Grand Prize
Gardens for Health International (USA) received the Grand Prize in the 2008 Staples Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur competition. Gardens for Health provides nutritional support and economic empowerment to HIV-positive individuals throughout Rwanda. This organization simultaneously targets malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and poverty. Gardens for Health, co-founded by Emily Morell and Emma Clippinger in 2006, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
(Photo: Gretchen Zucker, Executive Director, Youth Venture, Inc; Ben Mandelkern, Gardens for Health International; Mile Miles, Staples COO.)
Runner-Up
The Hunger Brigade (La Brigade De La Faim, France) received the Runner Up Prize. The Hunger Brigade provides alternative support to the homeless in Paris by engaging and inspiring students to participate in non-profit and charity organizations. This Venture encourages young people to provide sleeping bags – but also to build social interactions through meeting, talking, and sharing a meal with those they are helping. (Photo: Gretchen Zucker, Executive Director, Youth Venture, Inc; Nicolas Macabéo, The Hunger Brigade; Mile Miles, Staples COO.)
MAD - Make a Difference (India) received the Global Prize in the 2008 Staples Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur competition. MAD organizes volunteers to provide educational and life-skills to children living in orphanages and street shelters. Founded as a Venture in 2006, MAD says its children are street smart, intelligent and mature but very few get the opportunity to continue their education after the age of 15, and the quality of that early education is often poor at best. (Photo:MAD - Make a Difference)
Kyle Freas and his Venture Youth Together received the Grand Prize in the 2007 Staples Ashoka That Was Easy Competition. Youth Together encourages young people in community service to help abused, homeless, and critically ill children in Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New York, California and New Mexico. A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Youth Together offers eleven different projects for youth involvement and has raised over $200,000 dollars (to date) to help needy children.
(Photo: Ron Sargent, Staples CEO; Kyle Freas and Brad Henkel, Youth Together)
