Category: Bridging the Opportunity Divide

Anyone Who Needs Help Seeing Has 2 Million Pairs of Eyes Available With This App

Posted on by robbie

When Rory Hoffman needs to read the labels on his cassette tapes, he opens up an app. Marian Helling Wildgruber finds the spices in her kitchen cabinet by pulling out her phone. Tabitha Jackson grabs her phone before she goes grocery shopping.
Hoffman, Wildgruber and Jackson all are blind or visually impaired. So tasks like reading labels, selecting the right herbs and navigating stores can prove challenging.
That’s where Be My Eyes comes in. It’s a mobile app that connects people who are blind or visually impaired with volunteers who have normal vision. By tapping their camera’s video function, volunteers can guide people with vision impairments in a variety of daily tasks.
The app launched in 2015, and within 11 days, it had 100,000 volunteers. Now, four years later, two million volunteers have joined Be My Eyes. It’s part of a movement coined microvolunteering, whereby small tasks performed by many people can add up to real impact  on a large scale. For Be My Eyes volunteers, there’s no commitment to a certain number of calls. It’s just a chance to help someone out when they need it.
There is an estimated 1.3 billion people with some form of visual impairment worldwide. People who are visually impaired might have family or neighbors they can rely on, but on-demand support 24/7 is unlikely. Sometimes an extra set of eyes is helpful.
Hoffman uses Be My Eyes a few times a week. He typically relies on a neighbor to help him with tasks that require normal vision, but it’s nice to know there’s immediate help at hand, he says.
“I don’t have to wait for anyone to come, I can just take care of it immediately.”
Hoffman, who is a musician, recently wanted to replace the strings on his guitar. But it was impossible for him to feel the slight differences between each string. So Hoffman pulled out his phone and using the phone’s voice recognition feature, made a call on Be My Eyes.
There, a volunteer popped up and read the guitar string labels. In just a few minutes, Hoffman had the right strings for his guitar.
“There are some times when having somebody with a pair of eyes just makes things helpful,” he says. “And to be able to just connect to somebody who’s available to help, that’s really a great idea.”
The app was founded by Hans Jørgen Wiberg, a Danish furniture designer. Widberg, who is visually impaired, was talking with a few of his blind friends when they said they all relied on FaceTime to connect with family and friends for assistance.
Widberg realized this idea could work with volunteers. He brought his idea to a startup weekend in Denmark in 2012, where he met Thelle Kristensen. Together they formed a team. It took two and a half years to develop and bring the app to the market.
“The fire in our belly was to make a worldwide network of volunteers to help out, and it’s been great to see the reaction with ten times as many sighted as blind people,” says Kristensen, the co-founder and CEO of Be My Eyes.
Lauren Traut was deep in conversation when her phone rang, and she received a notification from Be My Eyes that someone needed assistance.
“I told my friend, ‘Hold on. Pause. I got to take this call.’”
On the line was a woman who needed help reading a letter. It was from a church thanking her for a donation she recently made in honor of her husband and daughter who had recently passed.
Traut said the appreciation in the woman’s words had a lasting impact.
“Granted that task probably wasn’t life-changing for her,” Traut says, “But it’s simple things like that that maybe fully sighted people take for granted.”
Traut says the sheer magnitude of volunteers on the app is incredible. But this also means a single volunteer won’t get too many calls.
Traut downloaded the app in June 2017. Since then, she says she’s only received six or seven calls.
But for Wildgruber, it’s reassuring to know she won’t be bothering anyone.
“You know the volunteers are answering the phone if they want to,” she says. “And knowing that if you call a few times a day, you’re not bothering anyone.”
“Sometimes it’s a quick fix, other times it’s a longer conversation of what’s life like where you are,” says Christian Erfurt, the chief executive of Be My Eyes. “That reminds us that we’re not that different, and the gap between ‘us and them’ is minimized.”
More: The GovTech Apps Changing the Way We Live

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Editor’s note: An earlier version of the headline incorrectly stated there were 100,000 volunteers on the app. The correct number is 2 million.

