TEDxSantaCruzChange
April 8, 2012, 1:00 – 4:00 pm
Cruzio Internet, Santa Cruz
On April 8, 2012, TEDxSantaCruzChange took place at Cruzio in downtown Santa Cruz. TEDxChange is a partnership between TEDx and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that is devoted to ideas worth spreading in the areas of global health and development. The TEDxChange team works with TEDx organizers around the world to help facilitate meaningful discussions within their communities on topics such as vaccines, polio, malaria, HIV/AIDS, maternal and newborn child health, and agricultural development. The TEDxChange initiative also includes a global signature event in Berlin, curated by Melinda Gates and broadcast across the TEDx community through almost 200 TEDx events, including TEDxSantaCruzChange.
Locally, TEDxSantaCruzChange hosted a webcast of the TEDxChange presentations from Berlin, as well as live speakers from the Santa Cruz area who are involved in global health and development efforts. Local speakers were Carmel Jud, Rising International Founder & Executive Director, and Peter Laugharn, Firelight Foundation Executive Director.
Our speakers:
Carmel Jud is Rising International’s Founder & Executive Director. In 2002, Carmel gave up the successful business she’d founded and built for 20 years and launched 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. Carmel has been featured in the press both locally and internationally including as Huffington Post’s Greatest Person of the Day. She is also a proud recent recipient of the 2012 Woman of the World award.
To learn more about Carmel’s Homa doll, become her friend on Facebook.
Peter Laugharn has been the Executive Director of Firelight Foundation since July 2008. Previously, Peter served as Executive Director of the Netherlands-based Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF), a private foundation that funds and shares knowledge about work in early childhood development and children’s rights. Peter worked for more than 11 years in a variety of roles for Save the Children USA, with much of his extensive experience focused on Africa. As Save the Children’s Deputy Director in Mali, Peter helped develop the “Village Schools” model, which promoted access to basic education, girls schooling, and community participation. He was later Save the Children’s West Africa Area Director and then Education Adviser for Africa, providing technical assistance for programs in 10 countries. Currently a member of the Council on Foundations International Committee, Peter is also co-chair of the Inter-Agency Task Team on Children and HIV and AIDS.
During Peter’s talk he mentioned how people could help through supporting grantmaking organizations like Firelight Foundation. Following is a list of organizations supporting international development.
GLOBAL GRASSROOTS GRANTMAKING ORGANIZATIONS:
Supporting community-based organizations in the developing world
| Firelight Foundation (www.firelightfoundation.org) | Firelight works to improve the well-being of children made vulnerable by HIV, AIDS and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. We support grassroots organizations that help families and communities meet the needs of their children. |
| African Women’s Development Fund (based in Accra, Ghana) (www.awdf.org) | A grantmaking foundation that supports local, national and regional women’s organizations working towards the empowerment of African women and the promotion and realization of their rights. |
| American Jewish World Service (www.ajws.org) | AJWS’s grantmaking supports grassroots communities in Africa, Asia and the Americas that are working to create a just and equitable world where human rights are universally recognized, where poverty, discrimination and violence no longer exist and where individuals are free to flourish and live their lives with dignity. |
| Empower (www.empowerweb.org) | EMpower supports local organizations in EM countries that provide at-risk youth with the tools and resources they need to lead healthy, productive lives. |
| Global Fund for Children (www.globalfundforchildren.org) | Investing in grassroots groups reaching the world’s most vulnerable children |
| Global Fund for Women (www.globalfundforwomen.org) | The Global Fund works in a supportive, trust-based partnership with women’s rights organizations in nearly 200 countries. |
| Global Giving (www.globalgiving.org) | GlobalGiving connects individuals to over 1,000 pre-screened grassroots charity projects around the world. |
| Global Greengrants (www.greengrants.org) | Local communities want the chance to protect their environment and gain a voice in their own future. In the developing world and emerging economies, these communities don’t have the financial support they need to do so. Global Greengrants Fund enables you to provide that opportunity. |
| IDEX (www.idex.org) | IDEX promotes lasting solutions to poverty by providing long-term grants to locally run organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. |
| Mama Cash (www.mamacash.org) | Mama Cash supports pioneering and innovative women’s initiatives around the world, because they believe that social change starts with women and girls. |
Q&A Session
One of the highlights of the day was the question and answer session with the speakers after the event. It was great hearing more about their organizations and how they are involved in making changes throughout the world through their work. Video to come soon!
Thanks to Cruzio Internet for sponsoring this event and offering their beautiful space to host TEDxSantaCruzChange 2012. Thanks to the volunteers and to our audience for their ongoing support of TEDxSantaCruz.