Youth & Opportunity
Software
Donation
Nonprofit Technology
Education
Events
Science ,Technology
Engineering , Math
Humanitarian
Response
Working Responsibly
Linda Lockhart, Managing Director, Global Give Back Circle
Imagine you are a disadvantaged girl in Kenya, categorized as coming from the bottom of the economic pyramid. Imagine you grew up sleeping in a hut made from mud and dung, and next to you, in another hut your grandparents kept a cow, some chickens and maybe a goat. Imagine that you lost both parents, within a 12-month period, when you were just five. Nobody talked about how or why they passed away, but everyone knew it was because of HIV/AIDS – because this is how HIV/AIDS was attacking the parents of other children in your rural community – it was attacking them quickly and without discrimination. You were not aware of it at the time, but YOU were among the first generation of AIDS orphans.
Primary school in Kenya was free back then, but you still had to walk an hour each way to the closest school, and you walked barefoot. Imagine that a charity organization sponsored you through high school. Your village chief recommended you, because you were a bright girl. For the first time in your life you traveled out of your district and into the Nairobi area and you boarded in a safe and nurturing environment for four years. You received a uniform and a pair of sturdy black shoes that reminded you that you were functioning, and learning. The shoes reminded you every day that you could have dreams – dreams about all of the opportunities that awaited you in your society. But, after high school graduation you had to hand back your black shoes, forfeit your dreams and return to the bottom of the pyramid because you did not have the skills that lead to employment – and because you were a girl.
When a disadvantaged girl graduates high school, she has already overcome extraordinary odds. Unfortunately, the gap period between high school graduation and university is from 12 – 22 months. So, where does a poor girl go? Just a little more investment in her tertiary education provides the world with an extraordinary return on benevolent human capital investment.
It’s important that girls do not fall through the cracks after high school graduation. That’s the objective of the Global Give Back Circle (GGBC). It gives her a support system that will enable and empower her to step change her life by ‘completing her educational journey’. It was created in such a way that private sector corporates in Kenya treasure the investment in her tertiary education – since an investment in her is an investment in ‘benevolent human capital development’, because she is connected to a circle of giving back that has embedded a give back ethos into her DNA.
The GGBC connects mentoring, private sector investment and local community support in a process which guides a disadvantaged girl to complete her educational journey, gain employable skills and become an agent of change herself. The girls are guided to apply to university and leverage higher education loan packages. They are from all parts of Kenya and they are awarded mentors from all over the world. The mentors give back ‘time and talent’, the private sector gives back ‘treasure’ and the girls commit to giving back time, talent and eventually treasure to their communities.
The vision is that all girls who commit to a circle of ‘giving back’ (270 currently) are able to complete a tertiary education path which will enable them to find employment to step change their destinies – breaking through cultural, economic and political barriers. Gaining IT skills is a critical component of the plan.
In 2008, Microsoft’s Woman of WECA (Western, Eastern and Central Africa) collaborated with GGBC to implement Microsoft IT Labs in Kenya, with a goal to turn the Gap Period into a ‘Gateway’, as each girl completes a 9-month Microsoft IT course with marketable applications like, Word, Excel, Power Point, Programming, Website Design, Accounting, etc. Today, there are two Microsoft IT Labs with a goal to implement a third.
The Labs are much more than IT training facilities. The girls actually live in dedicated dormitories just next to the Lab. They form a very special bond during this time period, with each other and with their mentors. Up until the Lab, they communicate with their mentors through letters. Once they enter the world of Internet access, they begin communicating with their mentors in a much more robust manner – weekly/daily.
They take courses during the day and connect to the world in the evenings. They NEVER want to leave the Lab! They learn about university options, scholarship opportunities and career planning. They research new give back commitments and they learn about the global world they are now a part of. The IT Lab EMPOWERES them in ways we never could have imagined when developing the concept.
IT Skills are transformational….