This Website Empowers People in Need to Make Art — And Sell It for Thousands of Dollars

Posted on by robbie

Kitty Zen used to sell her art on a blanket in a Boston public park. Now, her art has been displayed at the city’s Museum of Fine Arts and has sold for $1,000.
Zen, a 25-year-old self-taught artist, has been homeless for most of her life. But through ArtLifting, she’s created an income for herself.
“When I got that first check, it was amazing,” says Zen. “I didn’t want to cash it. I wanted to frame it.”
ArtLifting is an online platform where individuals impacted by homelessness or disabilities can sell artwork. There’s an application process where the artists and their work are assessed for mission alignment and curatorial standards.
Liz Powers, one of ArtLifting’s founders, started working in homeless shelters when she was 18. After graduating from Harvard, she received a grant to create art groups within shelters. But she noticed the art produced in these groups ended up in closets and trash cans.
“I realized there were already existing art groups all across the country, about a thousand of them, and that quality, salable art was being produced every day in these groups. The issue was that the art wasn’t going anywhere after. Instead, it would just collect dust or be thrown out. This is where I realized the need for something like ArtLifting,” Powers says.
So Powers and her brother Spencer pooled together $4,000 and founded the public benefit corporation in 2013. Originally, it functioned solely as an online gallery for original works of art. Now it’s expanded to a marketplace for curated art, business partnerships, prints and merchandise.
ArtLifting started in Boston with just four artists. Six years later, there’s about 150 artists and customers in 46 states. Staff curators choose the art they then represent on their website.
“After the last decade of working with homeless individuals, I’ve heard over and over, ‘Liz, I don’t want another handout. I don’t want someone to hand me another sandwich. I just want opportunity. I want an ability to change my own life.’ And that’s really gotten to me,” Powers says.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaCi5BQH-vt/
While the income artists make is essential, empowerment is a key element of ArtLifting.
“My ultimate goal is to create a movement celebrating strengths. There are countless hidden talents out there, and our goal is to inspire people to notice them,” says Powers.
On its website, each artist has a story. Aron Washington, whose acrylic paintings are influenced by physics and designs, uses art to fight stigmas. Washington, who has synesthesia triggered by a bicycle accident, paints to bring awareness to humanity, he says.
Jackie Calabrese uses art as a release for PTSD and depression. Using colorful acrylics, she paints calming landscapes from memory that remind her of safe and happy places.
“[Painting] helps me to be more motivated in life, to feel less depressed or more peaceful. My past has been full of trauma,” she says. Art is a way to release a lot of that and find more peace within myself. It gives a place to think of that is beautiful instead of all the horror from the past.”
ArtLifting works with small businesses and Fortune 500 companies, like Staples and Microsoft, to provide artwork for offices. Prints sell for about $300 and original artwork has sold for as much as $25,000.
Eric Lewis Basher sold two artworks to Microsoft that now hang in Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters.
Basher currently paints at Hospitality House, a shelter and art studio in San Francisco.
“I am thrilled at the potential this means for me,” Basher says. “If anyone at that level likes my work then the world opens up.”
When a piece of art is sold, each artist makes 55 percent of the profit. One percent goes towards a fund that provides support to art groups, and the remainder keeps the business afloat.
Powers stresses that this isn’t a charity. These are talented artists looking to sell their work and spread their talent to a larger audience.
“It is a very touching moment to actually meet the person who wants to have a piece of your artwork be a part of their homes,” Zen says. “Artists are always our own hardest critics. Being appreciated that way is truly uplifting.”
More: 6 Stunning Art Projects That Are Making Cities Healthier

For Prisoners, Reading Is So Much More Than a Pastime — It’s a Way to Change Their Lives

