Rey – Page 2 – efozzie

50 days until One Degree launches

I can’t believe we have less than 50 days before our pilot launches here in San Francisco. Time certainly flies, especially when we’ve had exciting things to do like the Echoing Green New Fellows Retreat

To give you a quick update on that, at the retreat we had these activities called Brain Trusts, where we got into small consultation groups and brainstormed a current issue we’re facing. Our topic was One Degree’s vision for growth, and I came away with fascinating insights. It’s a luxury to collaborate with brilliant minds on One Degree’s big picture needs.

More importantly it was great to be with kindred socially entrepreneurial spirits. We bonded, shared tips, and also commiserated on the trials of startup life. It’s great to be part of the 2012 Echoing Green cohort!

WEB PLATFORM BETA
You know how we’ve been talking about this mysterious web platform that’s like a “Yelp for Nonprofits”? Yea, well we actually have one now! It’s a simple version 1.0 of our platform (in “Lean Startup” terminology, this is our MVP, or minimum viable product). We didn’t want to spend a ton of time or money creating a website that we’d have to change anyway, so we’re testing this with the people in our pilot, taking the lessons learned from that pilot and then building off of it in the next round.
You can help even if you don’t have web development experience! We need your eyeballs to beta test our site (shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to an hour and you can do this on your own time next week). Sign up here to help and to get a sneak preview!

RECRUIT RESOURCE DESK VOLUNTEERS IN SF
Can you forward the email below my signature — right now — to one person who may be interested in volunteering?
If you’re in the Bay Area, you, too, can sign up to be in our founding cohort of Resource Desk Volunteers! This is a great opportunity to work in schools to connect low-income families to the resources they need to thrive. No experience is necessary to join, and we’re asking for a short time commitment each week.
Help us recruit our first cohort of volunteers. Please email your contacts now.
The next 50 days are critical to launching our pilot successfully and showing that all families can have easy access to critical services in their community. I hope you can lend a hand.

For our youth,
Rey

CEO + Founder

FOLLOW ONE DEGREE
Founding Connectors Blog: 1degree.tumblr.com
Facebook: facebook.com/1deg.org
Twitter: @1deg
Subscribe to our mailing list: 1deg.org

SAMPLE EMAIL TO YOUR BUDDIES
Hi _____,
I really think you should check out this new organization, One Degree, which has an innovative solution to fight poverty. They’re looking for volunteers to operate their Resource Desks in low-income schools in San Francisco. I thought this might be a good fit for you.
This is a great opportunity to work in schools to connect low-income families to the resources they need to thrive. No experience is necessary to join, and it’s only a short time commitment each week.

Check out their website for more info at http://volunteer.1deg.org. Feel free to send this email to your friends, too.
Cheers,
Your Name Here

ABOUT ONE DEGREE
One Degree connects kids & families to poverty-fighting resources. We are mobilizing trained volunteers to operate resource desks in low-income public schools. This makes schools the focal point of the community and helps families navigate through the complex web of social services. Furthermore, we’re developing a web and mobile app that’s like a Yelp for nonprofits, which holds all the information about community programs in one place. Imagine millions of people being able to access, rate, review and get information about their local resources, like food banks, employment services and afterschool programs. We hope to make families the drivers of social change. One Degree is a 2012 winner of the Echoing Green Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship.

Originally posted on One Degree’s blog.

One Degree’s Summer of Progress

We’ve been a little quiet the last few weeks because now that the organization has settled down in San Francisco, we are busy at work. We could still use skilled hands to help us launch.

PERSONAL NOTE FROM A GRATEFUL COUCH-SURFING FOUNDER
This month has been tough! It’s been challenging and rewarding all at the same time. I literally hopped from full-time grad student into full-time CEO without a break. A personal thanks goes out to friends Adriana, Lyndsey, Erwin and Coy for housing me this summer! Luckily I found housing starting in August in SF’s Mission District for less than $520/month, which by the way is the cheapest rent I’ve ever had!

While the Echoing Green announcement was exciting, it thrust us into the spotlight and turned up the heat. The seed funding is great, but we’ve only raised 30% of our budget this year! Even though there is more work to be done, I’m learning a lot about myself, my own entrepreneurial working style, and my community during this startup phase.

