Pathway to Action (2014)

P A T H W A Y

T O

SECOND EDITION

A C T I O N

THE RESOLUTION PROJECT PRESENTS

P A T H W A Y

T O

A C T I O N

Second Edition By the Fellows, Volunteers and Staff of The Resolution Project

Special Thanks to Sarah Evans for Design and Layout, and Kelsey Overby for Concept and Editing

THE MISSION OF THE RESOLUTION PROJECT

I S T O D E V E L O P S O C I A L LY- R E S P O N S I B L E

YOUNG LEADERS AND EMPOWER THEM TO

M A K E A P O S I T I V E I M PAC T TO DAY.

Photo provided by Resolution Fellow Hussein Hassan of Community Led Total Sanitation.

THE VISION OF THE RESOLUTION PROJECT

I S TO C R E AT E A G E N E R AT I O N O F

LEADERS WITH A LIFELONG COMMITMENT

TO S O C I A L R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y.

Photo provided by Resolution Fellow Prarthana Bhattari of Clean Energy from Waste.

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These students have the

energy, idealism, and will to solve some of the world’s

most persistent problems.

G

iven new ways for people to connect,

and evolving

technologies, it is increasingly possible for entrepreneurially-minded people to build businesses and ventures without

undergraduate students around the world

as “leaders of tomorrow.” These students have the energy, idealism, and will to solve some of the world’s most persistent problems, but lack the access to capital, training, and ecosystem of support to realize those goals today. With the best of intentions, they hope to make a difference, but senior conference speakers

the training they receive as “leaders of tomorrow,” implying that their time has not yet arrived. Having managed youth summits themselves, the founders of The Resolution Project saw an opportunity for change and took action.

THE BEGINNING In its first few years, Resolution tested methods to activate these young leaders with its first conference partner, Harvard World Model UN (“WorldMUN�). In 2007, Resolution launched an online platform for WorldMUN attendees to connect. In 2008, this evolved into a mini-case competition, through which conference attendees submitted a short essay on a global or local problem, and how they would create an actionable venture to solve it.

Resolution received nearly 60 submissions, but the question was: how could Resolution channel this outburst of entrepreneurial spirit?

Carlos Garcia and his team present in the Venture Challenge Finals at WorldMUN 2009 in The Hague, Netherlands.

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n the absence of access to the social sector or project funding, it was unclear how students would fund the ventures they submitted in the mini-case competition, or to whom

during implementation. But it was more

that 60 solutions were developed in a few days revealed that this marriage of a student conference and a social venture competition could galvanize new leaders who might not otherwise have tried to launch a socially-responsible project. In a world in which so many students go to the private sector for lack of other obvious options, this was a breakthrough.

This underserved community of undergraduates was hugely diverse in so many ways—geographically, academically, ethnically, and economically. They decided to attend WorldMUN, often at great cost and with huge fundraising efforts and preparation. They had irrepressible energy and optimism, but no obvious pathway to Social Venture Challenge.

action after the last day of the conference.

Resolution co-founders Oliver Libby and George Tsiatis announce the at WorldMUN 2009.

Judges from Resolution’s pitches, including Advisory Board member Ariel Dora Stern and co-founders Oliver and George.

In 2009, Resolution travelled to WorldMUN Venture Challenge (“SVC�). Over 20 teams made it through three online rounds to present their ideas during the Social Venture Forum. Hundreds of their peers streamed through the science-fair-like setting, marveling at these youth-led social ventures.

In the Finals, a pitch session with a panel of judges, competitors earnestly presented about the state of their hometowns, the plight of battered women, and the need for technology in rural areas. Five inspiring young leaders were chosen, becoming and launching their proposed Ventures immediately.

THE SVCMODEL Having built a strong, proven system in partnership with WorldMUN, Resolution began partnering with more Host Conferences in 2012 to increase its sources of undergraduate student leaders.

Because of the scalability and portability of the SVC model, the organization was able to expand its portfolio of Host Conferences rapidly. The SVC also proved to be a compelling proposition for youth conferences, given its ability to extend student impact beyond the final day of the conference and add to the conferences’ value proposition to students.

Social Venture Challenge award announcements at the Harvard National Model United Nations conference in February 2014

Resolution SVC Forum at CGI U 2014

SVC winners at CGI U 2014

Resolution has a proven model for identifying and inspiring young leaders through our SVCs and Fellowships: We collaborate We invite undergraduate students attending these conferences to propose social ventures through the SVC. This is a multi-stage competition, combining web-based submissions, live rounds of presentations, and due diligence.