Posted on by robbie

Twice a week, volunteers climb down the steep steps to the basement of Brooklyn’s Freebird Books. Once inside, they’re greeted by hundreds of books, stacks of brown paper bags and piles of letters. Before long, each book will be in the hands of an inmate somewhere in the U.S.
The cramped bookstore basement serves as the headquarters of NYC Books Through Bars, a volunteer-run group that sends books to incarcerated people in 40 states (the remaining states are either covered by similar programs or barred from receiving packages). In any given week the organization, which has been around for 21 years, receives hundreds of book requests: a Scrabble dictionary, a beginner’s guide to playing the guitar, a science-fiction novel — the list goes on. Each year, they ship somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 volumes to federal and state prisons.
The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other developed country, with 10.6 million cycling in and out of the criminal justice system each year. Often, these prisons have libraries that are understocked and outdated. Others might not have a library at all, or at least not one that’s accessible to all inmates. New York’s infamous Rikers Island, for example, runs its library from a single cart. With roughly 8,000 inmates spread out among the complex’s 10 jails, getting your hands on even one book can feel like finding a treasure.
NYC Books Through Bars believes education is a fundamental right. It’s also one of the strongest tools to reduce recidivism — a 2013 study by the Rand Corporation found that educational intervention can lower a formerly incarcerated person’s chances of reoffending by about 40 percent.

A volunteer handles the mail. Besides fielding book requests, the organization also receives thank-you notes and hand-drawn cards.

But over the past decade prisons have cut back on educational programs, and inmates have been excluded from receiving Pell Grants, the financial-aid program for low-income college students, since the 1990s — all of which makes accessing educational support behind bars a challenge.
“In some instances, receiving a book is the beginning of an education,” says Daniel Schaffer, a collective member who’s been volunteering with NYC Books Through Bars for more than 16 years.
Instead of shipping donated books to a central prison library, the organization mails the titles directly to the inmates who request them, a novelty among programs offering similar services.
“Sending the books to the individuals adds to the strength of the project,” says Schaffer, adding that because some prisoners might not have families that visit, write or mail packages, NYC Books Through Bars might be the only contact they have with the outside world.
Schaffer stresses that a mailed book doesn’t reach just one person — inside a prison’s walls, books are passed around and shared.  
Prisoners learn about the organization largely through word of mouth. And when one person hears about the books program, it’s just a matter of time before letters start arriving, Schaffer says. Sometimes they ask that a specific title be sent; other people are happy to receive anything from a particular genre. Among the most requested are dictionaries.
Because the books and packing materials are donated by the community, and Freebird lets the organization use its basement space for free, the program costs very little to operate. There are no paid employees, either. The only expense is postage, which is collected mostly through fundraising events. Even then, the organization cuts down on shipping costs by bundling four books in a package, at a rate of between $2.75 and $4.31 to ship.
Every Sunday and Monday, 10 to 20 volunteers collect, wrap and ship off the books. By the end of a three-hour shift, hundreds of brown parcels are stacked, ready to make their way to correctional facilities across the country.
Volunteers come from a range of backgrounds — students, librarians, archivists and editors among them — and not all hold the same beliefs about the current state of the criminal justice system. Some consider themselves abolitionists, while others promote reform. Still, everyone shows up for the same reason: to have an immediate effect on people on the inside.
“The thing that links everyone together, ultimately, is that we think the people who are in prison at least deserve to be treated as [humans],” Schaffer says.
“If, in an evening, I can do 20 or 30 or 40 books then that’s the number of individuals who are directly impacted,” he adds.
As requests for titles flood in to NYC Books Through Bars, so do the thank-yous. Letters, pop-up cards, drawings and other artwork from inmates line the shelves of the Freebird Books basement and get posted on Facebook. For the volunteers, the handmade tokens are a friendly reminder of the work they do.
Says Schaffer, “It helps to keep in mind that what you’re doing actually does impact people.”

These Pilots Provide Free Flights to Patients Who Need Them Most

Posted on by robbie

When Norien was born, his parents faced an immediate challenge. Their son, now 2 years old, was born with a rare congenital condition called arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC), a disorder that affects the movement and flexibility of a newborn’s joints and muscles. “The doctors at home in Virginia had no idea what it was,” says Tess, Norien’s mother.
Unlike other conditions that inhibit movement, AMC doesn’t worsen with age, so long as kids with the condition get proper medical treatment. So Norien’s parents had to figure out a way for their son to receive expert care at Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia, and traveling by train to and from the hospital quickly became expensive. That’s when they reached out to Angel Flight East, a nonprofit run by volunteer pilots who combine their love of flying with a desire to help others.
“It’s very rewarding to be able to take something that you love doing and give back to folks in need,” says Nevin Showman, a pilot for Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic.
Watch the video above to hear Norien’s story, and to learn how Angel Flight and similar nonprofits make a difference nationwide.
More: The Harry Potter Producer Who Gave Up The Movie Business To Help Families With Sick Children