FUNDRAISING
Vote for us in the Good Maker Technology Challenge! It only takes two minutes and can land us much-needed seed funding and also great exposure on Good (a news source for all things socially good). Click on the video below to vote!

I recently spoke at an event for the All Stars Helping Kids Foundation, which garnered some great connections. Check out the picture below with All Stars Executive Director Kamba Tshionyi, Founder (and fellow Trojan) Ronnie Lott, and Celebrity Chef/Restauranteur Michael Mina.

BUILDING UP OUR ARMY
Welcome our new team members who are dedicating their time and talents to support our launch:

David Onek, Board of Advisors (Senior Fellow and Lecturer, UC Berkeley School of Law)
Rachel Ramos, Board Treasurer (JD/MBA Candidate, American University)
Patrick Mazuca, Social Media Fellow (Sophomore, USC)
Rachel Renee Miller, Summer Fellow (Junior, USC)
Brad Vanderford, Operations Fellow (Nonprofit professional)
Yuki Kondo-Shah, Press Secretary (Foreign Service Officer)

WEB PLATFORM
We’ve recently spent time setting up our technology so we’re ready to launch our program in the fall. We’re quietly developing version 1.0 of the One Degree web platform, which is set to be released next month!

OPERATIONS
We’ve got a new home right in the heart of downtown San Francisco! Send your $1,000,000 checks and care packages to One Degree, 144 2nd Street, Lower Level, San Francisco, CA 94105. In-person visits are also welcome!

IN THE NEWS

Did you see our recent article on EdSurge, the best edtech news source? If you missed it, check it out here.
Also, check out our press release for the Echoing Green announcement (which Yuki kindly put together).

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Volunteer at one of our San Francisco schools this fall
Introduce us to someone in the Bay Area who works in the tech industry
Tell your friends to vote for us at Good Maker Technology Challenge:http://bit.ly/1dgood

I’m off this week to go to the Echoing Green New Fellows Retreat in New Jersey (so excited!), and as you can see, there’s a lot going on in One Degree world. Stay tuned for my thoughts on the Echoing Green retreat, and thanks for your support!

Onward,
Rey

Rey Faustino
CEO + Founder

FOLLOW ONE DEGREE
Founding Connectors Blog: 1degree.tumblr.com
Facebook: facebook.com/1deg.org
Twitter: @1deg
Subscribe to our mailing list: 1deg.org

Originally posted on One Degree’s blog.

One Degree Awarded Echoing Green Fellowship

We’re thrilled to tell you that One Degree won the Echoing Green Fellowship! We were one of 20 organizations chosen out of 3,508 applicants to receive this prestigious social entrepreneurship award!

I speak for myself and my team when I say that we are humbled and excited by the recognization from Echoing Green. When I got the phone call, I just couldn’t believe it and was deeply moved. The first thing I thought of was the support and energy you all have poured into One Degree.

Over the last two years, together, we have planted seeds that are now starting to emerge from the ground. From the first $5,000 we raised together last December to the myriad competitions we entered earlier this year, you have played an important part — whether it was sending positive energy, making a donation or hunkering down and working on the business plan. It took a lot of disciplined, heartfelt work to get to this critical point.
The Echoing Green Fellowship propels us forward significantly. Not only does Echoing Green provide seed funding ($80,000), but this competitive award gives One Degree the valuable credibility we need to do our work. With this fellowship also comes immense responsibility. The national spotlight is on us. We have an obligation and the opportunity to see that the One Degree vision becomes a reality.

We are just getting started, and we can’t rest now. We’ve got a lot of work to do to ensure that our pilot year (program launches this fall) is a success, and this is what we need you, our amazing Founding Connectors, to do:

Get the word out. Tell people what One Degree is doing. Tweet the news on your favorite social networks. Feel free to send them this blog post () or the official Echoing Green one (http://ht.ly/boL0z).
Join one of our committees. If you can give a couple of hours a week or a set amount of time to help with projects, sign up by email!
Connect us to your friends/colleagues in the Bay Area. We’re looking for talented folks, like you, in the Bay to join us! Can you connect us to one person who can help?

