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The Ann Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth with disabilities and/or from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in developing countries. Through partnerships with local NGOs and educational institutions, we primarily provide educational services including English, computer literacy, and personality development through Skype and other technology. We also support health and humanitarian services through mission trips to developing countries.

The Detroit Musicians Fund, a charitable corporation, was founded in 2003 by the Detroit Federation of Musicians for the purposes of assisting union musicians in dire need and of providing scholarship assistance to college music students. Our mission includes: Alleviating hardship with financial aid to struggling musicians. Easing the difficulties of disabled musicians through grants. Partnering with MPTF to serve the community at large. Supporting promising music students through scholarships.

Living Resources serves individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, and persons affected by impairments associated with illness, injury or aging. Our mission is to provide the individuals we serve with life-enhancing opportunities in a safe and nurturing environment. We work towards positive outcomes, continuous improvement and sustaining health and wellness. We believe in innovation, and recognize that family involvement, as well as creativity, collaboration and community support are keys to success.

NEWLIFE ALLIANCE ("NLA") DEVELOPS, DESIGNS, AND SUPERVISES IMPLEMENTATION OF SOCIAL SERVICE PROGRAMS IN AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMMUNITIES ACROSS TEXAS TO "BUILD GENERATIONAL SUCCESS THROUGH EDUCATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT". WE CREATE AND MAINTAIN AN ENVIRONMENT OF HOPE FOR FAMILIES, THE DISABLED, AND THE ELDERLY. THROUGH STEWARDSHIP AND COOPERATIVE RELATIONSHIPS WE OFFER TOOLS AND RESOURCES TO ACHIEVE FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE, CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY, EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENT AND SPIRITUAL STEADFASTNESS AMONG FAMILIES RESIDING IN OUR AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMMUNITIES.

The Fundacion Oir es Vivir was founded in 2008 to serve as a bridge for the hearing impaired population who are seeking a solution for their disability and lack the knowledge, resources, and financial means. The Foundation has done strong advocacy for early hearing detection and intervention program in the newborn and hearing screening test in preschool and school children. In the older population the Foundation also educates the importance of quality of life through the ability to hear and understand the sounds of life, and the importance to remain connected socially and environmentally.

The mission of CORPluS is to help enhance individual and group potential and expand the capacity of Bulgarian communities through the continuation of innovative programs in education and development, modeled on Peace Corps Bulgaria initiated projects and activities. Vision Transforming Bulgaria's Tomorrow Through Innovation Values The organization embraces and further enhances the following core values: "Can do" approach to development: The organization will motivate and mobilize individual, groups and communities to advance their potential and engage their skills to the betterment of their individual and community growth. Participation: The organization will reach out to individuals, groups and communities to actively participate in trainings and projects, thus helping them build solid civic and professional skills, which they will apply to build a better future. Collaboration: The organization will foster the spirit of openness and collaboration among individuals, organizations, and community groups. Goals To maintain Peace Corps' legacy in Bulgaria through established Peace Corps programs and resources and to continue the goodwill and friendship between the people of the United States and the people of Bulgaria. To strengthen the English language skills of Bulgarian students and to share innovative teaching methods with teachers. To develop the capacity of youth and empower them to improve their quality of life, develop leadership skills and become engaged community members. To improve the administrative, economic and project capacity and civil society initiatives of local communities, organizations and individuals in Bulgaria. Approach CORPluS will maintain and continue the relationships with Bulgarian and American institutions, partner organizations and individuals and the network of Bulgarian RPCVs. The organization will develop new partnerships with Bulgarian organizations, businesses and members of the professional community.