Samsung NEXT Innovation Challenge

Posted on by robbie

It can be hard enough to start a business — but what if you also want that business to create positive change in the world? Samsung NEXT and NationSwell teamed up for the Samsung NEXT Innovation Challenge, to reward innovators focused on bridging the opportunity gap across education, workforce development, and economic empowerment.
The five finalists were comprised of a diverse group of entrepreneurs from all parts of the country, each building businesses geared toward achieving positive social impact. All five presented their innovations at an awards ceremony in New York City, where one company, Literator, was announced the winner.

Here’s a look at the issues these five young innovators chose to tackle, and how they hope to make a difference.

The winner, Michelle Ching, set out to solve a major problem in education: literacy. As a second-grade teacher, she saw that her students were struggling with learning to read — but it was hard to track their progress and identify where they were getting stuck. Her app, Literator, helps teachers track their students’ reading proficiency in real time across the school year, and lets them know what kind of help each student needs. “Literacy is one of the things that is the biggest blocker for student success, so for us, it was a no-brainer that literacy would be the big systems-change work that we wanted to tackle first,” says Ching. “But it’s turned into a bigger vision beyond that.”

Brian Hill, CEO and founder of Edovo, wants to create a new model of education in correctional facilities while also helping incarcerated people stay in touch with their loved ones. By providing incarcerated people with secure tablets, Edovo helps them gain access to education and also communicate with loved ones on the outside. These tools can provide the skills and support that allow people to integrate back into the community when they’re released, and that in turn can reduce recidivism, says Hill. “If we’re not helping people, if we’re just opening the door and saying ‘Go home,’ we run the risk of very rapidly destroying any gains we make in [criminal justice reform],” Hill says. “It’s about helping people learn and develop and make choices.”

Fonta Gilliam founded Sou Sou as a way to modernize the informal credit clubs adopted by many cultures around the world. In Ghana, a sou-sou is a practice in which a group pools their money, allowing one member to use the full amount each month. Gilliam said she became aware of this and similar practices while working as a diplomat in the foreign service across Africa and Asia. Gilliam built an app that allows people to easily track and organize their pooled funds, while also linking up with banks to earn credit on the money. “There are so many communities abroad, even immigrant communities in the U.S., that are using these informal lending circles to save money amongst themselves, rotate money and fund their goals,” says Gilliam. “So I thought to myself, this is a system that’s working, what if we modernized it with tech?”
Preston Silverman said he realized that many high school students “check out” of the college track early because they assume they will not be able to afford to go — even if they might be eligible for scholarships after graduating from high school. His startup, RaiseMe, helps high school students access financial aid before they apply to college. “We focus on the financial aid part of the equation because we see that’s the biggest barrier for students and families, but ultimately we want to help all students discover and realize their college ambitions,” says Silverman. With RaiseMe, students can “follow” colleges they’re interested in and earn “micro-scholarships” from those colleges for a variety of achievements throughout high school, such as getting good grades, participating in extracurricular activities and playing sports. If they end up matriculating, they can collect the scholarship.
Like Michelle Ching, Heejae Lim wants to use technology to improve education — but while Literator is a tool for teachers, Lim’s company TalkingPoints is intended to help immigrant parents better support their children in school. As a Korean immigrant, Lim noticed that students whose parents spoke English communicated easily with teachers and became involved in the education process, while those whose parents didn’t speak English struggled to be involved. Her app allows teachers to message parents directly and automatically translates messages in English into over 20 languages. When parents reply in their home language, their response is translated into English for the teacher. “Most of the resources right now are going to school environments and teachers, which is also really important,” Lim says. “But we can also unlock the power of parents and families to be able to improve student performance.”

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Article produced in partnership with Samsung NEXT, Samsung’s innovation group that works with entrepreneurs to build, grow, and scale great ideas. NationSwell has partnered with Samsung NEXT to find and elevate some of the most promising innovators working to close the opportunity gap in America. Click here to meet the finalists.

