prejudice by integrating the younger generation across ethno-religious lines.
Annually, the projects reach around 70 students generally aged between 15 and 18. For the first step, the project enters schools, introducing the students to the concept of prejudice through games. The next step is to explore the notion of shared heritage. The final stage of the project is to take three study troupes to a different part of the country, where they engage with a community where they are not the ethnic majority, and meet with local, religious leaders.
Alen also hosts an inter-religious summer camp, where 55 students from schools and universities socially integrate across ethno-religious divides. The project is also beneficial for the 20 youth educators, who in return for their time are provided with training on how to communicate, run workshops, and receive real-life teaching work experience.
Alen attended the One Young World 2014 Summit in Dublin, and credits his recent inclusion as “Ambassador of the Month” for One Young World as providing international recognition to help him forge partnerships and be viewed with legitimacy in Bosnia.
CarbonEthics
CarbonEthics - Indonesia
Agung Bimo Listyanu, Jessica Novia, Innandya Irawan
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:3
SROI
Bimo from Johnson & Johnson, along with two fellow Ambassadors, Jessica from Unilever and Innandya from BP, were inspired to tackle the climate crisis. Hence, they founded CarbonEthics in May 2019.
They designed a Carbon Calculator for individuals and institutions to calculate their carbon footprint easily. This accompanies their Blue Carbon Programme to mitigate the negative impact of carbon emissions.
The organisation plants mangrove trees to provide more carbon storage than terrestrial trees, coastal defence against degradation, a habitat for biodiversity, water filtration and replenishes fisheries for local communities. It plants seaweed to serve as a “carbon sink” for storage, an environmentally friendly alternative to soil fertiliser and to reduce the impact of ocean acidification. Seagrass is also planted for many of the same benefits of the other options, as well as being the “lungs of the sea” as 1m2 of seagrass generates 10 litres of oxygen per day. Finally, it invests in coral to counter the implications of coral bleaching. Shoreline reefs offer coastal protection which has an economic net benefit for Indonesia estimated at $314 million per year, as well as boosting diversity and absorbing carbon dioxide.
This initiative has offset approximately 424 tonnes of carbon with 6,230 trees planted, 1,325 seeds of seagrass, 610 seeds of seaweed and 247 polyps of coral. The organisation also has an educational arm operating through workshops and social media campaigns, including CarbonTrip that promotes responsible eco-tourism. Additionally, by working with local communities for the implementation of the Blue Carbon Programme, CarbonEthics promotes sustainable agriculture among the 17 farmers who plant the mitigation solutions.
CarbonEthics has provided its service to 20 international and local organisations, including One Young World partners who sent delegations to the One Young World Summit in London, helping to improve the sustainability of One Young World’s flagship event.
InnovaLab
Adulai co-founded InnovaLab in 2015, to develop an eco-system of entrepreneurship in Guinea-Bissau. The national attitude amongst young Bissau-Guineans is that politics is the primary means of a stable and healthy income. However, Adulai and his co-founders identified the need for entrepreneurialism to tackle poverty, create jobs and boost economic development in a country where around 70% live below the poverty line (1).
Through in person and online, web and radio, mentoring activities, as well as OpenLabs, Forums, TechCamps, Hackathon and Bootcamps, Innovalabs inspires and empowers entrepreneurs to solve their immediate socio-economic challenges by offering access to technology, resources and stakeholder networks.
Around 5,000 people have been educated through these various courses. Additionally, approximately 20 new enterprises have been incubated, as the course catalyses innovation. One example is Votu, a civic tech platform which involves the population in politics and democracy by encouraging campaigning and increasing transparent publishing of results. Another is WeAgri, which is training over 2,000 young women in digital skills across 15 ECOWAS countries.
In addition to the 5,000 trained entrepreneurs, Innovalabs have run week-long, educational festivals for three years running, one on Science which around 2,000 people attend annually, the other on Entrepreneurship which 4,050 attend.
The Adulai’s next innovative project is UMBUNTU, a pay-as-you-go renewable energy initiative born out of the 2018 One Young World Summit in the Hague.
Sources:
Drop of Water
Hermella conceived the idea of Drop of Water (formerly called Help for a Drop of Water) in 2009 with six of her friends. They had the chance to meet Matt Damon, award-winning actor and Co-Founder of Water.org. In Ethiopia, 62 million people lack access to safe water and 97 million lack access to improved sanitation (1).
After studying civil engineering, she formally founded Drop of Water to tackle the severe water crisis attacking rural communities in Ethiopia. The organisation engages with university students and educates them in hygiene awareness as peer educators for rural communities. Between 50-60 young volunteers have been trained to support their local communities in this manner.
Drop of Water also installs clean water solutions in the communities, which are designed and chosen to suit the specific geological landscape. The installation could be a bore hole, spring water protection, or other equivalent clean water installation.
The other aspect of its work is to implement climate resilience water safety plans to help the maintenance of the clean water sources. These different stages have, through education, awareness, installation and maintenance, provided clean water access to over 30,000 rural Ethiopians in five different regions in Ethiopia.
Hermella personally has spoken internationally on clean water and the water crisis, and continues to connect and collaborate with One Young World Ambassadors working in a similar field.
Source:
(1) https://water.org/our-impact/ethiopia/
Unloc
Hayden co-founded Unloc, an educational social enterprise, in response to his local youth forum losing funding in 2011. With renewed vigour from the One Young World Summit in 2014, Hayden has grown the organisation steadily at a rate of around 40% year on year, reaching more British children every year, offering a more innovative educational programme every year, and creating a larger, more inspired generation of changemakers.