We’re looking forward to starting this new chapter with your support. Thanks again.

Onward and upward!
Rey

Rey Faustino
CEO + Founder

FOLLOW ONE DEGREE
Founding Connectors Blog: 1degree.tumblr.com
Facebook: facebook.com/1deg.org
Twitter: @1deg
Subscribe to our mailing list: 1deg.org

Originally posted on One Degree’s blog.

Happy 10th Rebirthday

Ten years ago, I woke up in a cold hospital room with a bloody tube protruding from the side of my chest, spleen torn in two places, bones broken, and barely breathing. It was a nightmare.

But I was surrounded by loved ones who nurtured me and my friends who were in that car. And I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the strength you all lent me.

Today, I stand at the edge of graduating from Harvard, and I’ll be competing in one of Harvard’s most prestigious competitions, the Innovation Challenge — all for the sake of launching One Degree and making kids and families’ lives better. This is a dream come true.

Thanks to everyone who’s given me love and strength over the last 10 years.

One Degree closer to Echoing Green

We’re standing at the edge of something amazing with all of the action happening for One Degree. Through the challenges and successes, I’ve grown to love One Degree even more and see how much our communities really need this. Personally, I have learned a ton about the kind of tenacity, grit, and self-awareness needed to launch a startup. And as I approach graduation (in 55 days), I’ve committed to working on One Degree full-time, and I’m sure I’ll need YOUR help more than ever to launch our organization.

3 MAIN PRIORITIES
In the last newsletter we talked about the new strategic direction we’re taking, which lead us to the following key priorities: (1) Solidifying School Partnerships, (2) Fundraising, & (3) Developing a Web Platform.

1. SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS
I remember back in my BUILD days that securing a school partnership was a time-consuming labor of love. We’re excited to tell you Cecilia Aguilar, Jasmine Abele, and Alison Traina have stepped up to lead our School Partnerships Team (SPT) in SF. They each bring great energy and experience in education. Special thanks are also owed to Shanif Sims, Swaicha Chanduri, Leslie Garner, Omar Butler, Cassandra Coe, Stefanie Eldred, Ruth Barajas and Sandie Stringfellow for supporting our goal.

The SPT set an audacious goal of securing 10 SFUSD school partners by the end of the semester (gotta aim high, right?). We’re close to securing two as of today, and if you’ve got connections with educators in SFUSD, recommendations for schools to approach, or if you want to join the SPT, please contact us!

2. FUNDRAISING
In partnership with some amazing entrepreneurs at the Harvard Kennedy School, we’re throwing an event called Launch HKS, which will showcase the cool ventures that students are working on. Through this event, One Degree committed to raise $10,000 for our startup by May through major donations. Another daunting goal, but doable if you can help by approaching your or your friends’ companies for sponsorships. A couple of letters and phone calls can go a long way. Let me know if you want to help in this effort.

Most of our fundraising efforts recently have been applying for competitions, and below is an update of what’s in the pipeline:

Harvard i3 Innovation Challenge – Awards Reception is tonight. We’re up against 2 teams for the Public Innovation Award for $10K! Join us! Thanks to Grace Chung for her superb videography skills.
HBS Business Plan Social Venture Track – Thanks to my partner Ashley Halpin(HBS MBA 2012), we made it to the semifinals! Only 16 out of 49 made it to this round! Next up is submitting a full 30-page business plan by April 5 and presenting to a panel on April 12.
MIT IDEAS Global Challenge – Thanks to my partner Deborah Hsieh (MIT Sloan MBA/HKS MPP 2013)! Semifinalists announced on by March 30.
Echoing Green Fellowship – Finalists announced in mid-April. Cross your fingers!
Harvard President’s Challenge – Finalists announced on April 2.
UPenn Ed Business Plan Competition – Finalists announced on May 4

3. WEB PLATFORM
I’m also excited to announce that Tom Peng, director of IT at College Summit, joined our team as the technology guru! This saves me from sounding like an idiot when I talk to tech people as we develop our prototype. Tom brings a wealth of expertise in developing tech solutions that empower people and nonprofits.