We award Resolution Fellowships to those young leaders with the most compelling personal leadership characteristics and promising social venture proposals.

We support our Fellows with dynamic, hands-on mentorship, seed funding, and access to world-class global advisory resources from our dedicated team of volunteers and Guides.

The impact of activating potential young leaders through social entrepreneurship is inspiring; they become engaged early in making positive changes in the world and the character of their leadership is infused with social responsibility.

Resolution’s current host conferences include Harvard WorldMUN, Harvard National Model United Nations, The Youth Assembly at the United Nations, The Clinton Global Initiative University, Semester at Sea, The African Leadership Academy’s Indaba at University of Rochester, and The Igniting Innovation Summit.

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The Resolution Project

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has shown that sociallyresponsible young

entrepreneurs who want

to create a positive change no longer have to wait for

tomorrow, but are capable of leading today.

—Chelsea Clinton

Photo of Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation with the Social Venture Challenge Winners and the Resolution team at CGI U in March 2014

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The Resolution SVC at CGI U

2014 incorporated the largest Social Venture Forum in

Resolution’s history, involving 55 Ventures, over 80 student

competitors, and 21 Resolution team members.

Resolution’s largest SVC Forum in history at CGI U 2014

Social Venture Challenge Forum participants at our inaugural SVC with the African Leadership Academy

SVC Winners from HNMUN 2014

Resolution Fellows Hussein Hassan (left), Jean Paul Laurent (second from left), and Rose Wang (right) with SVC Winners at the Youth Assembly at the United Nations in January 2014

OUR FELLOWS Resolution’s mission is to develop socially-responsible young leaders and empower them to make a positive impact today, and its vision is a generation of leaders with a lifelong commitment to social responsibility. Resolution is empowering a global community of Resolution Fellows to begin their lifetime of positive impact early—as undergraduate students—while becoming effective and connected leaders for good in the world.

Resolution Fellow Rahmah Aderinoye, working in Nigeria to teach basic vocational skills and empower workers to form equipment-sharing collectives.

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lthough the Ventures that Resolution Fellows create have great impact,

they also serve as the crucible for the development of their leadership.

Whether Fellows continue with their original ventures or not, these

social responsibility and effective management skills. Resolution thus creates multiple layers of impact, from social ventures, to successful young leaders, to engaged and inspired volunteers. Even in the few short years

have done incredible work and have helped shape communities around the world. The following pages highlight just a few initiatives that our Fellows are actively pursuing, organized

by Resolution’s seven core areas of sustainable impact.

IMPACT

BASIC NEEDS

DEVELOPMENT

E D U C AT I O N

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

EQUALITY & EMPOWERMENT

H E A LT H & W E L L N E S S

H U M A N I TA R I A N A I D

Photo provided by Resolution Fellows Casimira Karunaratne and Ishani Premaratne of GrowLanka.

B A C K YA R D B E D S

basic needs

Building raised backyard gardening beds for families in West Philadelphia to address food insecurity, while providing agriculture education and access to a farmers market to sell surplus produce.

Resolution Fellows Lindsay Bushong and Christian Brown.

Resolution Fellow Christian Brown builds a backyard gardening bed.

W

ith many homes being over two miles from a grocery store and

lacking access to transportation, Philadelphia suffers from a food insecurity rate of over 20 percent. To encourage and enable families to grow some of their own produce, Resolution Fellows Lindsay Bushong and Christian Brown have launched “Backyard Beds”, a venture that helps families in West Philadelphia install raised gardening beds in their backyards and provides training on agriculture and cultivation.

With Backyard Beds, families can grow

foot each season, providing access to healthy produce and nutrition. They can also earn additional income from a buy-back system that Backyard Beds is implementing to purchase

a local farmers market. Lindsay and Christian

Growers Program. Food deserts are a huge and growing problem in America’s urban landscape Resolution Fellows Lindsay Bushong and Christian Brown are providing West Philadelphia residents the opportunity to grow their own food.

today, and these Fellows are proving a model for creating oases of fresh produce.

Local community members working to maintain shared gardening beds.

Christian poses with residents and their new backyard gardening beds.

These gardening beds are providing nutritious and affordable food for residents of West Philadelphia.

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Philadelphia has a food

insecurity rate of 20.4%, meaning over 300,000

adults and children do not

have access to healthy foods.

GROWLANKA

development

Connecting job-seekers in isolated parts of rural Sri Lanka to local job openings through an innovative mobile job alert system.

Resolution Fellows Casimira Karunaratne and Ishani Premaratne.