Vivian Onano was raised by her mother and in a rural village in Kisumu, Kenya. She walked an hour to and from primary school each day. Through charity, she graduated high school from Starehe Girls Centre in 2008. Throughout 2009 she lived in the Microsoft IT Lab 24/7. Her experience in Microsoft’s 9-month ICT Course transformed her life. She started communicating with her mentor on a daily basis, and her mentor inspired her to believe that anything is possible.
Her new IT skills helped her secure an Internship at the Mama Maria Clinic where she computerized data on HIV/AIDS to allow for easy calculation of the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in regions. She taught computer skills to the staff and residents of the rural village. She used the Internet to research college scholarships abroad, and through an on-line application process she secured a full scholarship to Carthage College in Wisconsin. Vivian will return to Kenya as a physician.
Truphena Wambui lost both parents when she was 5 and was taken in by St. Martin’s Girl’s Centre located in Nairobi’s Kibagere slum. She lived there and received an education for 12 years. Truphena was an average student with an above average will to achieve. Truphena’s mentor became Truphena’s light as she guided her to visualize what success looks like and the types of career options that can lead a poor girl into financial and societal independence.
Truphena always struggled with math, but still dreamed about becoming an accountant. Truphena entered the Microsoft IT Lab in early 2010 and discovered a ‘second brain’. The computer compensated for her mathematical learning challenges and allowed her to make spreadsheets sing! Truphena will begin a course in Financial Accounting at Visions College in Kenya starting January 2011. She will enter the workforce with IT and accounting skills and she ‘will’ find employment!
We now have over 60 sixty girls who have gone through the IT Course with another 50 due to start in January 2011. Their individual success stories provide tangible evidence that this societal intervention is working and creating a movement of its own.
To learn more about the Global Give Back Circle visit: www.globalgivebackcircle.org
Today we’re announcing updates to our nonprofit software donations program to enable more nonprofits around the world to get easier access to the technology they need, when they need it.
While we currently provide software donations to over 40,000 nonprofits each year, we’re just getting started and we need your help.
Many nonprofit organizations, including some in your local community, are not aware that they can request a donation of Microsoft software. Help us spread the word. Together, we can ensure nonprofits have access to affordable technology to help them do more with their limited resources.
There are two ways you can help:
1) Share the video (below) with your colleagues, friends and family to raise awareness of a great resource available to nonprofits.
2) Make your cause our cause: Reach out to your favorite nonprofit and make sure they’re aware of the Microsoft donations program. To make it as easy as possible, we’ve drafted a note below that you can use.
To those who have already helped, a big thank you from everyone at Microsoft!
To my favorite nonprofit:
I think the work you do in our community is amazing. I know how challenging it is to try and do more with less.
So how can you boost productivity, raise more funds, increase your reach, and deliver new or better services in our community? How about a donation of software from Microsoft? I wanted to make sure you know that eligible nonprofit organizations can request a software donation. There are still many nonprofits that don’t know about the donations program. Do you?
Eligible nonprofit organizations can choose from a wide range of Microsoft desktop and server products (including Office and Windows). Check out www.microsoft.com/nonprofit to see what’s available and learn how to apply. In fact, if you are in one of these 35 countries with a local TechSoup program, you may be able to get technology donations from other companies too, like Cisco, Symantec, or Adobe.
Maybe you already knew all this. If so, that’s great. I want you to keep doing good stuff in our community, and know that access to the latest technology can help. It would be great if you could share this note with other nonprofits too.
By spreading the word, together, we can help millions of nonprofits get access to the technology they need to best serve communities worldwide.
Sincerely,
Your supporter
More information:
Today we are announcing the winners of the first U.S. Kodu Cup. It’s a competition that challenged kids across the United States (from the age of 9 to 17) to use Kodu – a free game development tool from Microsoft – to create their own video game for the chance to win great prizes and the chance to attend the Imagine Cup World finals in New York City in July.
