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The feature below is brought to you by World Peace Connection, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.  Giving back to communities in need World Peace Connection advocates for courageous change-makers who want to bring solutions to problems happening within their communities. In order to create a better future, we must invest in the youth. The Young change-makers will be the ones to reshape the world ahead by using their creative skills to solve social problems happening right now. However, many young change-makers lack educational resources, safe spaces, and a community, which will help them fully launch their social initiative. In our experience, 70% of young change-makers face a lack of financial support; 80% feel they do not have enough community and mentorship guidance, and 85% do not have a strategy for the social impact they want to make. Change makes the world go around and without it, we stay stagnant. We know the importance of shaping young leaders to be equipped, educated, and heard. The conversations around social justice, diversity, and inclusion has quickly accelerated and has demanded our attention. We realized to address social issues; new methods of innovations are not just between policymakers but the inclusion of our future, the youth. We create beauty throughout our programs by providing a safe space for changemakers to experience transformative methods of self-discovery, leadership skills, and materials to launch their social initiative. Each young changemaker launches a social initiative to bring solutions to problems happening within their community by utilizing what they learned throughout our 6-week program. We prepare them to launch and activate. Fully equipped to make an impact! In order to lead change makers, we must lead by example. In 2015, Dane and I launched our social initiative World Peace Connection. Backpacking across 50 cities. We noticed a common thread among each person we met. Many of them had the desire to make a change but didn’t believe they could bring it to reality by putting action behind their inspiration. We identified that as an aspiring changemaker in need of resources, education, and an ear that will listen. Human to human connection. A community dedicated to nurturing their ideas and igniting their passions to fire up change. We created a program that takes an aspiring change-maker to become one. In order to discover that person, we lead with one question. “What inspires you the most about life and living?”. Sparking impactful conversation with strangers. We did this for two years. We traveled to many places, such as southeast Asia, Africa, Dubai, and Europe. Sharing their stories diversity, we interviewed over 200+ aspiring changemakers. Meeting changemakers around the world inspired us to continue our mission of World Peace Connection. Pulling from our experience traveling and conversations with wise mentors led us to the development of our curriculum. That will guide young changemakers through the process of self-development, leadership, and how to execute their own social initiative. In 2018, we launched our educational curriculum “Peace Projects” helping minority high school students to become changemakers. So they can lead their own social initiatives addressing problems within their communities. Peace Projects has launched over 30 student-led initiatives within various communities, many of which are still sustaining today. In 2019, we traveled to Bogota, Colombia with two graduating seniors, who launched a plan to educate inquiring minds more about the Colombian community in hopes to better create a better future for their local community. This project was in partnership with Impact 46, called Common-unity. In 2019, we launched a series called “The Connection Series”, a travel web-series interviewing changemakers around the world who are making productive contributions with their work. We also have conducted over 20 Connected Spaces globally. We have met changemakers in Ghana, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Budapest, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Jamaica, Dubai, the Bahamas, England, Iceland, Amsterdam, and the USA. This year, due to Covid-19 our programs and traveling have shifted. We can no longer physically be in schools or launch Connected spaces abroad. In 2021, we planned to launch the Changemaker Connection Program, a three-phase program, providing a space for marginalized changemakers to work at and bring their ideas to life. A home away from home. Our digital workshops teach the start to finish process of launching a social initiative. As well as travel outside of their community. In addition to how to apply and receive microgrants for their project. With foundations like See Beautiful, with your help, we can acquire proper software to host our educational workshops and provide funding and more opportunities for changemakers to launch their impact projects. See Beautiful will help us give at least 6 creatives micro-funding to launch their impact project and participate in a 6-week educational course. The Changemaker Connection program anticipates each participant to increase the ability to launch and sustain a problem-solving project that matters to them and brings awareness to their community. Our program births the changemakers we need to address community issues with creative solutions providing a productive impact. Each phase in the program equips the future change-makers with everything they need to succeed. To be leaders within their communities and have the skill set to address social issues. Resulting in a better future, and a more beautiful tomorrow. Change makes the world go around and without it, we stay stagnant. Each person has a special gift to offer the world, and especially their community. We are grateful for the opportunity that Sees Beautiful is providing for us. In closing, we want to invite you to take the first step to become a changemaker. By asking yourself one question “What inspires you the most about life and living?” Now go make the world more beautiful! Submitted by Chari Chin-Young Casto Founder, World Peace Connection
