It's hard to do great things by yourself...
...So we don't even try
From day one we recognized that if we wanted to build a number of schools around the world over a 10-year period we could never do it alone.
You need an organization to operate on a global scale. You need people on the ground in the countries where you want to work. You need people who speak the local language, know the local customs, know how things work in the local business world, and know how to get things done in their country.
You need experience. And you need people. People with passion. And if you want to work in multiple countries around the world, you need lots of them.
We don't have all those things, and we certainly don't have a lot of people. So we needed partners.
We developed a set of evaluation criteria for the organizations we considered working with: things like effective programs, strong management, quality references, reasonable salaries for their leaders, and a low expense ratio. And, like all partnerships, it had to "feel" right. We had to like them, and they had to like us.
We're now working with two partners. A brief (very brief!) description of each is below. We encourage you to visit their websites.
We have GREAT partners!
You need an organization to operate on a global scale. You need people on the ground in the countries where you want to work. You need people who speak the local language, know the local customs, know how things work in the local business world, and know how to get things done in their country.
You need experience. And you need people. People with passion. And if you want to work in multiple countries around the world, you need lots of them.
We don't have all those things, and we certainly don't have a lot of people. So we needed partners.
We developed a set of evaluation criteria for the organizations we considered working with: things like effective programs, strong management, quality references, reasonable salaries for their leaders, and a low expense ratio. And, like all partnerships, it had to "feel" right. We had to like them, and they had to like us.
We're now working with two partners. A brief (very brief!) description of each is below. We encourage you to visit their websites.
We have GREAT partners!
Since 1992, buildOn’s School Construction Program has overseen the building of more than 400 primary schools with many more on the way in Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Nepal and Nicaragua.
Leo participates in numerous volunteer projects with the Stanford Business School's Alumni Consulting Team. BuildOn was introduced to India by one of his ACT project mates.
Room to Read has built more than 1,442 schools and 11,641 libraries since they were founded in 1998.