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Mission: "Girl Scouts build girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place." The Value proposition is that Girl Scouts is where girls find their voices and make them matter. The Girl Scouts of Central Maryland has served the Metropolitan area since 1962. In the ensuing five decades, the neighborhoods and communities of Baltimore City and certain surrounding counties have changed. The GSCM has endeavored to change to be responsive to these changing demographics and keep current with the needs of girls in Central Maryland. GSCM conducted extensive research into the needs of girls and young women who live in Baltimore City. The families in these areas are typically single-parent families with income levels near the poverty line. Many parents work more than one job to make ends meet. And then there is the special group of girls, often forgotten, who are separated from their mother for reasons over which they had no control. Delivering the extra-curricular activities that are necessary for girls to achieve later in life is a founding principle and goal of Girl Scouts of Central Maryland. This includes learning the real meaning behind the Girl Scout Law of "I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what I say and do, and to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout. In underserved communities there is a lack of availability of programs, and lack of transportation. GSCM intends to continue to fill this void with its Beyond Bars program and needs your support to assure we can continue to transport girls from their neighborhoods to the facility which houses their mother. Overall, for the entire council, the goals for 2015-2018 were established for a target population of girls in kindergarten through 12th grade, the goals and are: (a) to empower a culturally diverse population of girls through engagement in a Girl Scout leadership pathway; (b) to increase the reach of GSCM's programs and unique experiences by enrolling an increased number of girls, particularly girls from underserved communities, as members of the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland; and (c) to recruit, screen and orient new and existing adult volunteers, who are guided and trained to mentor a culturally diverse Girl Scout population.

WE CARE Solar promotes safe motherhood and reduces maternal mortality in developing regions by providing health workers with reliable lighting, mobile communication, and blood bank refrigeration using solar electricity. The Problem Maternal mortality worldwide accounts for more than half a million deaths a year; 99 percent of these occur in underdeveloped countries. For every maternal death, at least 20 women suffer severe complications from childbirth. Major causes of maternal death include obstetric hemorrhage, obstructive labor, eclampsia, and sepsis. These emergencies cannot always be predicted, nor are they always preventable. However, with prompt, appropriate and reliable medical care, they are unlikely to result in loss of life. Sporadic electricity impairs the operation of surgical wards, delivery wards, essential hospital equipment, and hospital communication devices. This compromises the ability of health workers to provide safe, appropriate and timely medical care. Labor and delivery nurses cannot quickly notify on-call physicians of emergencies. Midwives and physicians are forced to make treatment decisions without the benefit of necessary diagnostic tests. Obstetric procedures and emergency surgeries are conducted under grossly suboptimal conditions, and can have tragic consequences. Our Background Co-founder Dr. Laura Stachel went to Northern Nigeria in 2008 to study ways to lower maternal mortality in state hospitals. She witnessed deplorable conditions in state facilities including sporadic electricity that impaired maternity and surgical care. Without a reliable source of electricity, nighttime deliveries were attended in near darkness, cesarean sections were cancelled or conducted by flashlight, and critically ill patients waited hours or days for life-saving procedures. The outcomes were often tragic. Laura wrote to her husband, Hal Aronson, a solar energy educator back in Berkeley, California. Together, Laura and Hal co-founded WE CARE Solar to improve maternal health outcomes in regions without reliable electricity. Hal designed an off-grid solar electric system for the hospital Laura was studying, targeting the maternity ward, labor room, laboratory and operating theatre. A Portable Solution Hal created a suitcase-sized prototype of the hospital solar electric system so Laura could show Nigerian hospital workers the LED lights, headlamps and walkie-talkies planned for deployment. When Laura returned to Nigeria toting the "solar suitcase," her Nigerian colleagues immediately grasped its significance and began using this kit to charge headlamps and walkie-talkies while they awaited the larger solar installation. In addition, hospital employees introduced Laura to clinicians in outlying health facilities who begged her to bring solar lighting to their own clinics, too. Our five-year goal is to serve 5 million mothers in remote areas by deploying 10,000 Solar Suitcases to health care facilities around the globe.