MISSION To eradicate extreme poverty in rural areas of southern India. To improve the living conditions of India's most disadvantaged groups, enhance their dignity and self-esteem, and help them achieve the necessary means to combat poverty. To ensure sustainable development with the active involvement and leadership of the communities. To reach as many poor people as possible and help organize them both individually and as community-based organizations, affording them strength, confidence, and the ability to lead their own development. To transform the semi-desert land through a holistic approach involving land, water, vegetation, and livestock development and to ensure the people live in harmony with natural resources. To sensitize men and women to the inherent discrimination and violence against women in both family and society, and to develop appropriate support systems and networks to fight such discrimination. To help people with disabilities gain equal rights and opportunities in every area of development, as well as access to all resources and services related to health, education, livelihood, and rehabilitation, helping them live a dignified life. To build a dynamic and creative organization that strives to participate in all development efforts and is spiritual in its motivation, based on knowledge and skills, shares the aspirations and struggles of the poor, and, though permanent in time, adapts to the changing times and needs. To raise public awareness about the living conditions of the rural and urban poor and to promote a more caring society. VISION For everyone from poor and oppressed communities to live with justice, dignity, and socioeconomic equality, and for all people to live in peace and harmony with one another. For people to live in harmony with nature, on land capable of sustaining its population. VALUES Permanence: We are a long-term project. Respect: We respect the people's culture and customs. Participation: We encourage the active participation and leadership of our stakeholders. Action: We have an action-based work philosophy. Accountability: We believe in efficient and accountable program and financial management. Humanism: We are strong believers in people and their capacity to help others. OUR PRINCIPLES RDT-Vicente Ferrer believes that people are the main actors in their development process and ensures their active involvement and leadership in the programs. The organization endorses a multi-sectoral approach with a view to enhancing people's overall progress. As a result, RDT addresses all major areas of development, including access to quality education, improved livelihoods, ecologyand the environment, equal opportunities for people with disabilities, women's development and empowerment, and access to healthcare. We organize, at a grassroots level, women, men, andpeople with disabilities into groups to enhance their strength, confidence, and ability to resolve their own issues and problems. An important RDT-Vicente Ferrer approach is the continuous sharing of knowledge, skills, and awareness about all aspects of life. Collaboration with the government and other NGOs to draw maximum benefits from development. To raise people's awareness and support their use of government schemes and resources. Though the organization has a special program forwomen's development, it believes that women's progress should be a factor in every area of work and life, including education, where emphasis is placed on young girls, and healthcare, for the overall well-being of women and girls. We believe in continuous training and orientation for staff members and people. We also have an HR department that regularly organizes internal and external training sessions for staff members of all levels and people on leadership, group building, problem solving, and gender-related matters, among others. To create an efficient human organization capable of acting regardless of where the need arises, even in emergencies. We believe that we must have a strong organization focused on community development, yet flexible and able to accommodate the changing needs of the people. RDT-Vicente Ferrer also stresses continuous dialogue with people and seeks to ensure its programs are useful and practical. An empathetic approach to helping individuals in severe distress due to chronic or acute illness, abandonment, or abuse of any kind.

The mission of Pennsylvania Diversity Children's Organization is to provide community-based services to linguistically challenged children as well as children with special needs and their families with a focus on the families' cultural, ethnic, and language backgrounds. We provide the valuable services including physical therapy, speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, and special instruction specifically designed according to each child's needs. Culturally and linguistically appropriate services will help in assessing a second-language learning child. We aim to help teachers, caregivers, parents, and community helpers work effectively with second language learners in childhood settings, homes, and community to meet the social, emotional and developmental needs of every child with a different speaking background. Pennsylvania Diversity Children's Organization has developed an exceptional Board of Directors in order to help reduce the burden of government by providing targeted programs and services to provide support for bilingual households for children with special needs. The efforts of our organization will reduce the need for special education for these families, and prepare the families and children for assimilation into the workforce and our society. Our educational programs support all children with special needs in participating with other children who are without disabilities and who grow up in a bilingual/bicultural environment. We help all families from diverse racial, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds in using special accommodations for their unique children.

