Throughout the year our teams of students work with like-minded organizations striving to promote sustainable development in Latin America.
Current Partnerships
Action for Education was founded to address the critical lack of educational opportunities in western Honduras. They are a 100% volunteer-run organization working to improve the educational and health environment in Honduras.
"We work to create affordable, accessible, and sustainable opportunities for education in western Honduras. Our mission is centered around bringing resources from the United States to enable Honduran communities to succeed in their own way. By drawing on expertise from those around Honduras and in the United States, we strive to make our model as effective as possible."
"We work to create affordable, accessible, and sustainable opportunities for education in western Honduras. Our mission is centered around bringing resources from the United States to enable Honduran communities to succeed in their own way. By drawing on expertise from those around Honduras and in the United States, we strive to make our model as effective as possible."
Libraries Without Borders' mission is to address the structural causes of economic and human under-development through the promotion of better and innovative educative practices, providing access to life-long learning and training, helping disseminate information and knowledge, reducing the digital divide and promoting cultural heritage. This objective is part of a broader approach to fight against all forms of ignorance and obscurantism. By creating and reinforcing libraries, training librarians, distributing books, supporting local publishing and designing library networks, Libraries Without Borders actively promotes access to knowledge throughout the world.
AVANTI is a non-profit, dynamic, innovative and high impact Ecuadorian NGO. They implement sustainable development projects in order to combat poverty and promote entrepreneurship and social innovation in Ecuador. AVANTI’s national projects have changed the lives of many. In recent years, they have offered great support in Coaque, Ecuador. Coaque is an Ecuadorian community that houses about 600 poor families. In April 2016, the community was severely affected by a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake. Families lost their homes, and most schools were destroyed. AVANTI offered immense aid in disaster relief: food, water, provisional residential accommodations and a humanitarian center. Now, AVANTI has partnered with Libraries Without Borders and BUILD Latin America to implement a digital library program in Coaque in order to expand access to online educational resources and promote Coaque’s educational development and economic reconstruction.
Past Partnerships
Human Connections was founded on the notion that seeing the world from a diversity of perspectives inspires vision, innovation, and action towards lasting social change.
"Our work starts with our clients -- low-income artisans, tradespeople, and business owners in western Mexico. We then invite travelers and students to visit and interact with our clients through day tours, seminars, and internships. These experiences facilitate profound cross-cultural exchange, and as a result, mutual understanding flourishes and relationships form. We then funnel the profits from our programs directly into financial literacy and business classes for our clients and their communities. While our model is multifaceted, our goal is simple: to foster connections that are transformative, rewarding, and lasting."
"Our work starts with our clients -- low-income artisans, tradespeople, and business owners in western Mexico. We then invite travelers and students to visit and interact with our clients through day tours, seminars, and internships. These experiences facilitate profound cross-cultural exchange, and as a result, mutual understanding flourishes and relationships form. We then funnel the profits from our programs directly into financial literacy and business classes for our clients and their communities. While our model is multifaceted, our goal is simple: to foster connections that are transformative, rewarding, and lasting."
Escalera is a social purpose organization on a mission to end school shortage in our lifetime.
"We will end Mexico’s school shortage. Then, we’ll end it for the entire world. We empathize with students to design solutions that work. This means we design based on student feedback and not donor demands. Students design solutions, and donors fund them. To best serve children without school, we must change the systems that serve them. To change systems, we need to influence policy. To influence policy, we engage policymakers early and prove solutions at scale. To engage policymakers early, we co-design solutions together with their government agencies. Changing systems is the best way we can serve children without school. When a solution changes a system, we exit and move on. And then we smile, because we're on our way to end the school shortage."
"We will end Mexico’s school shortage. Then, we’ll end it for the entire world. We empathize with students to design solutions that work. This means we design based on student feedback and not donor demands. Students design solutions, and donors fund them. To best serve children without school, we must change the systems that serve them. To change systems, we need to influence policy. To influence policy, we engage policymakers early and prove solutions at scale. To engage policymakers early, we co-design solutions together with their government agencies. Changing systems is the best way we can serve children without school. When a solution changes a system, we exit and move on. And then we smile, because we're on our way to end the school shortage."
La Comunidad que Construimos is a small nonprofit based in Trujillo, Peru, where they worked with community members in two different neighborhoods in the city to run an after-school program that helped children build self-esteem by putting them in positions of power as teachers of their own culture. Volunteers teach workshops with Young Leaders, helping them to master new skills and abilities. In turn, Young Leaders teach volunteers all about the cultural richness that Peru has to offer – after all, they are the experts!
"It is La Comunidad's belief that by focusing on self-esteem building and empowerment with youth, we can help equip our Young Leaders with the confidence and positive self-image needed to take control of their own futures, and to be the next generation of change-makers in their own communities."
"It is La Comunidad's belief that by focusing on self-esteem building and empowerment with youth, we can help equip our Young Leaders with the confidence and positive self-image needed to take control of their own futures, and to be the next generation of change-makers in their own communities."