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The feature below is brought to you by Pebble Tossers, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.  Rainbows of peaceROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. These are the colors of the rainbow that we learned in kindergarten. Each color stands strong alone, but together, they create a beautiful wonder to behold. Recently, other letter groups have been circulating around - DEIJP. What do these letters stand for? Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Peace, Justice. The events throughout 2020 bring more meaning to each of these words. Each word has power alone, but when working together, they can represent a beautiful world. How can we create a rainbow in our world through diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and peace? Pebble Tossers, a youth development nonprofit with a mission to equip and empower youth to lead through service, brings together youth from all socio-economic backgrounds to serve those most vulnerable in our community, regardless of their skin color, position in society or last name. Pebble Tossers partners with nonprofits all around Atlanta, linking volunteers to service projects and organizing our own projects covering 12 major cause areas including The Arts, Animals, Citizenship, Education and Literacy, Elderly, Environment, Families in Crisis, Fragile Children, Global Awareness, Homeless, Hunger, and US Troops and Veterans. Pebble Tossers recognizes a community-wide need and provides service-related youth development programming including socio-emotional learning, character-building and leadership development workshops and enrichment opportunities. Our causes are global, local, and societal and our individual and family volunteers come from all walks of life and bring valuable diversity. These programs help youth serve, lead and succeed through hands-on experiences. Through our weekly service projects, we introduce community needs to youth and families. Teaching kids that they can have a voice and can take responsibility for helping others empowers them to want to learn more about who they are helping and why people may find themselves in certain situations. Pebble Tossers reinforces dignity by teaching that everyone we serve deserves to be treated with respect and with a smile. Valuable lessons of diversity, equity and inclusion happen through small moments, like sharing a s’more with someone experiencing homelessness. It’s hard not to smile at someone taking their first bite of the tasty marshmallow, chocolate and graham cracker treat. That s’more and smile lead to an introduction and a conversation. Our youth volunteers walk away from that experience with a new outlook and also more questions. Once you see, you can’t unsee. They can see beautiful and see the value in each person they serve and also in those they serve alongside. During a team meeting, an intern mentioned that she wished she had the opportunity to be a part of an organization like Pebble Tossers when she was younger. She shared that as a middle school student, she remembers the death of Trayvon Martin and how sad and helpless she and her friends felt. As kids, they brought Skittles and Arizona tea to school to do something, to show their solidarity in some way. She wished that she had something like our Teen Leadership Program that would empower her with knowledge of what she could do by actively engaging in community service. She could have had a platform to speak out as well as access to other resources. Pebble Tossers engages with young people where they are developmentally and demographically. This alone broadens the scope by which our youth see the world. In turn, they become empathetic and turn that empathy into action. Through our Teen Leadership Program (TLP) we focus on social-emotional learning to help young leaders become confident and self-aware to see the beauty within themselves, others, and the world around them. Our TLP centers around an ethical skillset: self-management, relationship skills, responsible decision making, and both social and self-awareness. Teaching this skillset allows us to foster their creativity and passion to fuel service so they become active leaders in the community and society at large. Every third Sunday, we have a guest speaker talk to the TLP about leadership and their particular field. In preparation for these guest speakers, we present the teens with an ethical dilemma to ponder and respond to. This fall, retired NFL player, Malcolm Mitchell, discussed the importance of literacy and how he came to success. Mr. Mitchell encouraged the youth to “think about what you would’ve needed and give it to someone else”. Throughout his discussion, Mr. Mitchell shared his life experiences and lessons he learned when he was in school. The teens asked him questions and for advice in their own pursuits. At the end, breakout rooms were formed where the teens conversed and brainstormed ideas for service projects that would be done in the coming year. Aside from monthly meetings, we also engage with the teens through life-skill workshops, peer-to-peer collaboration, and fun out-of-the-box ways to develop their leadership. We strive to shape youth into social-emotional intelligent, altruistic leaders. Pebble Tossers recognizes the vast array of resources young people now have at their disposal and their overall passion for world change. By engaging kids in service at a young age, we’re able to assist in identifying their passions and finding ways to make a positive impact surrounding them. Pebble Tossers recognizes the power that comes with motivation, but we also know it’s what happens in the valleys of life that truly make a leader. Overall, we encourage and empower youth to see the beauty in themselves as well as the potential and power they have to make this world a better place. With this, they can see the true beauty in the world and the endless possibilities for rainbows of peace. We are teaching this generation to be empathetic and ethical global citizens who will “start a ripple of giving”, fueled by kindness, inclusivity, justice and compassion. Submitted by Jennifer GuynnThe feature below is brought to you by Girls Gotta Run, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.  