Social entrepreneur Nedgine Paul immigrated from Haiti to the US at a young age. After graduating from Yale, she received her masters of education at Harvard University. She gained valuable experience working for the prominent charter school network known as Achievement First and then working for Dr. Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health in Haiti. Shortly after, Nedgine Paul started the nonprofit organization, Anseye Pou Ayiti (Teach for Haiti).   The NGO recruits and trains local Haitians and...

Today's guest is the person who I spend the most time with (even more than my mom) over the phone/email during any given week. She is also one of my best friends.   In this episode, Amanda Fennell talks about getting adopted from an orphanage in Colombia, childhood in America, how she dealt with her "ugly duckling" years, the tragic loss that devastated her family, her first (tumultuous) exposure to leadership where she was called "awful", favorite books, what she REALLY thinks of...

While studying at the University of Maryland, Melissa Frankenberry raised more than $30,000 for Students Helping Honduras. In this episode, she breaks down her process step-by-step and talks about facing her own fears when making the ask. Show notes for Melissa Frankenberry Melissa Frankenberry first heard about SHH at UMD’s First Look Fair where 500+ clubs on campus try to recruit members She was actually looking for Habitat for Humanity and instead joined SHH! She knew very little about...

Want to learn how to raise money for your favorite charity by traveling across a continent on a bicycle?Long-time Students Helping Honduras support Cristy Falcone biked 2,200 miles through Europe for SHH. On her daring expedition from Oslo to Paris, she got lost, stuck in rain storms, slept in her tent, and faced gear malfunction. At one point, she crashed and injured herself badly.   Cristy Falcone pedaled 50 miles (5-7 hours) nearly every single day for the cause.   Learn how she...

"The mountains are calling, and I must go." -John Muir Back in 2011 while at the Coast Guard Academy, Johnny Zeng envisioned climbing the 48 fourteeners in Colorado. The fourteeneers are mountains that each exceed 14,000 feet in elevation. Five years later and after many months of training and preparation, he faced his fears and self-doubts head on. Johnny embarked on the dangerous journey to raise money for his favorite charity, Students Helping Honduras, through the climb. He called the...

Social entrepreneur Sophia Sunwoo believed in her mission so much that she worked without a salary for the first 2.5 years of starting The Water Collective. To make ends meet, she worked at a bakery during the day and built up the NGO at nighttime. Entrepreneurial at heart, Sophia built a clothing company (celebrities like Miley Cyrus wore her clothesline) and sold it while still in college. She remained in the corporate world for several months after college. But for Sophia Sunwoo,...

Social entrepreneur Marquis Taylor started Coaching for Change by racking up $15,000 in credit card debt. He believed in his mission that much. Marquis Taylor grew up in a rough, gang-riddled neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. For him, basketball was the only thing that mattered. Using his talent and dogged work ethic, Marquis got a scholarship to play NCAA basketball. After college and a number of years in the real estate industry, Marquis took a giant leap of faith forward. He...

Most high school students are too busy with school work, video games, and their social lives to do much else. But Chris Cao, a 17-year-old senior at Thomas Jefferson High School is raising the bar for his generation. At age 15, CNN Hero Chris Cao became a social entrepreneur. He started Reboot for Youth, a nonprofit organization in northern Virginia that recycles, repairs, and delivers refurbished computers to youth in need. His core team is made up of his friends who go to different high...

Ned Norton could deadlift 660 pounds. But that's one of his smaller accomplishments in life. Ned is a social entrepreneur and a Top 10 CNN Hero from Albany, New York. He is the founder of Warriors on Wheels. In this episode he tells his story all the way from growing up as a scrawny kid (like me) and how that motivated him to become a competitive athlete and power lifter. He became a fitness trainer and trained several Olympic athletes, helping them win gold medals. But even that wasn't...

In today's episode, we have Jessica Heinzelman ("a white woman who doesn’t discriminate against lovers based on race") and Teddy Ruge ("an educated, angry African--a rare species in the development sector"). They are the founders of Jaded Aid: A card game to save humanitarians (Wayan Vota, the third co-founder, couldn't make it for the call). As friends, they loved to drink and laugh together. And all three worked in the international development aid sector. One day at a bar in Washington,...

Today’s guest is our very own Caroline Gray, a staff member here at Students Helping Honduras. She began teaching in 2011 in a low-income neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut through Teach For America. Her first year there, she taught reading and writing for grades K through 8. She then taught third grade for two years.  Caroline moved to Honduras in 2014 to teach third grade at our Villa Soleada Bilingual School, helping her students achieve 1.6 years of growth in reading each year. And...

Michael Driscoll was an active member of Students Helping Honduras during his time at Virginia Tech, helping build several schools in El Progreso. During his senior year, he served as the Chapter President on campus.   Upon graduation, as his classmates were signing contracts to work at high paying corporate desk jobs, Mike took a different path. He became a middle school teacher in a low-income neighborhood in Miami through Teach for America.   After serving TFA for two years, Mike flew...

