5 Ways buildOn Alumni Can Help Break the Cycle
After 21 years of doing afterschool programming across the United States, we consider ourselves a movement. Several of our alumni have accomplished incredible things, such as Haben Girma, who didn’t let being deafblind stop her from doing community service and building a school in Mali with buildOn. She is now a disability rights activist and the first Harvard Law School student in history who is deafblind.
Here are some ideas to help you break the cycle with buildOn:
– Do something beyond yourself. Take the service you learned to do as a group with buildOn and then be a change in our community. It could be as simple as mentoring a niece or nephew once a month, or spending time with an elderly neighbor.
-Be a global advocate! Keep up with the news in your community, as well as what’s happening globally in developing countries. Host a documentary screening focused on international development and talk to people about global illiteracy and poverty, as well as the challenges inner cities face. Listen to them and educate at the same time.
– Be a buildOn ambassador! Offer to give presentations at schools and public centers to share your experiences working with buildOn. Talk about your service in the community or your experience building a school in a developing country – and share one of our YouTube videos.
– Dedicate your birthday, party or big event to poverty, illiteracy and low expectations! Start your own WebuildOn campaign and then spread the word through blogging and social media. Take a look at some of our fundraising ideas here. (This holiday season is the perfect time to fundraise for because Teza Technologies is matching every donation made to buildOn dollar to dollar!)
– Keep in touch! Let us know what you’ve been doing by tweeting to us or shooting us an email at news@www.buildon.org. We’d love to hear from you.
See something missing on the list? Add it in our comments section. Want more inspiration? Read about what these people are doing to Break the Cycle.