Social Impact Social Media

Founded in 1988 the charity whose volunteers once built hiking trails, worked in libraries, and did myriad other tasks, has overhauled its service program to focus on a single mission: improving graduation rates in struggling public schools. The transformation was tied to a Johns Hopkins research study worked on by Robert Balfanz,brother of City Year's President Jim Balfanz. According to the Johns Hopkins study the high-school dropout crisis is concentrated. Roughly 12 percent of the country’s high schools account for 50 percent of the students who don’t graduate. Says Robert Balfanz, “It all sort of clicked in my mind,” he says. “They can give us a team of 10 to 15 corps members who are trained and focused and are in the building 7 to 7.” If each volunteer works with 15 students who show warning signs that they might drop out, he says, “we can now reach 150 to 200 kids a day with that constant nagging and nurturing.”  The math and English tutoring and the volunteers’ work...

sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com Carmel Judd is Rising International's Founder & Executive Director. In 2002 she gave up the successful business she owned and ran for 20 years to start Rising International, the first non-profit to use the home party business model to contribute to solving poverty.  Rising International sells crafts made by the world's poorest people - women. In addition, Rising trains under-employed women in the U.S. to run their own Rising Home Party businesses. Today Rising works with women in 27 countries, focusing on areas of the world where it's the hardest to be alive as woman.  To hear Carmel tell the story of Rising International use this TedX link (and share it with your social networks) http://www.tedxsantacruz.org/ Encourage your social connections to get involved--- send them to  www. risinginternational .org

In my  more than 2 years of blogging here  (my nonprofit social good blog) and at www.successsful-woment-blog.com,  my lifestyle and business resource blog,  this is the first I have found my subject matter appropriate for both. Social TV – Mashable was writing about it in 2011. Nielsen shared changes and visions of engaging viewers in content in 2013 as the engagement of consumers in content from one platform to another as a means of engaging consumers in ads. Cut to late 2013, early 2014--new visionaries are bringing to the table a new kind of Social TV and a new meaning for engaging with content. The visionaries I am talking about are philanthropist Jeff Skoll and CEO Jim Berk of Participant Media (and PivoTv and TAG Media), and Marc Erlbaum of Philadelphia-based startup Eflixir – delivering a streaming platform of socially meaningful and cause related films via Amazon. Erlbaum is also founder of Nationlight Productions producer of films  Café ...

urbanharvester.org Founded by Linda Hess in 2009 South Pasadena-based Urban Harvester is a nonprofit solving multiple problems to the benefit of grocery stores, restaurants, food pantries providing services for the hungry and those in need of a healthy meal. According to the US Department of Agriculture 1 in 6 Americans go to be hungry every night. Data from The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicates that 40% of the food produced in the United States is discarded each year. Enter Urban Havester. In 2013 the organization recovered 30,000 fresh meals - that's 20 tons of fresh food rescued rather than wasted. To learn more or to donate to support their good work visit www.urbanharvester.org

Since 1987 the Appalachian Community Fund (ACF) has been making a difference – helping create social change in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. appalachiancommunityfund.org ACF funds and encourages grassroots social change in Central Appalachia. ACF works to build a sustainable base of resources to support community-led organizations seeking to overcome and address issues of race, economic status, gender, sexual identity, and disability. As a community-controlled fund, ACF offers leadership to expand and strengthen the movement for social change through its practices and policies. Their efforts range from mentoring teenagers and guiding them toward college, supporting women in emotional crisis to keeping the only public clinic serving the poor open. And ACF has forced changes in the Federal Black Lung Program for miners and those in mining areas and they have helped protect endangered forests in the Appalachian region. To find out more so you can ...

wellsbringhope.org It all started when Gil Garcetti spoke at Barbara Goldberg’s Salon Forum in 2008 sharing powerful photos he had taken in Western Africa. He shared the dire need for safe drinking water and the endless struggles of women and girls to get it.    In 2009 Barbara founded Wells Bring Hope and, partnering with World Vision, drilled 10 wells the first year. Inspired by the commitment of Wells Bring Hope Gil Garcetti continues help share the story of this struggle for safe drinking water through speaking opportunities and his photography. In the Fall of 2007, the UCLA Fowler Museum had an exhibition of his photographs, “Women, Water and Wells.” In 2009, many of these photos were on exhibition in the visitors lobby of the United Nations in New York. In February, 2008, these same photographs and his words inspired the founding of “Wells Bring Hope.” Since its start Wells Bring Hope has funded 681 wells  and 3 solar water systems helping...

blac.media Named for Hiedelberg Street in Detroit The Hiedleberg project began with Tyree Guyton decorating houses in a  Detroit community that resembled a burnt out war zone in 1986. Today the project uses art to teach community children about art and the environment while instilling a sense of community. Through the organization's ingenuity they have engaged students and professors from Wayne State University to the University of Michigan and Harvard. The photo here is of artwork from Tim Burke's Detroit Industrial Gallery Working with children that walk past rubble, debris, crime and abandon houses day after day The Hiedelberg project networks urban vacant lands into art/play/garden spaces while teaching children the philosophy of  "art-as-life." They have a Young Adult Heidelberg program that is nurturing and mentoring young adults, 18 - 25, to become community leaders and nurture the...