Board of European Students of Technology is a non-profit and non-political organisation that since 1989 strives to improve communication, cooperation and exchange opportunities for European students. The mission of BEST is to help students achieve an international mindset, reach a better understanding of cultures and societies and develop the capacity to work in culturally diverse environments. To achieve this mission BEST offers high quality services to technology students all over Europe. These services include a European engineering competition, academic courses, career events and events on educational involvement. BEST offers these events in 96 European Universities, spread among 34 countries, reaching over one million students, with the help of 3300 members. It is BEST's mission to provide complementary, non-formal education in every event that it organises. This to make sure that the students that are reached grow to their full potential before they enter the job market. It is essential for BEST to show students the value of complementary education, not only to widen their perspective on the technology topics covered in their studies, but also to teach them the needed soft skills. To begin, these soft skills are covered in BEST's events by bringing students together with its two other stakeholders, universities and companies, and letting them dialog. Secondly, BEST provides specific training sessions to teach students how to acquire these skills in a safe and stimulating environment among peers. Lastly, this is done not only towards outside students, but also towards BEST's own members. By letting them organise events after they had a thorough knowledge transfer and did some in-depth training sessions, they acquire a lot of hands-on experience that makes them valued assets on the job market. In all this soft skill acquirement, there is one thing that makes BEST special: everything happens in a culturally diverse environment. BEST's volunteers really learn how to cooperate with project members from all over Europe and also the outside students are introduced to a specific mindset that BEST likes to call 'the BEST spirit'. This means that everyone works together, respecting each other's backgrounds, to achieve a common goal: empower students and give them a voice in today's society. For this donation campaign BEST would focus on the educational involvement that it stimulates among European students. It is namely very unique that an organisation run by students offers their peers a voice by collecting data in surveys and events and presenting that data to the relevant authorities. BEST, therefore, attends a lot of conferences about education to be able to share our outcomes to the fullest. We hope to raise some donations in this campaign to be able to carry out next year's planning around the theme of Digital Literacy. This theme focuses on how prepared students and universities are for the upcoming digitisation wave. It raises the question of how we will learn and teach digital skills and how industry 4.0 will make its way into our education. For this program BEST invests in conducting surveys, doing symposia on education and writing scientific papers with the purpose of disseminating the outcomes. It is not the first time that BEST is going to conduct such an Educational Involvement Programme. Last year, for example, the theme was 'Diversity in STEM education' and the years before we covered topics such as pedagogical skills, new teaching methods, relation between university and industry, etc. So what were the steps BEST undertook to create all the materials around last year's topic? First, a team was created to do research on existing literature about 'Diversity in (STEM) education'. Based on that research a survey was created in which 4 diversity types were tackled: cultural diversity, ethnic diversity, gender diversity and students with disabilities. Then, after the answers of the survey were gathered and analysed, the subtopics for the BEST Symposia on Education were identified: in this case, each symposium had a different diversity type. The same team that worked on the content creation of the symposia also prepared and delivered the sessions of those symposia. After the events, the input of all the participating students is gathered in a scientific report, which is then either published in conferences, or disseminated through social media and newsletters. The approach used last year proved to be a successful one and will be repeated in this year's Educational Involvement Programme. If we manage to get more funds via Global Giving, this will mean that we can elaborate this process and spend more resources on content creation, promotion of the surveys and dissemination of our results. In short: we will be able to make a lot more noise in the educational world.