The School for College Dropouts

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Dennis Littky looks every inch an iconoclast. With his omnipresent kofia, white goatee and casual manner — the words “ain’t” and “man” regularly pepper his speech — the 74-year-old self-styled “radical educator” seems more ashram guru than international education thought leader. But his track record is hard to dispute: Littky, who holds twin Ph.D.s in psychology and education, has been founding and running schools for over 40 years, along the way garnering praise from the likes of the Gates Foundation (which has awarded several million dollars to fund his efforts) and Barack Obama.
Littky first gained attention in the late ’80s as the principal of the troubled Thayer High School in New Hampshire, where his unorthodox appearance and methods eventually got him fired (which was grist for the 1992 TV movie “A Town Torn Apart”). After co-founding a nonprofit, Big Picture Learning, that today operates more than 75 schools in the U.S. and more than 100  around the world, he turned his attention to post-secondary education with the launch of College Unbound in 2009.
Designed to address the needs of underrepresented, nontraditional college students, most of whom have full-time, low-wage jobs, College Unbound caters to adults with some college credit but no degree. Focusing on each student’s unique talents and interests, Littky’s innovative formula seems to be working: The Providence, Rhode Island–based school currently enrolls around 200 students, 80 percent of whom graduate, says Littky.
NationSwell spoke with Littky about how College Unbound supports adult students, why a bachelor of arts degree still matters, and how to get credit for one’s “life” work.
NationSwell: After establishing the Big Picture and Met schools, why did you decide to open a college for underserved populations?
Dennis Littky: There are 37 million people in this country who started college and didn’t finish. Ten years ago I [realized] college sucks for poor kids. If kids in the lowest quartile actually start college, 89 percent don’t make it through, which is absurd. So I said, “I think I can reverse that.”
NationSwell: Why is getting a bachelor’s degree so important in this country? Some might argue that vocational schools can help fill that gap.
Littky: In the year 2019, if you are poor and of color, you ain’t moving anywhere without a bachelor’s degree. It’s the bar, and it is still a symbol that you know what you’re doing. It’s the middle class that tells you, “Yeah, there are a lot of different pathways.” Yeah, [but are] you sending your kid to a four-year college or are you sending them to a plumbing school? There are other ways, but [a degree] is very important right now.
NationSwell: All of your previous work was with kids in high school and younger. Why did you change your focus to helping people finish college, particularly older people?
Littky: We started [College Unbound] with young kids, and then I kept having 25-year-olds, 35-year-olds, 45-year-olds, come to us and say, “We dropped out when we were 20, man. I went back when I was 23. I dropped out again. And we can’t get back in school. We don’t want to sit next to an 18-year-old. We’re now 38. We can’t go to school at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.” So 10 years ago I wrote a Facebook post saying, “If you started school and dropped out, come [out tonight] at 7 o’clock.” I had 78 people show up who wanted to finish their education — a lot of single moms, a lot of people working two jobs.

college unbound 2
Dennis Littky (left) with College Unbound founding provost Adam Bush.

