Contact: Jake Wood: 818.804.8651 Email: wood@teamrubiconusa.org Web Site: http://teamrubiconusa.org
Team Rubicon Places First in Mobilize.org’s Democracy 2.0 Competition at “Beyond the Welcome Home” Summit April 6, 2010, LOS ANGELES – Team Rubicon proudly announces they have won first prize and a share of $25,000 in grant money in the Democracy 2.0 competition at Mobilize.org’s “Beyond the Welcome Home” summit for their proposal to speed the deployment of medical aid in disaster relief. The competition, held at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Cal., April 1 – 3, invited Millennial veterans between 18 and 34 years old to propose groundbreaking ways for veterans to better their campuses, communities and country. A select group of 100 veterans was chosen to attend the summit and sixteen proposals were submitted for final evaluation by a panel of judges, expert advisors and participants. The criteria for judging this year’s Democracy 2.0 competition included the idea’s creativity/innovation, its impact on society, effective use of new/social media communications, and long-term sustainability. Team Rubicon’s presentation described their unique model for rapid response in worldwide disasters, a paradigm that reinvented medical relief following the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Using a military-style deployment of small, mobile units, Team Rubicon was able to reach remote locations not served by conventional aid groups, bringing doctors, nurses, paramedics, and medics to more than 3,500 survivors, many of whom would have otherwise died from their injuries. “You have defined a new way of crisis response,” noted one of the judges, Joan Abrahamson, president of the Jefferson Institute, a MacArthur fellow, and former assistant chief of staff to vice president George H. Bush, in awarding the prize. Retired Lt. Col. Jack Amberg, senior director of the veterans program for the McCormick Foundation in Chicago and Beyond the Welcome Home judge added, “[With your social networking outreach] You’re empowering people who can’t go there to do something.” Team Rubicon co-founder and president, Jake Wood, 26, a decorated Marine combat veteran, accepted the award on behalf of Team Rubicon. He was assisted by co-founder and Marine veteran, William McNulty, 32, and Clay Hunt, 27, who was wounded in Iraq and returned to Afghanistan as a Marine scout-sniper. Drew Lewis, a member of Team Rubicon’s board of advisors, provided additional support as the fourth team member.
“Our team has worked tirelessly in forming a model for disaster relief and we are so excited to be able to share our model and our work with others. Team Rubicon thrives in chaos and will continue to thrive and help those in disaster areas with the help of organizations such as Mobilize.com. Today was awesome, but it’s just the beginning.” said president and co-founder Jake Wood.” According to Maya Enista, CEO of Mobilize.org, funded projects will also become 12-month projects of Mobilize.org, whose partners, MTV, the Goldhirsh Foundation, The McCormick Foundation and ServiceNation: Mission Serve, are committed to building their success. Team Rubicon, an all-volunteer organization that is self-sustaining, self-reliant, and selfdeploying, plans to use the grant money to help insure the success of future deployments, including the purchase of medical supplies and covering the expense of travel. About Team Rubicon: Team Rubicon bridges the critical time gap between large natural disasters and conventional aid response. We provide vanguard medical care by fielding small, self-sustaining, mobile teams of specially skilled first-responders. To deploy rapidly, we rely heavily on a horizontal command structure, social networking technology, and the employment of local nationals. About Mobilize.org Mobilize.org is an all-partisan organization, built and led by Millennials. Founded eight years ago by 10 students on the campus of UC Berkeley, Mobilize.org has grown into a national Millennial movement, engaging the Millennial generation in building the next level of the democracy we will inherit - Democracy 2.0. Utilizing technology and social networking to connect Millennials to each other online, its national Democracy 2.0 Award Summits gather Millennials from around the country to discuss issues impacting our generation and to develop sustainable solutions to address them. The Mobilize.org mission is to improve the way democracy works by investing in Millennial-driven solutions. ###