Running Towards Education and Economic Opportunity in EthiopiaThe story of Girls Gotta Run Foundation is much the same as the communities it serves – a story of tenacious girls and women coming together to overcome gender-based barriers and empower a new generation of female leaders in Ethiopia through the power of running. In a nation plagued by girls’ and women’s limited access to education and economic opportunities, Ethiopia’s national sport of running is viewed as the great gender equalizer. It is a sport where girls are encouraged to be just as successful as boys and therefore ensures girls equal access to opportunities to succeed in the sport. Girls Gotta Run uses running as an innovative approach to creating safe spaces for girls, ending child marriage, and expanding access to secondary school for girls. Consider this: • Only half of Ethiopian girls who enroll in primary school ever make it grade 5. • 40% of Ethiopian girls are married off as children. • 47% of adolescent girls in Ethiopia today have already been subjected to female genital cutting. • One in three women in Ethiopia experience physical, emotional, or sexual violence in their lifetimes. • Ethiopian women provide the majority of agricultural labor across the nation but have limited or no access to financial resources or decision making in their homes and communities. If you feel uncomfortable grappling with this reality, know this - Girls Gotta Run is on a mission to change these statistics. Through our Athletic Scholarship Program, we focus on four key investment strategies for girls and their mothers to ensure they have the ability to design the future of their choosing: EDUCATIONAL SCHOLARSHIPS Girls Gotta Run provides full scholarship for girls to attend secondary school which covers school costs including tuition, books, supplies, and uniforms; healthcare subsidies for girls and their mothers; hot lunches and clean water every school day; and hygiene products including sanitary pads, soap, space to wash clothes, female-only hygiene facilities. LIFE SKILLS TRAINING Girls in our program meet weekly with a female mentor to train in life skills. The weekly workshops were developed to create safe spaces for girls and provide experiential learning modules on financial literacy, HIV/AIDS awareness, nutrition, healthy relationships, leadership, family planning, and creative expression. RUN CLUBS FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT Girls in our program are trained in leadership development through their participation in run clubs where they not only train for races, but learn to set goals, build plans to achieve goals, and discipline themselves to pursue their dreams. Every girl is provided with a full running kit, two pairs of shoes, training gear, oversight of a female coach, and entrance and transportation to Ethiopian races throughout the year. MOTHERS SAVINGS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP Girls Gotta Run establishes savings and entrepreneurship groups with the mothers of the girls to whom we provide scholarships. Mothers are provided with a 5-day business development workshop, seed capital to establish a savings group, and the oversight of a trained community mobilizer for 3 years. Our Athletic Scholarship Program does more than just provide adolescent girls with full scholarships to attend secondary school in Ethiopia. We use running as a means of promoting change in the lives of Ethiopia's most vulnerable girls. Combining sport with education provides our girls with a pathway to success, instilling in them the life skills they need to successfully navigate adolescence and adulthood. Since its inception, Girls Gotta Run has seen 96% of our program participants avoid early marriage, complete the Girls Gotta Run program in full, and enter higher levels of education. Over our 14-year history, Girls Gotta Run has impacted more than 1,300 people in four regions in Ethiopia. Submitted by Danielle TaylorExecutive Director, Girls Gotta Run The feature below is brought to you by Horticulture for Healing, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.  Plant care is self careHorticulture For Healing (H4H) is an organization developed in November 2019 by myself, Joanna Brown. During 9 continuous years of sobriety I have personally witnessed people in recovery overcome the seemingly endless barriers resulting from the stigmas centered around substance use, addiction and recovery. I founded Horticulture For Healing with a desire to provide creative tools for recovering and transitioning individuals who are in a time of rapid change and discomfort. Through our Plant Care Is Self Care Kits and Workshops, we encourage and support individuals that have been marginalized by a patriarchal society, substance use, life hardships, gender and racial inequality to experience the lasting benefits of horticulture as a form of self care, self acceptance, and emotional recovery. Since COVID19 my organization has adapted and shown resilience in the face of uncertainty and constant change. One year ago we were trying to implement our first original project: building urban raised garden beds at women’s substance use treatment facilities. The treatment facilities we were partnering with were forced to shut down to visitors and outside volunteers, leaving the women residing in 12-18 month treatment with few outside resources (and H4H without a partnership for our project). My board and I were forced to come up with a project adaptation, our Plant Care Is Self Care Kits and Workshops, which has allowed us to impact more people than we originally thought possible. At Horticulture For Healing’s core lies three foundations on which our Plant Care Is Self Care Kits and Workshops are built: plant care, self care and feminism. Through these empowering foundations we provide support and resources for marginalized genders who are beginning to claim their beauty, value, space and power while in recovery at residential substance use treatment centers. Caring for plants goes hand in hand with self care. Not only do these two actions help the body heal physically and emotionally, they can also be used as empowerment tools for individuals who are often belittled by society due to life circumstances. These tools can help participants to recognize their voice, feel the power of choice and gain autonomy. Through my personal recovery experiences, I discovered that having plants around my living space, near my bed, where I do my reading and even where I eat helps promote personal healing and growth, environmental consciousness and critical thinking. I have a strong desire to pass these healing tools along to individuals in recovery who otherwise may not have the opportunity to discover the time and space in which they can embody the healing benefits of nature. Many of the individuals that Horticulture For Healing supports come from a background of substance use and/or a prevalence of violence, sexual, and emotional abuse, and have had little to no room for experiencing