At a GO Campaign project for disabled youth in Tanzania
Last we spoke (in January '17), GO Campaign was still celebrating its 10-year anniversary. Bring us to today: What has happened since then? So much! When GO Campaign started in 2006, my goal was to help a group of 20 orphans in Tanzania. Now, 12 years later, we’ve helped over 125,000 children across 34 countries. Since I spoke to Eden readers at the start of 2017, we’ve been able to expand our work in the USA, especially in our own backyard of Los Angeles where we are now supporting programs for foster youth, girls empowerment, arts programming, tutoring, mentorship and more. In addition, we’ve recently built a new campus in Tanzania for children with intellectual challenges such as autism, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy and other special needs. It will be a game-changer for special needs children and their families across East Africa. Can you share more about what makes GO Campaign's model so unique? We think differently. Instead of going in and imposing our ideas on a community, we simply go in and listen. We identify pioneering local heroes in communities around the world and we listen to them. We offer them our resources and expertise, but we always rely on them to know what is best for children in their communities. And our “Local Heroes” range from the celebrated, like Nobel Prize Winner Kailash Satyarthi in India and CNN Superhero Pushpa Basnet in Nepal, to the quiet and unknown, like school principal Jessica Flores in Peru and youth activists Anja Thiessen and Bianca Zaharescu in rural Mississippi. And on the donor side, we listen there too. We want our donors to feel connected to their giving, to choose projects that resonate with them. You care about the Middle East? We have projects there you can help. You care about protecting girls from sex-trafficking? We have projects that do that. You like growing businesses? We have entrepreneurship and microloan programs that enable youth to become breadwinners for their families. We let our donors choose how they want to have an impact. From East L.A. to East Africa, from Compton to Cambodia, Harlem to Haiti, we’ve got a way for you to connect and make a difference.
8 THEEDENMAGAZINE.COM e December 2018
Visiting a GO Campaign supported school near Machu Picchu, Peru