CRITICAL QUESTION
Last month we asked you to connect us to tech experts, and this month we ask:

Can you help One Degree find a home in SF?

As we approach the summer, we’re looking for free office space in San Francisco. Do you know a company/nonprofit with an extra desk or two that they can lend us for the year or at least the summer? If the thought of figuring out these logistics excites you, sign up to lead this effort!

Lastly, I realize that we’ve been doing a lot of meeting and action lately, but not a lot of celebrating. Even the small wins, like reaching the semifinal round, should be celebrated. Stay tuned for a Boston 1° celebration!

For our youth,
Rey

Rey Faustino
Chief Organizer
One Degree

Originally posted on One Degree’s blog.

Building Momentum

What a great start to 2012 it’s been! We recently began to see momentum building after months of laying groundwork. Marshall Ganz, my professor for Organizing, always says, “Energy begets energy,” and the energy surrounding One Degree right now is electrifying!

YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME
We recently won third place at the Harvard Education Innovation Pitch Competition, which included a lovely $1,500 prize! We also advanced to the semifinal round for the incredibly competitive Echoing Green Fellowship (300+ semifinalists out of 3500+ applicants) AND theUPenn Education Business Plan Competition (only 20% advance).

Sadly, we did not advance in the Yale Education Business Plan Competition nor the Harvard Social Enterprise Pitch Competition.

Thanks to Karla Monterroso, Rachel Ramos, Deborah Hsieh, and Yuki Kondo-Shah for helping with Echoing Green round 1. Advance thanks to Brett Alessi, Suzanne McKechnie Klahr, Chantal Laurie, and Karla Monterroso for their support on the next round of Echoing Green.

We need your help! If you can write/edit essays, record/edit a video, help write our business plan entry for the Harvard Business School Business Plan Competition, let’s talk! We’ve got a ton of work to do!

NEW STRATEGIC DIRECTION
Last month I had an invigorating chat with College Summit Founder J.B. Schramm, and he advised me to “just do it” and get started with implementation. That’s exactly what we intend to do. We’ve evolved our launch strategy with your input to focus on a specific pilot region: San Francisco Bay Area. Our plan is to partner with 10 high-poverty public schools in SF by June to launch our Resource Desks, and we plan to mobilize the community to take ownership of them.

I also had another pivotal conversation with Lotus Software Founder Mitch Kapor and Level Playing Field Institute Founder Freada Kapor Klein, in which they highlighted the exciting potential of our proposed web technology (our “Yelp for Social Services”). The implications of building a highly scalable, sector-disrupting technology are huge, and we plan to launch a beta version of this web app by the fall.

We see the Resource Desk and Web App working together. The Resource Desk model will be our proof of concept of how to mobilize communities to support schools, while the web app will revolutionize access to nonprofit and social services.

CRITICAL QUESTION
Over the last few months we’ve been in dialogue around critical questions that are shaping our startup. It’s pretty phenomenal how your thoughts have helped us focus our messaging and direction. We are now in a phase where we need your abilities and contacts to create a tangible product. This month we ask:

Who do you know with technical (as in tech) expertise? We are looking for folks who can create a prototype of our web app. This part of our model is fundamental to the system disruption and community accessibility we want to create. So anyone you could throw our way with a network of tech folks in their life could really help some major shaping of the way we operate! Open up those virtual Rolodexes and let us know who we can charm into being a champion.

Email us with your recommendations!

Thanks for all of your continued support and energy!

For our youth,
Rey

Originally posted on One Degree’s blog.

One Degree is Semifinalist for Echoing Green & 3rd Place at Harvard Education Competition

Originally posted on One Degree’s blog.

We competed on Thursday, February 2, 2012 at the Harvard Education Innovation Pitch Competition, and placed third — behind two very education-focused organization, whereas ours really disrupts the traditional education system. Not bad for our first competition ever!

Additionally, out of 3,508 applicants for the prestigious social entrepreneurship fellowship, Echoing Green, our startup is among the roughly 350 that advanced to the semifinal round. We need to submit a second round of application materials by February 21, and we hope to make it to the final round to eventually become an EG fellow! EG Fellows receive $80,000 per year for two years to start their concept.