Kodu was created by FUSE labs in Microsoft Research to help children learn how to use computers while developing useful skills such as problem solving, creative thinking and planning in a fun and engaging way. Kodu is proving to be a great tool for fostering children’s interest in exploring a career in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The U.S. Kodu Cup surprised us. As Brad Gibson, a senior program manager with Microsoft Research observed:
“These kids, frankly, did things in Kodu that I hadn’t thought of before. Kids had zombies and fantasy worlds, monsters and infective diseases, mythical heroes – there was just this incredible variety. On one hand you say, ‘Hey, they’re kids, you expect a lot of imagination.’ But when you see the depth of gameplay and the richness of the stories they created, I think many of these kids could be on their way to being world-class game designers.”
So without any further ado, onto the winners.
Grand Prize Winner (9-12 year olds category) - Hannah Wyman
Hannah is 10 years old and lives in Leominster, Massachusetts. Her game is called Toxic, and players collect coins and hearts while solving puzzles to help save the environment. In Hannah’s own words: “My game is about how the environment is getting polluted, and we need to help shut the factories down and cause less pollution.
First Prize Winner (13-17 year olds category) - Jacen Sherman
Jacen is 15 years old and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. His game is called The Vortex. It’s a beautiful looking game which opens with the world under nuclear attack. While humanity has found a way to “upload” itself to a virtual world and launch into space to avoid extinction, one of the creators of this virtual world wasn’t able to make it into the virtual world on time. Out of anger, she unleashed a virus – Vira X – which the player must defeat. Jacen was inspired both by the programming experience, and by the movie Tron.
First Prize Winner (9-12 year olds category) - David Gardiner
David is 9 years old and lives in Leominster, Massachusetts - clearly a future hotbed of games development! David, draws comics about aliens and he took part in the competition following encouragement from his teacher. His game is called Alien Attack where the Galactaliens are trying to take over the world and you have to stop them. It is a delightfully whimsical world with fish swimming in a bowl-less pond, flowers growing in strange places and enemies, and submarines bobbing in what looks like a floating island of lava.
The grand prize winner receives $5,000 for themselves and their respective school, as well as a trip to the Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in New York. The Imagine Cup is a global technology competition for students in over 100 countries. The grand prize winner also wins a Toshiba Windows laptop, Microsoft Office Professional 2010 and an Xbox 360 console with a Kinect sensor.
The first prize winners receive a Toshiba Windows laptop with Microsoft Office Home & Student.
Kodu Judging
The consensus among the members of our judging committee was that the creativity demonstrated by all the entries in this first U.S. Kodu Cup competition was outstanding. When you combine that creativity with the hard work and dedication evidenced in all the submitted games, choosing the winners was a very difficult process.
On behalf of all the judges we’d like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate everyone who took part in the competition. Well done!
You can read more about the winners on the Microsoft News Center.
More information on Kodu and STEM education
A note on sensible, safer gaming.
Microsoft is committed to helping families enjoy video games and online media in ways that are safer, healthier and more balanced. As part of this commitment we have created Get Game Smart.
GetGameSmart.com brings the most current parental controls tools, expert tips and resources together online, including the latest information on updated Xbox 360 Family Settings. This website offers a variety of resources in one place where parents and caregivers can find valuable information to make educated decisions about balanced media use. The site helps parents and kids to work together on fun activities and quizzes that will improve their knowledge about gaming and online safety, and help them create household agreements for media use ...along with easy ways to enforce them! GetGameSmart.com also provides tips and information from the nation's leading experts and organizations, and features its own blog to provide families with up-to-date information on the latest video game and Internet safety topics. The Get Game Smart program is a new approach to helping parents and their children get on the same page about making smart media choices.
Microsoft is proud to have led the effort to create and build in safety measures that enable parents to choose the right games, content and online access settings for their families. Xbox was the first video game and entertainment system on the market with built-in parental control systems. Virtually all of Microsoft's consumer products- Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE, Windows 7, Zune and MSN/Windows Live - feature family safety features.