We morphed the college into what we call a degree-completion college, so it’s for people who have started [college]. We get them to come out one night a week for three hours. They’re in a cohort model so they support each other. They’ve all dropped out a million times. We’ve been keeping 86 percent of the people in, which is ridiculously good. And that’s with 75 percent who are eligible for federal Pell grants, which is ridiculously poor. To give you perspective, 7 percent of students at Brown University are eligible for this aid.
NationSwell: College Unbound provides childcare and dinner for students. I have a 4-year-old so I can understand how complicated going back to school would be, especially if also working full-time.
Littky: The other day [a prospective] student heard me talk. She hadn’t been able to go back to school. And then I said, “Food — you can come right from work.” She checked it off. She has a kid, so she checked daycare off. We do everything we can do to help an adult get through. We’re also inside the Rhode Island Department of Corrections; we’ve had 93 students in the prison. When they get out, they take what we call a gateway course, which helps them with the transition back to society and prepares them to move into the college.
NationSwell: I was reading that you partnered with another school, an accredited institution, that provides the actual diploma. Is that how it works?
Littky: We had [being doing that], but now we’re on our own — we got approved as the 13th college in Rhode Island, and we were the first school approved in 26 years. The [accreditation commission] is very protective of who they let in; it’s very tough. We went through a three-year process. And last September, we got what’s called candidacy, the most important step, which means we now can apply for the federal government to give our students financial aid — that’s a big thing. If you have poor students, you need them to be eligible for financial aid, and they can’t get that unless the school is accredited.
NationSwell: So when students graduate this year, their diploma will say College Unbound for the first time?
Littky: Yes. Hopefully in the fall, the first people entering can collect financial aid right through us.
NationSwell: I skimmed your course catalog and noticed more pragmatic fields of study like social and business ethics instead of, say, a film class or other squishy liberal arts stuff. Why is that?
Littky: We have one major that’s going to help people succeed in life: organizational leadership and change. They take courses on leadership; writing for change; and reframing failure, where they reexamine [past mistakes] and do a “résumé of failures.” There’s also a research course, and one that contextualizes their work and workplace. We try to make everything relevant. But we have science courses, we have statistics courses, we have everything. We give out 120 credits, like everybody else.
NationSwell: College Unbound serves nontraditional students, all of whom are adults. What is a typical day like for these atypical students?
Littky: Most people going to community college take a course here, a course there, and they’re 80 before they graduate. The majority of our students have jobs. A student might come in at 5:30 p.m., grab her food, put her kid in the corner with a book. She’ll start mingling with her cohort, about 15 people. Every student has a project. There’s usually either a professor online or a professor right there who’s giving them some content about their courses. They take two courses at a time for eight weeks. One day they’re meeting with a lab faculty advisor to get one-on-one work.
Our job is to get these people [to graduate], right? And to honor what work they’ve done for the last 20 years, OK? So we have something called prior learning experience. There’s an organization called the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning that we partnered with. You can put together all the novels that you’ve read and all the work that you’ve done, and they can be submitted. If they find a course that’s similar, an English course, you can get credit for it. There’s also something called CLEP exams, which are proficiency exams and have been approved in this country as college credit. So if I have people that speak Spanish — and half my population speaks Spanish — they can take those exams and get six to 12 credits.
After Kurt Vonnegut wrote “Cat’s Cradle,” [the University of Chicago] gave him an honorary degree. I was thinking about that — I’ve got a lot of honorary degrees. Sometimes you just think it’s bullshit, but on the other hand, it’s based on real work, right? And that’s what we do. We try to give credit to adults for their life’s work.
More: What If We Could Nearly Double the Graduation Rate of Community College Students With One Simple Idea?

Providence Restaurant Serves Up Second Chances

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Jeff Bacon has worked in kitchens his entire life, but it was only after a brush with the law that he realized food could change lives. “I ended up mixed up with drugs and alcohol, running with a wild crowd, losing job after job … I was great at what I did, but I wasn’t a very good person,” Bacon says.
After serving two years in prison for drug possession and resisting arrest, Bacon says he experienced a spiritual awakening. “I firmly, firmly heard from God, ‘This is not what you’re supposed to be doing with your life. You need to do something more, and you need to give back the second chance that you got.’”
Bacon wanted to use his passion for food to give back to the community of Winston-Salem, N.C., where one in seven people struggles with hunger. After years of pitching the idea of a culinary training school, Bacon was finally able to launch Providence Culinary Training Program through a partnership with the Second Harvest Food Bank.
The program trains people in all aspects of food service, and students prepare meals for local community members in need. “It’s not the food scarcity and the food insecurity, though that is a crushing and urgent and acute problem… but it’s the root causes,” says Bacon. “[It’s] the root causes of poverty, the inequalities of our society — we’re not just ill-prepared to deal with them, we’re ill-prepared to even discuss them intelligently.”
Through the Providence program, students receive 12 weeks of culinary training, as well as connections in the food industry and opportunities for long-term internships and jobs. Many of the participants enter the program facing obstacles to stable employment, such as a criminal background or a lack of higher education. But after completing their training, 87 percent of graduates retain steady employment one year later.
Watch the video above to learn more about the Providence program and meet some of the people who have turned their lives around through it.
MORE: Would Your Opinion of Criminals Change If One Cooked and Served You Dinner?

