It was a special night at the Athenaeum theatre January 25th, with thirteen remarkable social entrepreneurs and social change artists on display. The sheer range of activities for these groups was itself remarkable. About half work mainly in Indy, the other half work in more than 20 countries around the world. At home and abroad they fight poverty, provide education, protect the environment, work to promote peace, and market fair trade products. And to achieve their goals, these groups use a wide range of styles of operations: microfinance projects, socially responsible tourism, promotion of arts and culture, networking and community-building.

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Kelly Campbell
The Village Experience & The Village Cooperative

Kelly Campbell is co-founder and co-owner of the Village Experience (TVE), and executive director of TVE’s sister nonprofit, the Village Cooperative. TVE is a socially pro-active business dedicated to uplifting impoverished communities in the developing world through efforts in international fair trade and socially responsible tourism.

TVE works with The Village Cooperative to further empower villages around the world through the implementation and support of income-generating activities – small business development, handicraft projects, vocational skills training, and micro-enterprise. Together we bring awareness and connect the Indianapolis community to international topics such as the famine in East Africa, human-trafficking in Asia, global poverty, and economic empowerment for women. Their trips to the developing world focus on cultural education, humanitarianism, and adventure. They work with charities, micro-financing groups, women’s projects, local artisans, and global cooperatives to develop fair trade products and create a market for them in the developed world … including in TVE’s shop in Broad Ripple.

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Maggie Kirkpatrick
Building Tomorrow & The Social Investment Council

Maggie Kirkpatrick became involved in the University of Virginia’s Building Tomorrow chapter when she was a student. Building Tomorrow’s mission is to empower young people to invest their resources, time & talents in providing students in sub-Saharan Africa with access to an education. They engage elementary, middle, high school and college students in service-learning, fundraising, awareness and design activities to generate support for the construction of primary-level academies in sub-Saharan Africa. So far these students have raised more than half a million dollars to construct schools in rural Uganda. BT’s partner communities in Uganda match the students’ support by donating land for each academy and volunteering approximately 20,000 hours of self-labor to construct it. As of December 2011, Building Tomorrow has seven open academies with three nearing completion and an additional three currently under construction. Each academy has seven classrooms, an office, a library, meeting space and a large field; all in all providing learning space for 325 students.

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Kathy Morris
Timmy Global Health

Kathy Morris is Programs Coordinator for Timmy Global Health, which works to expand access to healthcare, while empowering student and medical volunteers to tackle global health challenges firsthand. In collaboration with international and US partners, Timmy facilitates medical brigades and channels financial, medical, and human resources to community-based projects. Timmy links short-term medical brigades — focused on family medicine, located in marginal or remote locations, and usually limited in their ability to provide a wider scope of healthcare access — with longer term commitments to partner organizations and individual communities. Timmy’s student chapters across the US are responsible for a 52-week commitment to raising funds for their partner; procuring many over-the-counter medicines for a medical brigade; and advocating on behalf of Timmy, the communities Timmy serves, and global health issues in general. For Kathy, Timmy importance can be captured in the case of an infected boy in Ecuador whose parents brought him to a Timmy clinic via a canoe trip of several days.

The treatment was relatively simple, the recovery complete … but without the treatment the boy was just days from dying. Timmy expands access to health care locally as well as internationally: Timmy utilizes its 5,000-square foot medical warehouse to broker medical supplies to free or subsidized clinics within the Indianapolis community, as well as other Indianapolis-based healthcare organizations working around the world.

 

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Joanna Campodonico
IUPUI Global Health Student Interest Group

Joanna Campodonico is president of the Global Health Student Interest Group (GHSIG), which was founded by medical students at IUPUI. GHSIG facilitates opportunities for global health service, encourages study abroad in medicine, and increases awareness of global health care needs. The organization currently includes undergraduate, graduate, and medical students from a variety of backgrounds, including biology, pre-med, philanthropy, social work, health law, nursing, public health. GHSIG’s activities include global health lunch talks, volunteer opportunities with NGOs, international electives and internships, and an annual fundraising hunger banquet. As Joanna observes, this is the best chance to help soon-to-be doctors define how global work will fit in their careers.

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Amy King
Provocate—Haiti

Amy King is the driving force behind Provocate-Haiti, a sister organization to Provocate, which seeks to stimulate new ideas for solving problems by connecting global and local initiatives, education and entertainment, policy and culture. Provocate-Haiti provides a resource base for the scores of Indiana-Haiti partnerships. On a medical mission in 2007, Amy began a love affair with Haiti that has grown strong over time. Provocate—Haiti organizes events such as film screenings and art shows; links Indiana groups working in different areas of Haiti; connects Hoosiers working in Haiti to influential policy-shapers in DC; leads tour groups and social justice missions to Haiti.

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Rania Hattab
OBAT Helpers

Rania Hattab is director of operations for OBAT Helpers, an Indianapolis-based organization that provides basic amenities of life and education to some 300,000 Biharis trapped in appalling conditions in Bangladesh. For 40 years the Biharis have languished in makeshift camps, rejected by the governments of both Bangladesh and Pakistan. Rania told the story of Anwar Khan, a Pakistani-Hoosier who collected $1700 from his family to lift one Bihari family out of poverty. When he witnessed the squalid conditions of life of the Biharis, however, Anwar realized he must do much more to provide the Biharis with the tools to help themselves arise from their plight.