_
This week Dominik Tomičević from Croatia, Jason Mitsuyuki Wakizaka from the United States, Francisco Perez from Ecuador, and Mohammad Lu’ay Alazzam from Jordan were playing with the very latest Microsoft technology – in this case our new Microsoft Surface - in Davos, the Swiss village that hosts the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. They were in Davos as representatives of the four teams who have been chosen as the inaugural recipients of the Microsoft Imagine Cup grants program.
The Imagine Cup Grants program is a three-year, $3 million competitive grant program to help Imagine Cup participants take their ideas and their projects and transform them into a business or nonprofit that can bring the benefit of their technology to the communities that need it most.
The students were in Davos to meet with Microsoft Chairman, Bill Gates and to participate in a roundtable discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing young people today. (We’ll have a report on that coming very soon.)
The winning teams were chosen from 50 applicants that competed in the Imagine Cup 2011 Worldwide Finals last year in New York City. A judging panel of eminent industry experts from the worlds of technology, venture capitalism, software development, startup culture, and the nonprofit sector ranked each team based on specific criteria including project impact and viability, and team quality and motivation.
The judges included: Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director of Global Community Affairs, Microsoft Corporation; Peter Cowhey, Dean: Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Communications and Technology Policy, School of International Relations and Pacific Studies: University of California, San Diego; Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson; Debra Dunn, Advisor to Social Ventures, Skoll Foundation; Edward G. Happ, Global Chief Information Officer of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Chairman of NetHope; Zeev Klein, General Partner, Landmark Ventures; Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President: Strategic and Emerging Business Development, Microsoft Corporation; Jeff Raikes, Chief Executive Officer, Gates Foundation; and Ann Winblad, Managing Director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
While the judging process was very difficult, the winning projects are fantastic, and they show the incredible potential of providing young people with the skills and the opportunity to make a difference.
Here’s some more about the four winning teams:
Team Apptenders from Croatia: KiDnect
Ivan Antonic, Ivan Borko, Karmela Bresan, Dominik Tomicevic (pictured)
KiDnect is a Kinect-based solution for on-premise and remote physical therapy for children, especially those born with Cerebral Palsy. This software has the ability to monitor a child’s exercises to ensure they are being completed correctly, and then provides statistical analysis to the therapist. Team Apptenders hopes to add multilingual interfaces in order to integrate additional sensors for limb rotation monitoring and advanced data analysis.
Team Falcon Dev from Ecuador: SkillBox
José Vicente Anilema Guadalupe, Gerardo Francisco Pérez Layedra, Henry Javier Paca Quinaluiza, Juan José Morales Ruiz
SkillBox is an affordable solution to help children who are hearing impaired by translating all audio received from a teacher in a classroom into sign language. A wireless headset captures the sound, sends it to the computer and SkillBox then shows the corresponding sign for the word or phrase. Team Falcon Dev hopes to take their first step in making SkillBox available to children by selling their technology solution to public schools in Ecuador.
Team OaSys from Jordan: Horizon
Hani AbuHuwaij, Mohammad Azzam, Monir Abu Hilal, Mohammad Saleh, Yousef Wadi
Horizon is a software and hardware system that allows people who do not have use of their hands/arms to use a computer. Specifically, it tracks head movements and translates these movements into mouse movements. Users get full control of a computer and a cellphone, and can browse the internet, type and connect with ease and at a low cost. Team OaSys hopes to improve the software stack by optimizing and adding features, pilot client lab preparations and hire sub-contractors.
Team LifeLens from the United States: LifeLens
Tristan Gibeau, Cy Khormaee, Wilson To, Jason Wakizaka, Helena Xu
Lifelens is an innovative point-of-care tool to diagnose malaria using an augmented Windows Phone application. The project addresses the unacceptably high child mortality rates caused by the lack of detection and availability of treatment of malarial diseases. Team Lifelens is ready to develop their project for launch. They will use the investment for distribution of their devices, subsidizing the phones and field testing.
So what about you?
