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Posted by Sarah Whitney and Claire Bristow, Fellows
There are walls!
Construction is moving along. The community hall has walls, and we are thrilled. We even spent the afternoon sitting inside the new building just getting used to it!
Azaph Sithole is the senior member of our committee. He is an Elder and therefore is well respected by the community. The group of Elders in Uta work to help the local traditional leadership to guide the community. He has worked his life to support his 14 children, all of whom have successes that their father can brag about. He has a reputation across Uta of being able to provide excellent life advice, some of which we’ve had the opportunity to witness. As an Elder, Azaph has helped us bridge the gap between traditional leadership and Uta’s future leaders. When the planning committee needed to secure permission-to-occupy from the local chief for the land, his role allowed him to help the group navigate this system and made that process possible.
Azaph announced at our last committee meeting that he would take it upon himself to survey the building site at 5am Friday morning in order to begin construction on the community hall fence. Azaph has been getting price quotes for fence materials from local hardware stores.
The original and most basic purposes of the community hall are to hold meetings and facilitate pension distribution. Azaph is an example of a member of the community who collects pension from the government but is currently is unable to do so in a comfortable environment where he and others can be protected from sun or rain. The government will be able to use the community hall as a pension site so that mothers and the elderly will be able to collect every month in a secure location. Azaph’s leadership in the community and in the planning committee is a blessing and his commitment to the project has been an inspiration to the rest of the committee as well as to us.
What if you could impact 50,000 lives in rural Africa? What if it only took 10 hours? What if you won a free iPod nano for volunteering?
Would you do it?
ThinkImpact is calling on you to join the Impact Corps – a group of 75 supporters that are committed to alleviating poverty through sustainable development.
The Impact Corps is mobilizing from January 15 until January 22 (only one week) to get votes for ThinkImpact in the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook.
We’ll provide you the tools to get your networks involved. We’re just asking you to commit 10 hours to reaching out to your communities.
If ThinkImpact wins $1 million (or even $100,000 as one of the 5 runners up) in the Chase Community Giving contest, then EVERY Impact Corps member will win an iPod Nano! The most committed, hardest working corps member will win a FREE trip to South Africa in 2010 with our Global Development Ambassadors trip.
What are you waiting for?
Sign up now! Go to http://bit.ly/impactcorps. Only the first 75 volunteers to sign up will be eligible for the free gift. Take action now. Make an impact!
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
Fundraising for many people is the least exciting activity they can think of. Most of my friends loathe raising money, even if it is for a cause they absolutely love and believe in with genuine passion. That is why fundraising should be fun. Sarah Whitney and the GW SMRC chapter successfully pulled off their 3rd Annual Anything But Clothes Run, and it was a wild success. The campus dean joined them along with a slew of students all taking the steps (no pun intended) to build a community center in Uta South Africa.
The article in the campus paper can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/ccas2r. What other ways can you think of that make fundraising fun and successful?
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
Working on international development from a cushy Washington, DC office has its challenges. People always say that you must love your job purely because your mission is important to you, and that you feel like work is rewarding outside of yourself. They are correct, but it’s not so simple.
Posted by Daniel Armanios, Former Global Development Intern
I found that South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape, suffers from water scarcity, which inadequate infrastructure has exacerbated. My goal is now to help rural communities self-develop infrastructures they can locally manage to ensure a sustainable water supply. This goal directly emanated from what I saw on-the-ground in Manyeleti. Through it all, I realized that all peoples share one common value: a sunny and indefatigable human spirit. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
Reading “Good to Great in the Social Sector” by Jim Collins was enjoyable, if brief. What makes me really excited, though, is the way he breaks down the three circles that lead to success. First, you must be passionate about what you do. We are insanely passionate about what we do, so that’s good news 
Second you must do what you can be the best in the world at. I stongly believe that SMRC can provide the best and most productive global internship program and fellowship process in the world for international development. Third you have to drive your “Resource Engine”. In the for-profit sector they call that the economic engine, but non-profits require three pieces to build this circle: Time, Money and Brand.
Time comes from your staff and your volunteers. We have many, and we hope to recruit many more. Money comes from a revenue generating model and effective fundraising, which we are working hard to build. But Brand is the most elusive. Brand is how people talk about the organization, what people think of when they hear the name “Student Movement for Real Change,” how much legitimacy people feel we have, who we work with, who we are funded by, and so much more. There is no end to any of this, but I ask you, when you think about great non-profits… what makes a brand?
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
Almost daily I am asked how I started Student Movement for Real Change. The answer is usually something like this: “It really all began around a coffee table with a couple friends. We wanted to create a mechanism for young people to do great things.” Little did we know what we were getting in to. Before long, the ups and downs of working in development became apparent. The challenge of building an organization was also more than I had ever expected.