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n the aftermath of a civil war that left behind more than 90,000 war widows, northern Sri Lanka suffers from high unemployment rates due primarily to an information

employers. Employers do not have the ability to advertise job opportunities to villagers who would be willing to work for the salaries they offer and, thus,

new factories that are being built in the region. Understanding this problem, Resolution Fellows Casimira Karunaratne and Ishani Premaratne founded GrowLanka to make post-disaster relief

They did this by developing a mobile-based system that sends job alerts from employers to job-seekers in the region. In their recent pilot of training activities, they signed up more than 300 students at Jaffna University, and are working with Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Youth and Skills Development for a national roll out. Casi and Ishani are Resolution Fellows Casimira Karunaratne and Ishani Premaratne pose with team member Inesha Premaratne at a Sri Lankan war memorial.

both of Sri Lankan descent and currently students at Harvard University.

through an innovative mobile system.

Casi signing up Jaffna University in northern Sri Lanka.

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GrowLanka is not just

about investing in a new

technological innovation— it is about investing in the people.

Casi discusses GrowLanka with a local community member in Sri Lanka.

THE MOBILE SCIENCE LAB

education

Teaching underprivileged children in India about complex scientific principles through after-school sessions and application-based learning.

Resolution Fellows Prachiti Dalvi and Pranali Dalvi.

M

any underfunded schools in India utilize rote memorization techniques,

rather than application-based learning methods, due to lack of funding and resources. To address this deficiency, Resolution Fellows and twin sisters Prachiti Dalvi and Pranali Dalvi designed an interactive, applicationbased science curriculum for grades 5 through 7. To-date, they have worked with more than 500 children in slums in Thane, India. Their curriculum encourages children to draw parallels between the classroom and their everyday lives, while cementing their understanding of diverse sciencerelated topics, from physics to botany.

use solely recyclable materials, such as straws and plastic water bottles, to emphasize the importance of resourcefulness and sustainability.

Prachiti and Pranali graduated from Resolution Fellows Prachiti and Pranali Dalvi of The Mobile Science Lab are teaching science lessons to

Duke in the spring and just began their Masters’ at Georgetown University.

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With The Mobile Science Lab

we wanted students to realize that science surrounds them

and therefore is not a subject of the ‘elite’.

Prachiti and Pranali engaging students in a science experiment using balloons and string.

GEYSER FLICKER

energy&environment Promoting energy efficiency through the development of a boiler-activation device to address South Africa’s power crisis and reduce electricity costs for families.

Resolution Fellows Barry McKenna and Harald Oswin.

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outh Africa is facing a power

energy and climate challenge.

Families are doing all they can to reduce their electricity

costs, and lessen the load on the power grid at peak hours. This is essential to maintaining national power stability and reducing

(or “geysers”) account for nearly 40% of a

Fellows Barry McKenna and Harald Oswin saw an opportunity to reduce energy usage.

By designing a simple mechanism to automate the activation of the boiler at key times, they

and cost savings for families. Naming their venture “Geyser Flicker”, the team is working to deploy their low-cost device through local retailers and scale it into a revenue-generating social enterprise. From the Kingdom of Swaziland in Southern Africa, Harald is an Applied Mathematics concentrator at Harvard University. Barry is a mechanical engineering student at Harvard University and is primarily Photo provided by Resolution Fellows Barry McKenna and Harald Oswin of Geyser Flicker.

interested in energy-conservation technology,

Barry and Harald are designing a unique switch that will regulate geysers (boilers) at key times.

Barry, Harald, and the Geyser Flicker team (left and bottom right) are designing a unique switch (top right) that will regulate ‘geysers’ (boilers) at key times – this will help save energy and be safer to use than current systems.

Harald (left) and Barry (right) working on their Geyser Flicker prototype.

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with electricity manually turn

off their geysers to keep utility bills in check.

M E R I T O K S AV E

equality&empowerment Engaging youth to combat gender-based, family, and sexual violence in Papua New Guinea and improve accessibility of support systems for victims.

Resolution Fellows Ayesha Lutschini, Tasman Bain, and Courtney Price.

Photo provided by Vlad Sokhin/Panos Pictures.

K

nown for its cultural diversity, the South

Papua New Guinea also

gender inequality and social injustices against women. Resolution Fellows Ayesha Lutschini, Tasman Bain, and Courtney Price are addressing genderbased violence by raising awareness of

Through their Venture, Meri Toksave (which loosely translates to “information for women” in Tok Pisin), they are improving information accessibility and supporting referral systems for victims.