Five Things That Can Help Democratize Entrepreneurship

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William Gibson said that the future is here — it’s just not evenly distributed. That certainly seems true for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. While there is plenty of breathless reporting about the latest startups to come out of Silicon Valley, the truth is that startup growth is relatively stagnant in many parts of the country and for large segments of the population.
It’s no secret that startup founders in the U.S. are overwhelmingly white and male, and many have family wealth to fall back on. If you live in the wrong place, didn’t go to the right school or just don’t fit the traditional model of what successful founders “look like,” accessing venture capital can be a huge challenge.
Samsung NEXT executives met with a diverse group of entrepreneurs, policy experts, nonprofit leaders and financial lenders to discuss what can be done to level the playing field and democratize entrepreneurship.

Redefine what an entrepreneur looks like

Many VCs may have a preformed notion about what a successful entrepreneur looks like — and if you’re a woman, or a minority, or both, “You are not the model of success they’ve seen,” says Siggi Hindrichs, principal investor at Samsung NEXT.
What’s more, many potentially talented entrepreneurs who aren’t white or male don’t see themselves as someone who might potentially start a company: they don’t have an internal “model of success” either. “Unless you’ve seen someone that looks like you do that, you’re not going to think to do that,” Hindrichs says. “In many cases, unless you’ve been exposed to an option, you won’t consider it an option.”

Democratize entrepreneurship education

Leadership consultant Lisa Pearl suggests that early education might be a key to building such an internal model of success for women and minorities. “This is something you can start really early in school,” she says. “Teaching kids how to be entrepreneurs — how to come up with ideas, and get them from idea to execution.” Giving kids access to VC concepts early on might give them the confidence to navigate that world when they are older.
Steve Hollingworth, President of the Grameen Foundation, agrees change is needed to promote entrepreneurship through public education. “Otherwise we’re just perpetuating our inequalities for future generations.”
Charlie Germano, senior director, IT security and operations at Save the Children in Washington, D.C., agrees. In areas where his organization serves young women, he says, “You can draw a straight line from education to opportunity.”
Social entrepreneur Paul Harrison notes that community colleges could also help prepare students to start companies and access VC by helping them meet venture capitalists. Today, if you don’t come from a big-name business school, he said, “You have to both have a great idea, and catch up with 10 to 15 years of networking before you get started.”
Democratizing entrepreneurship 2

Diversify venture capital portfolios  

Because prejudice can be subconscious, it’s important for VC firms to track how many startups led by women or minorities they back — and to proactively reach out to underrepresented groups, says Gus Warren, managing director of Samsung NEXT Ventures. It’s a practice his group has just begun. “We’re looking, and we’re tracking it,” he says.
This kind of active self-auditing will pay off, Warren adds. “Your earnings will be better, your ideas will be better” with more diverse teams, he says. “There will be more collisions of people from different backgrounds to come up with different solutions.”

Reinvent venture capital

Entrepreneur Jessica Stuart bootstrapped her business, Long Story Short Media, and was able to grow it into a success. Now, she says, she wants to apply for funds to take her business to the next step — but VCs aren’t interested because these types of businesses don’t typically generate the type of returns venture capitalists expect or require.
Venture capital needs to expand their scope to include opportunities for people like Stuart, Warren says. “There’s an opportunity for a different kind of VC that funds small, profitable companies to expand, rather than bet on vaporware that may or may not win big.”

Add mentorship to VC

“Sometimes someone has a dynamo idea, but they might not ‘speak the language’ of VC,” says Hindrichs. Samsung NEXT offers funding to startups but will also mentor them to shape their ideas and show them the ropes — something more VCs need to do, Hindrichs adds.
“Money isn’t everything,” adds Arti Patel Varanasi, president and CEO of Advancing Synergy. “You need the money, but are there other components that can make [an entrepreneur] a better, stronger individual and more conversant on venture capital? If you write that person a check, you should also mentor them.”

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Article produced in partnership with Samsung NEXT, Samsung’s innovation group that works with entrepreneurs to build, grow, and scale great ideas. NationSwell has partnered with Samsung NEXT to find and elevate some of the most promising innovators working to close the opportunity gap in America. Click here to meet the finalists.

