ALA Recognized as One of the World's Most Exciting and Innovative Social Ventures

African Leadership Academy was recently selected as a finalist in two of the most prestigious social venture competitions in the world-the Echoing Green Fellowship (www.echoinggreen.org) and the Global Social Venture Competition (www.socialvc.net). Both competitions come with small cash awards, but more important is the recognition that it gives to ALA as one of the most innovative and exciting social ventures in the world today. We feel extremely honored to have received such recognition.

The Echoing Green Fellowship
ALA co-founders Chris Bradford and Fred Swaniker have been selected as one of 20 finalists out of 950 social entrepreneurs from 75 nations around the world who submitted applications for the Echoing Green fellowship (the top 2% of all the applications). The Echoing Green Fellowship is an award given to the most innovative, bold ideas for social change in the world. It provides a stipend of $90,000 over two years ($45,000 per year) to the social entrepreneurs leading the venture. Out of the 20 finalists, awards will be made to 10-13 of them. Chris Bradford and Fred Swaniker will participate in final round interviews for this fellowship in New York City between May 5th and 7th.
To read the full Echoing Green press release, visit:
http://www.echoinggreen.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageID=644

 

The Global Social Venture Competition
African Leadership Academy recently participated as one of 9 finalists out of 130 organizations who entered the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) held at Columbia University in New York. African Leadership Academy was the only nonprofit organization to reach the finals of the 2006 competition. GSVC is widely recognized as the most prestigious business plan competition for organizations launched by current and former MBA students with a social mission. It is held every year at Columbia Business School, and is co-sponsored by Haas Business School (UC Berkeley), London Business School, the Indian School of Business, and the Goldman Sachs Foundation.

While ALA did not win the competition, being selected as one of the 9 finalists was wonderful recognition for ALA. Most notable was the "honorable mention" that ALA received from one of the judges in the GSVC. Jonathan Greenblatt, co-Founder of Ethos Water (now a division of Starbucks), wrote the following about ALA on his weekly blog on the company's website: "All the businesses were noteworthy, but I thought that I might take a moment to highlight the winners and to call attention to one plan in particular ... ALA is a non-profit, full-time school that aspires to educate the next generation of African leaders from across the socio-economic spectrum - the founders already have raised 80% of the funds needed to build a campus in South Africa and completed a successful pilot last summer - you can expect to be reading about ALA in the New York Times and mainstream media in the very near-term."

The full text of Jonathan's blog can be read here:
http://www.ethoswater.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/4/11/The-Next-Generation-of-Social-Entrepreneurs

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