the healing and empowering benefits of self care. Horticulture For Healing meets recovering people in that space, moving past shame, guilt and hopelessness into a place where they can begin to own their life and claim the space that is so rightfully theirs. Our Plant Care Is Self Care Kits contain specially selected high quality items to be used long after leaving the recovery or transition facility. Most recipients of our Care Kits do not have many resources while residing in specific centers. This includes not having a personal phone, access to the internet and a variety of reading materials from the outside world. Because of this, I am personally utilizing my creative and artistic abilities drawing and writing handmade mini magazines (zines) focused on self care, plant care and feminism which are available for copy and redistribution. Our Kits also contain a beautifully potted plant, a spray bottle, a blank journal and writing utensil to track plant and personal growth, illustrations from various artists, and a weekly plant care scheduler. Horticulture For Healing’s original intention was to support women in early recovery from substance use. As H4H began expanding and partnering with different recovery and transition centers, I quickly discovered each center included many genders. Through this opportunity to impact so many people, Horticulture For Healing is now able to address the need to specifically tailor and design each Plant Care Is Self Care Workshop and Care Kit to be gender inclusive for the individuals enrolled at that center. Along with fulfilling our mission, Horticulture For Healing addresses social justice by contributing towards a society that doesn’t restrict based on an individual’s gender. We emphasize feminist thinking strategies and its relation to gender equality. Since many individuals recovering from addiction lack emotional and self-care resources, adversity can become defeating. As a recovering woman myself, I have a personal responsibility to try to help others break the cycle of addiction, especially the stigma that plagues it. Even having the smallest potted plant can reach someone who may be neglecting their self love and care, or who hasn’t yet discovered that self care is their human right to claim. My intention is to cultivate the inherent connection all human beings have to Nature as a form of self care and kindness. Horticulture For Healing creates both an interior and exterior beauty everyday and contributes towards dismantling systems that keep so many people vulnerable to unnecessary grief and struggle. The content on our website, social media and in our original redistributable “zines” will continue to acknowledge, question, and combat the systemic problems of the patriarchy, gender inequality and white supremacy in a sustainable and creative way. Submitted by Joanna BrownFounder and Director of Horticulture For Healing The feature below is brought to you by Read and Right, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.  Impacting children’s attitudes about race and representation The summer of 2020 proved to be a racial awakening for our country. Although systemic racism has been prevalent in our society for centuries, horrific acts of police brutality against Black people were now seen by millions. More and more stories of injustice unmasked and recharged the dire need for social change. The time to speak up and stand up was right in front of us. We (Asia Brown and Abby Stolz), two coworkers and the cofounders of Read and Right, both felt committed to doing our part in the fight against racism. In our efforts and research, we both felt strongly that racism was a learned act. As we continued these conversations, it was evident there was a lack of diverse representation of the books we read as children. These younger years are developmentally crucial for racial awareness. White children need to see diverse characters for positive attitudes about race and BIPOC children deserve to be represented in the literature they learn from. With this in mind, we founded Read and Right, an approved 501(c)(3) organization that strives for racial equality and opportunity within the education system by providing the necessary resources for children to accept and respect all races. Our continued goal is to donate books to elementary schools that encourage positive conversations about race and feature important Black leaders, pioneers and protagonists. We also donate school supplies to the underserved Black students in our community that aid equal opportunity to succeed. Based out of the Atlanta area, our efforts have started out in the Atlanta Public Schools, serving grades PK-3. After our launch in June 2020, we began collecting monetary donations as well as books with diverse characters. We received an outpouring of support from people who shared a similar passion of equal representation and positive conversations about race. With the generosity we received, we began to prepare for our first donation at the start of the 2020-21 school year. Despite various obstacles and the relentless pandemic, in October we were able to donate over 250+ books to four different Atlanta Public elementary Schools in addition to school supplies we had collected. We also coordinated a reading guide that was passed along to each school, to help teachers and media specialists guide their students into these honest and raw conversations about race. All four schools (Springdale, Mary Lin, William Boyd and Harper Archer) greatly appreciated the donations and it only fueled our drive to expand our reach. With our goals of stretching our reach to different communities, we understand it’s time to grow our exposure. Our Instagram page (@readandrightatl) has been continuously growing and has tremendously helped our efforts in receiving donations, educating and informing the public and updating our followers on our progress. We are ready for the next steps of our journey. We understand Read and Right’s efforts can seem small in the fight against systemic racism, but the thought of having an impact on children's attitudes about race and representation motivates us. We hope that our once, small nonprofit will continue to positively affect the lives of many children to come who will be able to look back and remember the diverse books they were able to have in their classrooms and libraries. Submitted by Abby Stolz Co-founder, Read and Right |
See beautiful in yourself.
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