In this episode, Natalie Jesionka and I discuss volunteer travel and current trends in the NGO industry. Some of the questions asked during the episode: Does a volunteer's intent matter? Should an NGO ever fire a volunteer who is there to help? Should volunteers take photos during their trips abroad? Should vulnerable children grow up with distant relatives or in orphanages? Natalie is a lecturer, reporter, and human rights advocate. Natalie is the founder of the Prizm Project, the first...

Social entrepreneur Caitlin McHale is the Co-Founder and Director of Project Esperanza (esperanzameanshope.org), an NGO dedicated to serving the Haitian immigrant population of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic in the areas of education, social aid, and community development. They run a group home for street children and two school projects, mainly for children from the "Batey" slum communities near the sugarcane fields. In the D.R., it is said that nearly half a million Haitians live in...

Check out the links and related articles at www.shinfujiyama.com/richard There are many ways to help orphans and children who have no home to go to, and there is a heated debate to figure out what programs are best or in some cases harmful. Traditionally, orphanages helped these children. As the years have gone by, foster care, family reunification services, and adoption have become the dominant options. Today, some people are skeptical or even against the idea of orphanages, believing that...

Two college buddies studying engineering--Greg Mcgrath and Wes Meier--started EOS International with no money. They had to travel on chicken buses, ox carts, and by foot for years in Nicaragua. Today, their NGO provides under-served communities with access to low-cost appropriate technologies that generate income, improve health, and preserve the environment. Together with other engineering students, they began working in Mali (where Wes served for the Peace Corps) and in Nicaragua. Learn...

When sloths are in trouble in Suriname, people call today's guest for help. Social entrepreneur Monique Pool is a CNN Hero and the founder of Green Heritage Fund Suriname. She's rescuing homeless sloths in South America who are facing deforestation of their natural habitats. It all began from a chance encounter at the animal shelter that led to her facing what history called the "sloth Armageddon." She is also helping other animals in Suriname, such as anteaters and dolphins.  Learn what a...

Kelly Phoenix is the former Executive Director of Nourish International, a non-profit organization that partners with communities to make a lasting impact on extreme poverty. With the fundraising efforts of their 60 campus chapters, they've invested in 113 long-term, community-based programs to fight poverty. Learn how this NGO reached this level of success. In this episode, you'll get a behind-the-curtains look at what it's like to be the Executive Director of a growing nonprofit...

Social entrepreneur and CNN Hero Jock Brandis is the founder of The Full Belly Project. He is the winner of the MIT Ideas Award and the Purpose Prize. He is known as the modern-day Thomas Edison, having invented the "holy grail" of sustainable agriculture and more. His universal peanut sheller and other appropriate technologies have helped tens of thousands of people in many countries across the world. His nonprofit organization works out of a factory in Wilmington, North Carolina.  Jock is...

Sebastian Africano is the founder of ENASA, a consulting firm for fuel-efficient cooking stoves. He now works for Trees, Water & People in Colorado as their International Director. Sebastian manages TWP's clean cookstove, solar energy and reforestation programs in Central America and Haiti. In 2008, Sebastian worked with SHH to replace 30 traditional stoves with 30 fuel-efficient cookstoves in Honduras. If you're deciding whether to become a social entrepreneur or to work for a...

Social entrepreneur Kunal Doshi is the founder of Brighter Children, a non-profit organization that sponsors educational costs for students around the world who couldn’t otherwise go to school. The Brighter Children team is made up of Millennials looking to make a difference while still working full-time. In this episode, Kunal speaks about how his team–despite their busy schedules–leverages evenings, weekends, and network to fund schools and scholarships for children around the world. We...

CNN Hero and social entrepreneur Nancy Hughes is a 73 year-old grandmother and the founder of Stove Team International. They have distributed more than 56,000 fuel-efficient cooking stoves in Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras. Nancy Hughes was widowed at age 65. In an effort to fight the loss, she went on a medical mission trip to Guatemala. It was there that she witnessed a woman who's hands had been burnt shut for sixteen years. At age two, this Guatemalan had fallen...

Social entrepreneur Jacob Lief started the non-profit organization Ubuntu Education Fund in 1999 at age 20 with the goal of transforming the lives of children in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. His interest for South Africa began on a trip that he took there as a young high school student. Over the years, Ubuntu created a comprehensive, child-centered, community-based development plan for the townships of Port Elizabeth. They provide world-class health and educational support to the orphaned...

CNN Hero Yash Gupta was a freshman in high school when he began collecting used eye glasses to distribute to children around the world who couldn't afford them. Since then, his nonprofit organization Sight Learning has collected more than 26,000 eye glasses, giving them out in Mexico, Honduras, Haiti, and India. In this episode, Yash talks about the Tae Kwon Do incident that sparked it all, what it was like driving around with his mom to collect the first glasses, and his quest to grow his...

Social entrepreneur David Schweidenback is the founder of Pedals for Progress, an NGO that collects used bicycles in the US, shipping them out to 38 developing countries including war-torn Nicaragua, Honduras, Africa, and Eastern Europe. In 25 years, this nonprofit organization has delivered 147,830 bicycles around the world. David Schweidenback is a CNN Hero, and his NGO has been recognized by Forbes Magazine and the Skoll Foundation, among many others. Learn how bicycles can help spin...