OBAT is perhaps the only organization outside of Bangladesh helping the Biharis: OBAT provides basic medical care and sanitation, education for children and adults, and economic empowerment through microfinance projects. OBAT now is using what it has learned in Bangladesh to establish the Rahma Initiative to benefit the needy in Indianapolis. Relief funds are provided to Second Helpings to feed the poor; a micro-lending program on the SE side of Indianapolis facilitates income-generating ventures; and Rehma Fellows recruited from local colleges provide tutoring for students at SENSE charter school, which serves some of the poorest children in Indianapolis.

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Dan Mundell
Mundell & Associates

Dan Mundell is a researcher for Provocate who works as an associate of Mundell & Associates, an earth and environmental consulting firm in Indianapolis. Mundell is part of the Economy of Communion, a worldwide network of businesses that promotes a “culture of giving” and fraternity by sharing profits with the poorrest members of the communities in which the businesses work.

Some 850 businesses in 60 countries around the world share Mundell’s approach. On February 3, Dan will speak about the Economy of Communion at the United Nations in NYC, part of the 50th session of the UN’s Commission for Social Development of the Economic and Social Council. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nick Reich
Circles Indiana

Nick Reich is executive director of Circles Indiana, an innovative approach that inspires and equips communities to end poverty by building capacity, educating stakeholders, and facilitating intentional, long-term relationships across class and sector lines. Circles works with community organizations, including the Indianapolis hospitals, churches, United Way and schools, to implement and offer training programs focused on empowering people who strive to get out of poverty. Families living in poverty who are highly motivated to improve their situations go through in-depth training and are matched with trained middle or upper class “Allies” who become intentional friends and accountability partners to help them move toward their goals. The Circles National Development Center Nick directs has been a project spearheaded by Dr. Jim Lemons, pediatrics professor at IU, who has worked tirelessly to promote neonatal health and eradicate poverty in Indiana and in Kenya. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mike Oles
Citizens for Global Solutions Indiana

Mike Oles is Indiana field organizer for Citizens for Global Solutions, is a venerable institution founded in 1947 by leading American activists and intellectuals who believed global cooperation was crucial both to preserve future US leadership and to prevent another world war. Early members included Albert Einstein, Kurt Vonnegut, EB White (author of Charlotte’s Web), and Oscar Hammerstein.

Currently, Mike Oles is building a statewide network of activists, organizations, and student groups, to advocate and fight for better global policy from Congress. At the focus of CGS’s work is advocacy and organizing for United Nations reform and revitalization, genocide prevention, support for the International criminal court, arms control, nuclear disarmament, and human rights.

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Mari Yamaguchi
Indianapolis Intercultural Network

Mari Yamaguchi is one of the founders of Indianapolis Intercultural Network (IIN). IIN is building a network of culturally literate young professionals. IIN introduces its members to local and global philanthropic opportunities through Events-for-a-Cause. All Events-for-a-Cause proceeds are donated to the entity, whether it is in Central Indiana or Central India. IIN supports local businesses and local art. They promote economic development by “connecting professionals with professions.” And they support educational outreach through working with youths and schools, and through educational roundtables.

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Artur Silva
Cultural Cannibals

With Kyle Long, Artur Silva makes up Cultural Cannibals, one of the most vibrant and creative cross-cultural arts and music collaborations anywhere.

As DJ, Kyle exposes large audiences to a wide range of the best music the world has to offer, then explains its significance for cultures through his articles in NUVO. Artur’s art often draws attention to conditions throughout the world such as poor people’s vulnerabilities to global economic pressures.

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Andy Fry
Big Car

Andy Fry is a designer, audio producer and musician who works with Big Car, a collective of more than 30 artists, writers, designers, musicians and thinkers who work together to explore the notions of people and place and the unique aspects of community that connect them. Big Car’s next big project for the community is Collaborative Projects Indianapolis (Co-Lab), which will function like a design, marketing or creative consulting comnpaqny. Co-Lab’s clients will be the city’s challenges and aspects poised for improvement. Co-Lab’s job will be to serve the people of Indianapolis and collaborate with them and other organizations to help boost the social wellbeing for all. It will do this through community engagement, creative problem solving, applied design thinking, excellent graphic and web design, and solid documentation. Co-Lab will offer memorable and personal experiences, conversations, and celebrations. Basically Co-Lab is Big Car placing all of its creative talents and resources at the service of the groups presenting at the Athenaeum, as well as the rest of the Central Indiana Community.

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Katie Basbagill
Bohemian Red Images

Katie Basbagill is a photo-journalist focusing on international human rights. You can read about what Katie is doing and see some of her work at Bohemian Red Images. She has a new project that is attracting a lot of attention: Indyrefugee, which documents the stories of refugees from Burma who make their way to a new life in Indianapolis. Katie is the official photographer for the Thirst Project, which uses youthful TV and movie stars to inspire high schools and colleges to raise money for global water projects.

Katie tells a story about how a friend found it difficult to engage emotionally with the sorts of global issues Katie documents such as access to clean water … until Katie showed her a photo of a fourteen-year-old in Africa who has to drink from the same source as her village’s cattle. The picture was worth more than a thousand words.

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