In 2019, Unloc worked with a network of over 200 partner schools and colleges across the United Kingdom. Unloc creates a unique programme for each partner, based around one or two of their core educational pillars: Enterprise, Leadership, Student Voice and Career Pathways.
Each idiosyncratic course teaches the students, and encourages them to be changemakers who contribute positively to the world around them. It is important to the organisation that this educational opportunity is available to school children regardless of their socioeconomic background, thus offering subsidised opportunities to schools in more vulnerable communities.
In 2019, Unloc reached 10,700 British school children, a significant increase on the 830 students who attended training programmes when Unloc was analysed in One Young World’s 2015 impact analysis. Of the students educated in 2019, 7,025 have received entrepreneurial training, 2,750 learned leadership skills, and 970 participated in a student voice mentorship programme.
In 2020, it is on track to reach over 19,000 students. Hayden has established other initiatives through the One Young World network, including a programme he established with fellow One Young World Ambassador Jean d’Amour Mutoni, to accelerate social enterprises in Rwanda.
Prospect for Girls
Prospect for Girls - Gambia
Fatoumatta Kassama
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:25
SROI
Gambia is a country where gender inequality remains a substantial challenge to overcome, and through her organisation Prospect for Girls, Fatoumatta has been leading the charge.
Alongside her Co-Founder, Kujeh Kah, Fatoumatta founded Prospect for Girls in March 2018 with the ambition of providing vocational skills and ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights’ education to vulnerable women in the Gambia. The two seminal projects were funded by the US Embassy in Banjul.
The first was a nationwide health campaign dubbed “My Period My Pride”, training 1,807 girls from 25 junior schools over a period of eight months. The second is a vocational skills training programme which was launched on International Women’s Day 2019 and recruited 40 women and girls to train them in tailoring, graphics design, food & beverage management and photography, recently graduating with a comprehensive, income-generating education.
The plan for 2020 is to take on 16 women with disabilities for the next incarnation of the programme, however, this is dependent on funding.
Fatoumatta attended the One Young World 2018 Summit in the Hague. She was the recipient of a €5,000 grant from her delegation partner OFID for her organisation Eye Care For All. She invested this into a transformative new project called “Free Sight Restoration Surgeries For 100 Less Privileged People in Rural Gambia”, providing 100 cataract surgeries to elderly patients in rural Gambia and beyond, monumentally improving their quality of life.
Leadership & Executive Acceleration Program
Leadership & Executive Acceleration Program - United States
Courtney Sunna
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:22
SROI
In November 2018, Courtney Sunna joined the Leadership & Executive Acceleration Program (LEAP) as a co-director. LEAP develops the networks, abilities and opportunities of Irish and Irish-American women in New York City and the tri-state area.
LEAP is multi-faceted and enhances not only the career opportunities and leadership capacity of the women involved, but the wider community that they interact with. In 2019, 16 women completed the Leadership Development programme. Through a combination of events, home-study and training, involving a multi-channel, immersive learning and development programme, they advanced their leadership, professional and interpersonal skills, and their personal passions.
LEAP brought in 12 senior level female mentors to guide the participants towards success. All 16 participants of the Leadership Development programme have stated they will use the tools and advice they have received to advance their careers. From the 2019 programme the organisation created a LEAP Women’s Council, for alumni, as a pathway to continue to benefit participants with training and a network, and as a mentor pool for current participants.
LEAP recently launched an online version of the programme to widen their reach and create a way that more women could, and continue to benefit from the expertise and guidance that LEAP offers. To date, 1,000 online participants have enrolled in the online programme. In addition, it launched a YouTube channel on the Irish International Business Network page which hosts the modules for a wider audience.
The programme partners with and supports two charities through the “LEAP in the Community” scheme: Aisling Irish Community Centre and Solace House. LEAP provided 50 employees from these two organisations with leadership and operational strategy training. It has reported successful outcomes for the individuals and organisations. LEAP has boosted the impact of these charities by an estimated 20%, and their fundraising efforts secured $90,000 in direct funding for Solace House.
I Am a Girl Barbados
I Am a Girl Barbados - Barbados
Alian Ollivierre
Ambassador-led Initiative
1:5
SROI
Alian began I Am a Girl Barbados as an event, as a result of her mentorship programme for girls with poor self-esteem. She identified that girls lacked self-esteem as well as the high rates of depression, stress, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. From this, I Am A Girl developed into a leadership academy for young, vulnerable, female Barbadians.
The organisation holds a variety of opportunities and development programmes for the network of young women, as a solution to gender inequality and to empower young women in Barbados. One example is Generation Y, a year long programme where girls connect and support each other during capacity building sessions. Another is the Girls Club, which offers biweekly educational workshops. A final example is the Summer Programme which combines and expands on the previous two programmes.
Girls who participate fully in the I Am A Girl programme are identified from a mixture of counsellors, schools, and social care institutions. As of 2019, there are 175 I Am A Girl members and over 1,500 people have participated in at least one element of the organisation’s programming.
Of the 175 members, there have been a diverse range of outcomes: 15 have received internship placements, 5 have attended university, and 15 an alternative form of further education. They have also produced 25 peer leaders, 20 junior counsellors, two have joined the organisation as staff and one has joined the US Army.
Moving forward, Alian aims to build a transitional home to support girls leaving social care institutions including a 6-18 month developmental programme. I Am A Girl has also established a regional partnership supporting girls in Dominica and St Lucia, called “50 More”. This is part of a wider move towards regional collaboration in the Caribbean.
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 Biographies: short biographies of Ambassadors who are growing into influential leaders for social good in some of the world’s largest companies, organisations, and in government.
- One Young World Funded Projects: detailed case studies of grant recipients from One Young World's funding opportunities, including Lead2030, Rebuilding Communities, and the COVID Young Leaders Fund.