Our Why IAEOU was founded because of our founder, Lisa Canning's, experience as a small business owner. Now 53, Lisa Canning has successfully been self-employed since the age of 17. Her first venture was a successful 12-million-dollar business in the music business with little to no investment except for the use of personal credit cards. When she did qualify for bank loans, after 4 years, her 20+ percent continuous annual and profitable growth, for more than 15 years, required ongoing investments that were hampered by banks who were risk adverse. Advisors and mentors interested in the growth of her small business were far and few between despite her being recognized as a Top 200-retailer (in a male dominated 'boys-club' industry), being routinely quoted in trade magazines and appearing on their covers, and being named by the National Association Women Business Owner of The Year in Chicago, Illinois. Since our inception in 2006, IAEOU has been focused on our founder mission to help under-served small business owners, especially women, find the resources they need to transform their ideas into sales and build the channels to market they need to grow and raise the capital they need to rise and thrive. At its core IAEOU is about helping those least served-those in small business who like our founder have viable business models that are offered few if any resources, struggle to access bank loans and who may not yet be investable by Angels or Venture Capitalists. Our Early Years to Present In our early years, IAEOU's family and friends supported the launch, advancement and development of our incubator, The IAE- The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship, for the creative sector in Illinois. It was an experiment to see how quickly we could help small business owners find new sales and channels to market, as often this is the only way creatives in small businesses can survive and find any investment resources they need to grow. IAE achieved a 97% success rate with over 200 small business owners, helping them to find new sales and new channels to market. Our success brought us recognition by The United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) and the White House for our innovative education to helping under-served entrepreneurs thrive. Our academic model was published by USASBE by Elgar Publishing in the Annals of Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy in 2014. We were also invited to speak on the first ever creative industries panel at the 6th Annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, Kenya in 2015. That recognition propelled our 501c3 forward into a global arena resulting in the introduction to IAEOU's co-founder Scott Gillespie, and to the founders of The JOBS ACT, Jason Best and Sherwood Neiss, from Crowdfund Capital Advisors. Scott is a growth adviser, investor and mentor to ventures (micro) around the globe; helping founders to transform their: ideas into products, products into sales, and ventures into businesses. Scott splits his time architecting regional startup ecosystems (macro) in: Australia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Palestine, Jordan, USA, Malaysia, and Colombia. As Founder and Director of theJigsaw Group, a business accelerator Scott and his team connect: founders, talent, customers, markets, and channels; with global opportunities. Jigsaw Group investment portfolio ranges from office fit out (UAE Compare), to new media (BTG Studios) and online education (co-founder IAEOU). To learn more about Scott go to ABOUT at the bottom of our website iaeou.me Shortly after Scott came on board, The IAE closed its physical doors, created a new partnership with Crowdfund Capital Advisors as their educational arm, and became a virtual accelerator called IAEOU- Vowels are to words what creativity is to business- basic and necessary. Why is creativity so basic and so necessary to business? Because growing a business is challenging! It takes a lot of creativity and ingenuity to mature from a startup into a venture with growing sales, viable products, adequate funding, and a team prepared for growth- especially without access to resources others who are considered more scalable gain access to far more quickly. And you have to be strong enough to fund raise which means you have to have traction and sales. The competition for survival weeds out >50% in 5 years according to the US Bureau of Labor. Once a venture achieves breakeven, our research suggests that a SME (small and medium sized businesses) #1 goal is to secure 'more sales' to build a robust pipeline (few if any businesses ever say they have 'too many sales'); yet the majority openly admit plans are easy and sales management is hard. Albion Ventures Growth Report 2013, examined the challenges faced by 450 SMEs with a combined turnover of over 1.6B and found that the biggest gap in the small business skillset is SALES. And because of IAEOU's success skilling SME's in sales; and based on Crowdfund Capital Advisors global research advising 50+ countries on how to build financial ecosystems for entrepreneurs, as well as working with over 100 startups, and because of their research supporting that online traction is critical to SME's online funding success; we have spent the last few years building our abilities to help entrepreneurs globally find sales and build their social media skill building to find key influencers and investors. Together with CCA we have worked on projects with entrepreneurs for The World Bank, Climate Innovation Center in Kenya; International Development Bank in partnership with the Universidad Anahuac in Mexico, and delivered social media education to Virl Microfinance, the largest microfinance fund in Zimbabwe. These projects lead us, 18 months ago, to launch a training program in Pakistan to help women who otherwise are discouraged from working to become social media marketing specialists who are focused on finding sme's sales and new channels to market. Part of the challenges entrepreneurs face is the need for lead generation and marketing support at a low price. We spun off this project under the IAEOU umbrella and named it Sana's Kitchen after the woman in Lahore who is our partner. See more at SanasKitchen.me To date, we have perfected our education process and have been steadily working with clients successfully. Now we are partnering with a large training organization in Lahore, Pakistan called Loop.org.pk founded and run by a woman, Faiza Khalid, who shares our values and vision. With the passing of Title III of the JOBS act becoming a living law on May 16, 2016 in the United States, regular Americans (a.k.a. unaccredited investors), now have the opportunity to invest in ventures (incorporated as businesses, not for profits and B corps) they use everyday and in entrepreneurs they believe in. This allows family, friends, colleagues and peers to make investments of $10 or $100,000 to accelerate IMPACT and earn, real returns. We are in need of Global Giving's support because while we have part 1 of our mission just about ready to scale- to build an affordable resource through Sana's Kitchen to help SME's access sales and new channels to market- part 2 of our mission requires additional staff to create a parallel ongoing effort to reach key influencers and investors to build traction for their fundraising efforts through crowdfunding. IAEOU has recently been invited to become a key partner to a newly forming association too for the State of Illinois- The Illinois Business Innovation Association. Founded by Carol Abrahamson, a former valley venture capitalist and the founder of over 13 not for profits and 7 for profit businesses, our goal is to serve the over 200 incubator and accelerators in Illinois. We already have the support of the Governor's Office and have been invited into participating in numerous Bi-Centennial Events. We also are co-creating the newly created Great Lakes Innovation Summit bringing together the managers of incubators and accelerators across 5 states and Canada. Entrepreneurship is critical to the life of economies globally and to individuals, their families and the communities they serve. For the first time entrepreneurs (who come in all genders, ethnic heritage and represent a wide variety of causes) can use crowdfunding methods to engage with communities of origin, communities of interest, communities of geography and communities of diaspora to raise capital for their businesses. But this opens the door to more questions we need a new hire to help us to help them answer like: Where do I go to find my supporters that have capital? What is the right type of campaign for my initiative? What is the process to getting listed on one of these websites? How do I create a campaign that sells my vision to my potential backers? How do I approach the social network I am building for sales and new channels to market back my campaign? How do I stay compliant with the law? How do I use my crowd not just for money but knowledge, experience and relationships? How do I keep my investors informed about what I'm doing without diluting my efforts at running my business? What are investors looking for? What are the keys to success? As the 3 year-old fledging Regulation Crowdfunding industry takes shape, IAEOU wants to provide the under-represented especially female-owned, women of color, and social enterprises, access to answers to the above questions and best practices in education and training to help them become prepared to raise funds. Through the development of their social media and sales skill building we will help them find their audience and access the capital they need. We are so close to realizing our goal to connect these efforts to their fund-raising needs and believe with Global Giving's support we can overcome our staffing hurdle to fully realize our mission.