Dear Family and Friends,

On May 16th I graduated from USC and on July 28th, I’ll be turning 22 – two memorable moments in my life. In lieu of the celebrations, I wish to participate in a service-based program called ThinkImpact in Rwanda, Africa this summer. To actualize my dream of making a sustainable impact in the rural community, I need to raise $4500 for the program participation fee and materials.

The ThinkImpact Institute is an 8-week immersion program that challenges student teams to build trusting relationships with local community members, who are aspiring entrepreneurs with the goal to become self-sufficient. My role is to work alongside a team of 4-5 community members to evaluate their assets and then co-create and launch a business idea. I aspire to go beyond this formal role and influence the way locals think about entrepreneurship -- to overcome language and cultural barriers and breakdown the business development process so that locals can independently pursue new entrepreneurial endeavors after I leave.

In addition to sharing my business knowledge, I am equally enthusiastic about fully immersing myself into the local community, about calling my homestay family members “mom” and “sister” in Kinyarwanda (the local Rwandan language) and calling the local kids “Inshuti,” or friend. Whether it’s by trekking to get water with my homestay family, playing and teaching the kids games, or learning as much of the local language to briefly converse with the locals, I’ll try my best to become a valuable member of the community.

To take a bold step towards my dream of assimilating into this Rwandan community and transferring my business knowledge to help the low-income community members become self-sufficient, I must raise enough funds to participate in the ThinkImpact Institute. Your investment of any degree in my future would mean a great deal to me.

Please feel free to directly donate on my fundraising campaign at Empowered.org. I will appreciate all donations!

Thank you for your support and if you have few minutes please check out this ThinkImpact Intro video.


Hailey


ThinkImpact video: http://vimeo.com/35921578

Empowered.org campaign link: http://www.empowered.org/Rwanda-Institute-for-Social-Innovation-Summer-8wk#