In other great news, we also became semifinalists for the University of Pennsylvania Education Business Plan Competition. An executive summary and 20-page slide deck are due on March 16, and again, we hope to become finalists for this competition as well. We are eligible for four categories, the UPenn-Milken prize, the Startl Prize, the Educational Services of America Prize, and the Erudient Borderless Education Prize. The top prizes are in the $25,000 and $10,000 range.

Wish One Degree luck!

More importantly, if you can help edit/write essays, record/edit video, or send positive support, please let us know in the comments below!

You can still donate to launch Connective Possibilities!

Our official fundraising campaign through StartSomeGood.com is technically over, and you can visit our fundraising page here, but that doesn’t mean that the fundraising stops!

In fact, this is just the beginning. You can still support us by making a donation today! Click on the button below or this link to help us launch our organization.

I’ll also update you all soon with some fascinating data from our first 50 days of fundraising.

A Startup Manifesto

I believe that communities have the power, potential and the will to lift themselves out of poverty. In East Palo Alto, a poverty-afflicted community in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was not uncommon to hear that the high school drop out rate was 60%. But for that salient statistic, we can look at the converse and realize that in East Palo Alto, 40% of the kids were NOT dropping out of high school. Who are these kids and families? Amid a turbulent and poverty-afflicted community, why and how were these students successful?

When I worked at a college access nonprofit organization, I saw firsthand the reasons why these kids and families were successful. They leveraged the social capital that was around them. They had a loving teacher or nonprofit program manager who pushed them. They had a trailblazing mother or cousin who led the way for the entire family. It’s people talking to people, working together to find solutions for each other. Through this critical network we leveraged every single connection to ensure that our students were on a path to personal success.

I believe that this network can be scaled up to entire communities. What if we built the connective tissue in communities so that people could access this human-powered network at a larger scale. What if all families, community members, educators, nonprofit workers, business people, and leaders took ownership and responsibility for the future success of all children.

However this will require a shift in the way we currently think about the purpose of education. A few years ago I was planning an event that showcased our students’ successes to the community and needed a large venue. Naturally I thought to ask the neighborhood schools to see if they would allow us to borrow their gym for an evening, and I was shocked when a school principal was completely unwilling to help. She aggressively asked, “How many of MY students are you serving?” When I named only a handful, she rejected my request stating that she only allowed use of her premises for “her students.” It’s this kind of insular attitude that hinders relationship-building in the community. Instead of thinking just about “her students,” how can we change the community conversation to “our students”? I knew there had to be a better way.

The good news is that hundreds of nonprofits, community-based organizations and innovative schools and initiatives across the country have already made progress and action. There is a movement happening in the education sector towards rebuilding the system from the inside out and from the outside in. Although we’ve got a lot of new and innovative initiatives happening all across the country, many of these initiatives work in isolation, don’t collaborate, or don’t communicate — they’re still acting like that isolationist school principal, thinking about “her school” and “her students.”

We can change this.

With your help and with the help of many other supporters from communities across the nation, we will launch Connective Possibilities (CP, a working title), a social movement that will connect kids and families to vital poverty-fighting resources. CP aims to build the connective tissue in low-income communities to transform our lowest performing schools.

The vision is to create a human-centered platform in low-income communities across the country that will help to strengthen and innovate entire education systems from the ground level, rather than from the top-down.

The first phase of the movement will start at the ground level to address poverty-related issues that plague students and families from low-income communities. We will build a one-stop shop of all of the resources in the community in low-income schools. It’ll have a “Wikipedia” for who to go to for whatever issue kids and families are going through. We will staff them with heart-driven, innovative college students so that teachers can focus on teaching. There are a hundred more details about how this will work, and if you want I can even share the business plan with you.

Starting a new nonprofit organization is a daunting task, and I’ve spent enormous amounts of time in solitary reflection and in consultation with many supporters about the concept. However the time for action has come, and I’m incredibly excited announce that we will launch (and incubate) Connective Possibilities this year and do a full launch during summer 2012 (after I graduate from my masters program at Harvard).