They are also empowering women and engaging with men to overcome the attitudes and stigmas surrounding

their onboarding as Resolution Fellows, the team compiled a comprehensive directory of emergency and supportive services for domestic violence victims —

is now being used by the United Nations Photo provided by Vlad Sokhin/Panos Pictures. country.

Resolution Fellows Courtney Price (left), Ayesha Lutschini (center left), and Tasman Bain (right) of Meri Toksave pose with a local volunteer in Papua New Guinea.

Meri Toksave is distributing thousands of print and online copies of their emergency resources directory for domestic violence victims in Papua New Guinea.

Photo provided by Vlad Sokhin/Panos Pictures.

Quotation from Resolution Fellow Ayesha Lutschini

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I can count on my hands the

women [that I know in Papua New Guinea] who haven’t

been affected by violence.

T H E PAT H F I N D E R I N I T I AT I V E

health&wellness Utilizing equine-assisted therapy to support returning veterans suffering from PTSD and provide the opportunity to increase self-awareness, confidence, and purpose through a curriculum in natural horsemanship.

Resolution Fellow Mike Pereira.

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pon returning from combat to the United States, veterans can face very serious psychological

challenges, ranging from depression to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The Department of Veteran Affairs estimates that every day, 22 veterans commit suicide.

Resolution Fellow and United States veteran Mike Pereira wanted to help

by teaching them how to trust their own leadership and give back to the community.

to leverage effective equine therapy techniques in helping veterans train

classes, veterans learn the basics of horsemanship and equine-maintenance,

leaders in equine-assisted therapy sessions and to teach local families. In late October

with one of the horses used in the equine-assisted therapy sessions his Venture offers to US veterans.

civilian), and is currently in the process of

Initiative offers US veterans opportunities to increase selfawareness and a curriculum in horsemanship.

Photo and quotation provided by Resolution Fellow Mike Pereira of

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Learning how to understand

and lead a horse is learning how to understand and lead yourself.

C O M M U N I T Y L E D TOTA L S A N I TAT I O N

humanitarian aid Training women in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Somaliland on the basics of water sanitation and hygiene, to decrease rates of illness, malnutrition and infant/maternal mortality.

Resolution Fellow Hussein Hassan.

T

he Jowle settlements in Somalia lack access to basic public sanitation and safe water sources, resulting in high rates of disease,

malnutrition, and infant/maternal mortality.

In response to this crisis, Resolution Fellow Hussein Hassan founded Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS). Hussein is working with local partners to bring sorely needed sanitation resources and training to this at-risk and marginalized population, while empowering women in these communities to act as the catalysts for the adoption of these new kits and methods. In late 2013, Hussein and the CLTS team also provided critical support, services, and care to those affected by the tropical cyclone in Northern Somalia. The CLTS teams were the

communities and reached 1,840 patients to treat 3,840 normal and severe cases of communicable diseases, maternal complications, malnutrition and anemia in a period of three months. The CLTS team, recently received a top grant of $300,000 USD from the WASH and

Photo provided by Resolution Fellow Hussein Hassan of Community Led Total Sanitation.

additional vulnerable communities inside the IDP settlements and host communities.

Hussein is empowering women in the IDP camps by training them in the use of WASH kits.

Concerned about water contamination and hygiene issues in internally displaced persons camps in northern Somalia, Hussein decided to leverage an existing innovation— the WASH kit—and bring it, along with training materials, to underserved communities.

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Women in the camp are

being trained to become agents of positive social change.

Photo provided by Resolution Fellow Hussein Hassan of Community Led Total Sanitation.

L O O K I N G

F O R W A R D

T

he Resolution Project is galvanizing a generation of leaders. Resolution Fellows are

among the most promising students today, with a passion for improving the world by solving its problems.

coupled with the training, mentorship, and support they receive through their Resolution Fellowships, helps to ensure they have the greatest chance of success, and the opportunity to lead not only tomorrow, but today.

As Resolution continues to increase its impact through its growing Fellow community and its inspiring Ventures, Resolution will continue to operate with the assurance that leaders of now make better leaders of tomorrow, and that some impact today leads to bigger impact tomorrow. Challenges are threatening to overwhelm the world, and yet our hope grows because of the generation of leaders who are starting today and committing their lives to social responsibility.

170+

FELLOWS

90+

VENTURES

40+

COUNTRIES

6

CONTINENTS

AND

GROWING Photo courtesy of Community Led Total Sanitation founder, Resolution Fellow Hussein Hassan.

www.resolutionproject.org