Right now, students can register to be part of Imagine Cup 2012 and can sign up in any of eight different categories. From designing brand new technology in Software Design to building gadgets through the Kinect Fun Labs Challenge, there is something for every student to enjoy. Who knows - your team could be the next group of students Microsoft funds through the Imagine Cup Grants!
Earlier today we announced the worldwide availability of Microsoft Office 2010. This new release of the world’s most popular productivity software provides a range of tools that help nonprofits work more efficiently and effectively from managing e-mail, to connecting and working with colleagues online, and creating and sharing professional documents.
Microsoft has long recognized the benefits technology can bring to nonprofit organizations. In keeping with our commitment to nonprofits, we are delighted to announce that Microsoft Office 2010 is available immediately for qualifying nonprofits through our technology donations program in the United States and in 32 other countries around the world through our partnership with TechSoup Global. Office 2010 is also available immediately through our other grant programs – learn more about our work in the community here.
What’s new in Office 2010?
Express ideas more visually
Office 2010 opens up a world of design options from new and improved picture formatting tools to a wide range of new customizable themes and graphic layouts.
Accomplish more when working together
Brainstorm ideas, keep versions in sync, and meet deadlines faster when you’re working in groups. Co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Excel Web App, and OneNote 2010 shared notebooks enable you to edit the same file at the same time with other people — even when they’re in different locations using your Windows Live account or Sharepoint Foundation 2010.
Microsoft Office Web Apps
Extend your Office 2010 experience to the Web. Store your Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files online and then access, view, edit, and share content from virtually anywhere.2
Stay connected to your business and social networks
Outlook 2010 is your hub for colleagues, donors, and friends. Use Outlook Social Connector to quickly view history of e-mails, meetings, or attachments you receive from individuals. Get additional information about people to stay on top of your business and social circles through SharePoint My Site, Windows Live, or other popular third-party sites.
Broadcast your message
Broadcast your PowerPoint presentation to a remote audience, whether or not they have PowerPoint installed. The new PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show feature enables you to present right from your desk, while your audience views the presentation live in their Web browser. PowerPoint 2010 also delivers exciting new video editing capabilities for bringing your presentation alive!
Create powerful data insights
Track and highlight important trends with new data analysis and visualization features in Excel 2010. The new Sparklines feature delivers a clear and compact visual representation of your data through small charts within worksheet cells. Slicers let you filter and segment your PivotTable data in multiple layers so you can spend more time analyzing and less time formatting. {Beth Kanter recently shared how she is using Excel as a critical tool to guide the effective use of social media – Excel 2010 is full of features and imagery that will help her bring her data to life.
Manage large volumes of e-mail with ease
Save valuable time by streamlining your inbox. Outlook 2010 lets you compress long e-mail threads into a few conversations that can be categorized, prioritized, and conveniently filed. The new Quick Steps feature lets you perform multi-command tasks, such as reply and delete, with a single click.
Store and track all of your ideas in one place
Get the ultimate digital notebook for tracking, organizing, and sharing text, pictures, and audio and video files with OneNote 2010. New features such as page version tracking, automatic highlighting, and Linked Notes give you more control over your information, so you’re always on top of your content and changes made by others.
Work your way, faster and more easily
Microsoft Office Backstage view replaces the traditional File menu to give you a centralized space for all of your file management tasks, including save, share, print, and publish. The enhanced Ribbon, common across Office 2010 applications, lets you access commands quickly and create or customize tabs to fit your work style.
There are two versions of Office offered through the technology donations program:
Program
Office Standard 2010
Office Pro Plus 2010
Microsoft Word
Yes
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Outlook with Business Contact Manager
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft OneNote
Yes New!
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Access
Microsoft SharePoint Workspace
Microsoft InfoPath
Microsoft Communicator
For more information
· Find out how qualifying nonprofits can order Microsoft Office 2010 through the Microsoft Technology Donations program here.
· Discover information and resources on Office 2010 from the Microsoft Office site.
· Explore the new Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps visit here.