#thinkimpactinstitute

ThinkImpact (www.thinkimpact.com) is an organization that provides opportunities for university students to travel to rural communities to learn social entrepreneurship in a hands-on way. I have an intimate understanding of the organization as I participated in ThinkImpact Kenya this past summer (see previous post for description on my work in Kinani). ThinkImpact was founded by Saul Garlick. In 2002 he visited a village in South Africa only to observe children being taught under the trees, as there were no classrooms for them to meet in. Perturbed by this discovery, at 18 years old, Saul promised to build a school for the community once he raised $10,000 from friends and family back home. He succeeded in this endeavor only to realize during his next visit to the community that the school was in bad shape, although it did have sufficient space for all the students.

Saul found this experience to be frustrating, along with his experience in the newly created ThinkImpact organization through which he had already started providing opportunities for students to pursue traditional development work, because he realized that the traditional model for aid was often unsustainable and difficult to scale up. That's when the Saul, and ThinkImpact, pivoted its approach towards a human-centered social innovation and design model. The redirected approach is based on his firm belief in the power of market-based solutions to address the challenges these communities face in creative, sustainable and effective ways.

In the past, ThinkImpact has only had programs in Africa (South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana and Kenya), but is now expanding to Latin America as well (Panama). Unfortunately, due to the recent events that have occurred in Kenya my sources have informed me that ThinkImpact will not be sending any students there this upcoming summer. I'm assuming the organization made this decision based on the fact that they have had difficulty in the past filling spots for the Kenya program in particular, and they figure that the recent attacks will make getting students for the Kenya program even more difficult. On the bright side, ThinkImpact is expanding, and programs will be up and running starting this winter!