Just like I believe that a community has to work together to improve schools, I believe that I can’t launch this organization by myself. Well, technically, I can, but that completely goes against the core beliefs that undergird this startup. I hope you’re intrigued and curious. I also hope you can join our growing movement to help families fight poverty and transform our nation’s schools.

Join us.

For our youth,
Rey

Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter.

Fighting Poverty in Boston

This week I met with three critical stakeholders in Boston to learn about the existing fabric of care that supports people living in poverty-afflicted communities as part of my feasibility research for launching Connective Possibilities (more on that to come later). LIFT and Healthleads are nonprofit organizations that provide resources to community members. Maicharia Weir Lytle, LIFT’s Boston Executive Director, gave me a tour of their multi-service center in the heart of Mayor Menino’s audacious Circle of Promise in Roxbury. Community members work one-on-one with LIFT volunteers to find jobs, secure safe housing, make ends meet through public benefits and tax credits, and obtain quality referrals for services like childcare and healthcare. Sonia Sarker, Healthleads’s Chief of Staff, also shared with me their similar model — except their volunteer-staffed “help desks” are located in hospitals and clinics that low-income people frequent.

Both services help people navigate through the turmoil inherent below the poverty-line, and provide support so that people don’t spend more in money, time, hassle, and exhaustion. No one thinks about the lines and bureaucracy that the poor have to wade through. Weir Lytle showed me a thick stack of papers, which represented all of the various applications for private subsidized housing that a person would have to fill out to look for a safe and stable home. A LIFT volunteer collected all of these applications, scanned them into PDF files, and uploaded them into an internal wiki of resources, so that people don’t have to traverse all over town to pick them up – a savings of at least 10 hours of travel time.

One of my main questions about Healthleads’ model was whether connecting clinic clients and hospital patients to resources was leading to a fade-out effect. Sarkar explained how Healthleads’ model actually made hospital interventions better. Currently the healthcare system reacts to the exacerbated ailments of poor clients. A doctor might prescribe an inhaler to a child with chronic asthma, but she can’t do anything about the child’s apartment that is crawling with roaches. Healthleads aims to fix this by being “Physician extenders” and unbundling this social responsibility off of the physician’s plate so that she can “work at the top of her license.” Healthleads fills a missing operational gap in the value chain of hospitals that serve high-poverty communities: Doctors => Nurses => Social Workers => Healthleads volunteers (who release the pressure off the previous three positions so that they can work at the top of their license.

My third and final visit this week was with Principal Cynthia Paris-Jeffries at one of Boston’s turnaround schools, Blackstone Elementary in the South End. Blackstone is a K-5 school with a largely Latino (80%), Black (15%), and poor (over 90% on Free/Reduced Lunch) student body, and because the school failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress in both English Language Arts and Math for several years, they’ve been labeled a “turnaround school” and provided resources from the district. My meeting with Principal Paris-Jeffries reminded me of Isaacs and Sawhill’s conclusion that the best intervention to improve social mobility is to focus on high quality, early childhood education targeted at children from poor families. Paris-Jeffries compares the job of a good principal to that of a skilled chef — every school needs a healthy mix of carefully and artfully chosen services and partners. Some principals just throw in every intervention or partner into their school without really thinking about how that affects the school as a whole. Paris-Jeffries alluded to making a simple, yet effective set of interventions tailored especially to early childhood education for children from poor families, which includes partnerships with City Year, READ Boston, South End Health Center, the Power Lunch Program, and Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Each of these three organizations tries to tackle the poverty-related issues that cause family background to play a role in why families and kids fall behind or get ahead. Providing resources and connections, like the informal social capital in middle and high-income communities, helps kids and families receive the resources they need to do better. And although poverty has risen to 13.2% (Sherman, et. al) — its highest level since the 60’s — it’s reassuring to know that communities, organizations and schools are doing their best to fight poverty and the hidden issues that poverty brings. However, it’s also clear that more needs to be done, and we have just touched the tip of the ice berg in regards to the full effects of the recession on people living in poverty.