About Us
We’re not a charity. We’re a movement.
Our mission is to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and low expectations through service and education. We mobilize U.S. students to transform their communities through service learning and change the world by building schools in developing countries.
What We Do
We believe in the transformational power of service and education. By mobilizing students and communities to take action, they create generational change in underserved neighborhoods in the U.S. and economically disadvantaged communities worldwide.
buildOn US
Our Service Learning Programs mobilize students in under-resourced urban areas to uplift their communities through intensive local service. We run programs at 39 high schools in six U.S. regions, including Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Bridgeport, Connecticut.
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buildOn Global
We empower villages in some of the world’s economically poorest countries to take the lead in bringing education to their communities. Every two days, we’re constructing a new school in eight countries, including Burkina Faso, Haiti, Mali, Malawi, Nepal, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Senegal. We have built more than 3,000 schools to date.
Learn MoreMeet the People Who Make Our Work Possible
buildOn is powered by passionate people committed to ending poverty through service and education.
Our Staff Our Board Diversity StatementJim Ziolkowski
Inspired by his passion for service and education, Jim Ziolkowski left a career in corporate finance to found the nonprofit buildOn in 1991. Since then, he has served as CEO and led the organization in breaking the cycle of poverty and illiteracy through buildOn’s Service Learning Program in the U.S. and Global School Construction Program in the world’s economically poorest countries.
To date, buildOn has mobilized hundreds of thousands of U.S. youth to contribute millions of hours of intensive service in their communities. Once students get involved in buildOn, they come to school 15 more days per year and 98% graduate on time. Globally, hundreds of thousands of parents have contributed over 6.1 million volunteer work days to build more than 3,100 schools. There are now more than 410,000 children, parents, and grandparents attending these schools they helped to build. Half the students are girls.
Jim is the N.Y. Times bestselling author of Walk in Their Shoes and has been featured on NBC’s TODAY Show, CNN, CBS Evening News, PBS, TED, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR. He has also been endorsed by three Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Mother Teresa, the 14th Dalai Lama, and former President Barack Obama. Jim received a Doctorate in Humane Letters, honoris causa, from St. John’s University, where he delivered the commencement speech for the 2024 graduating class.
To schedule an interview or other media request with Jim, please email press@buildon.org.
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Walk in Their Shoes
A powerful look inside the buildOn movement and the inspiring story that made it all possible.