At This Library, People in Need Can Check Out Accessories for Job Interviews

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Michelle Lee was in the middle of a job-hunting workshop when the subject of wardrobe came up. “I was talking about work fashion, and one teen said that he didn’t have any clothing [suitable] for job interviews,” Lee told NationSwell. “And some teens were surprised by the idea that they had to wear professional attire” when interviewing for jobs.
Lee was taken aback by their comments. As the young adult librarian at the Riverside branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL), Lee coaches local students on how to write resumes, practice for interviews and learn the skills they’ll need to join the workforce. But this was the first time Lee had thought about their attire and the importance of dressing for success.
It sparked an idea: What if the library could be a place where job seekers of any age could borrow the accessories they might need in order to impress a potential future boss?

Library Suits Ties 2
A selection of handbags available through NYPL Grow Up.

As libraries expand beyond books and become hubs for arts, technology and social services, they are now providing sartorial support. NYPL’s Grand Central branch gives referrals for organizations that provide professional clothing for work or a job interview, as part of a program run by the economic empowerment nonprofit Single Stop. And the Queens Library and the Free Library of Philadelphia both have tie-lending programs.
So Lee submitted a proposal for a “fashion library” to NYPL’s Innovation Project, which provides funding and support for library staffers to pitch ideas for creative programs and solutions services for clientele. Lee ended up winning a grant to launch NYPL Grow Up as a pilot program at Riverside. Grow Up combines an attire rental service with a new series of “adulting” workshops that cover workplace fashion as well as budgeting, healthy living and other life skills.
Grow Up’s library features a range of neckties, briefcases and handbags that patrons can rent for up to three weeks. All they need is a library card (with less than $15 in fines attached to it). Grow Up even offers bow ties if interviewees are in need of something formal. “They can use it for a school performance or prom if they want,” Lee told the Washington Post.
Grow Up has already seen some success, particularly among female job seekers who report that the handbags are not only stylish and useful, but also practical: “You can put a lot of stuff in there,” one renter said.
If you would like to contribute to the program, the Riverside Library accepts donations of work-appropriate handbags, briefcases and ties during normal business hours.

Meet the Delaware Teen Fighting for the Rights of Former Juvenile Offenders

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“I could have never imagined that something as severe as incarceration would happen to someone like me, until it did,” said Jane Lyons, recalling the path that led her neighbor to the local detention center.
Lyons, 18, grew up in an affluent Delaware suburb outside of Wilmington. A few miles down the road from her home sits Ferris School for Boys, a juvenile detention center she admits gave her an “eerie” feeling driving past.
It was only when her childhood neighbor was sent to Ferris on drug charges that the center became more than an abstract concept for Lyons. Her neighbor had come from the same affluent background as her, but after experiencing family problems became addicted to drugs and involved in a local gang.
Her neighbor’s incarceration was a wakeup call to Lyons about the difficulties facing former juvenile offenders as they try to rebuild their lives. “[Teens at Ferris] feel as if society is stacked against them,” she explained at a recent TEDxYouth event. “They simply think that our world is waiting for them to make a mistake.”
With this in mind, as a freshman in high school she teamed up with her brother Patrick to launch Youth Overcoming Obstacles, a nonprofit dedicated to lifting up formerly incarcerated youth. The organization started small — gathering donations of books, school supplies, clothes and other essentials to make sure teens’ basic needs were met as they exited the detention center. They eventually moved on to organizing larger fundraisers to send the young men to summer camp, vocational training, and even to provide a down payment on one family’s apartment.
“This started as an act of kindness and now has become a passion project to replace the recidivism cycle with a resilient path to a brighter future for teens who want to continue positive change,” Lyons told NationSwell.
Youth Overcoming Obstacles was so successful at raising funds and awareness to support formerly incarcerated youth that the Delaware Legislature adopted their re-entry fund after a year and a half. Now Lyons is working on a pilot program that offers financial training to these young people to help them transition into the workforce.
Teens have a vital role to play in improving their communities, says Lyons. “My advice to other young people is to follow your heart and have the courage to reach out to community leaders and public officials with your plan of action,” she told NationSwell.
“It may take some persistence, but they really do want to hear your ideas, and they will help if they can.”
Homepage photo via TEDx Talks.