The core ideas that underpin the mission of Ujyalo Foundation are: Innovation, Gender Inclusive Leadership, and Social Enterprise. Based on these core ideas, Ujyalo Foundation's mission is "to empower communities through technologies, innovation, social enterprise, and gender inclusive leadership, collaboratively locally and globally". We strongly believe that the best way to create sustainable development in any community is by investing in its young women. With initiatives like EmpowHER, and Women Leadership Summit, we provide safe platforms for young women to enhance their leadership skills, explore their unique selves as leaders in their communities, and develop their ideas into potential livelihood opportunities in Nepal. These programs give women a safe space to learn and lead without any social stigma or fear of discrimination. After going through our programs, our women have become confident, independent leading their ideas in different capacities, and creating their own strong collectives of young women. After leading these initiatives for two years and working with 1600 young women, we have discovered just how much such an effort can contribute in the advancement of young women and their causes, especially in a society driven by patriarchy. We want young women in Nepal to believe that a space where young women can lead fearlessly on the basis of their merit and idea, not their gender is possible. Our vision is to create a world where young women can live, learn and lead without any prejudice and discrimination, and have men as the champions to promote women safety and leadership.

Geek Girls Latam is an ONG led by tech women to inspire, empower and connect latina girls, teens and women as agents of change in the use, appropriation and creation of technology. We open opportunities for them to be leaders of the digital economy.

To foster sustainable and vibrant Ugandan communities through unique partnerships focused on education, women's empowerment, food security, and health.

As a Vietnamese non-governmental organization, MSD is taking efforts to enable environment for the development of civil society sector and to promote the rights of marginalized groups, especially children, youth, women and people with disabilities. MSD slogan is "Unleashing local potentials, inspiring for changes"

Fighting Poverty with Digital Opportunity. We offer free training in digital vocational skills in order to enable young women and men to make a living and support their families and communities by selling valuable digital services to international customers - right from their homes in poor rural areas of Africa.

Anudip's mission is to generate sustainable knowledge-economy livelihoods for underserved rural women and youth, through its market aligned skills training (MAST) program. Through MAST Anudip creates entrepreneur groups among students interested in starting IT-enabled business startups or unable to go for urban jobs for economical or traditional reasons.

CEMINA ( Communication, Education, Information and Adaptation) is a not- for- profit organization founded in 1990 to empower women and communities through the use of the radio. Over the years CEMINA has created 400 women's radio programs and has been awarded with various prizes. The radio model, created by CEMINA, is considered a social technology and has been disseminated not only in Brazil but in other countries as well. Since 2007, CEMINA has shifted its focus from radio to the capacity building for social start ups and education for adaptation to climate change. One of its main projects is Adapta Sertao ( www.adaptasertao.net) which aim is to develop a social technology that benefits the population of small underserved towns in the semi-arid region of Brazil. The project consists in articulating a group of social technologies that use scare resources such as water and arable land to guarantee the livelihoods of the local communities especially small farmers. The project has received very prestigious awards such as the 2008 SEED Award. It has also been recognized as a best practice by UN Habitat. CEMINA also supports a children- youth program at Favela Julio Otoni. The program offers a series of benefits for children with ages between 6 and 14 years old. The idea is to offer these children the new possibilities of seeing and actualizing the world. The program is done with volunteers.

Africa is the largest untapped talent pool in the world - and we develop it! Talents need structure, inspiration and jobs to grow. Our initiative works hand in hand with local schools to develop digital talents and bring them in meaningful jobs. We are targeting young talents to train digital & soft skills as early as possible. Our vision is to enable meaningful and sustainable job creation in Africa trough education. And to empower people who are often overlooked: the hidden talents of Africa - e.g. young women in small villages with no access to higher education. In theory, there are a lot of job opportunities that could be created: International corporates are highly interested to outsource value creation to Africa. And promising local start-ups are rising and strive to create impact. In practice, they all need a pre-qualified workforce with the right mindset and digital skills to realize those job potentials sustainably. Out of our experience as entrepreneurs in Africa, we derived a curriculum based on key skill areas which we found critical for future employees to create value and impact. We use experimental coding and gamification as tools to teach & train the skill areas in practice. Our mission is to deliver such trainings on a broad scale to create tangible impact.

To improve the quality of life of children, young people and women living in the slum through the provision of quality education, affordable housing, health care and socio economic empowerment Akili Girls Preparatory School strives to provide underprivileged girls in Kisumu County with affordable quality education that will help them to break the cycle of poverty. The project goal is to generate sufficient income through focussing on horticulture, poultry, dairy cows, and renewable energy systems so as to meet educational, nutritional and medical support needs of the girls we support. This project aims to support at least 200 orphans and vulnerable girls between 3 and 14 years by the year 2020. The primary target group are girls from the lowest income populations, particularly those who are affected by the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Obunga slum and Obambo village in Kisumu County. We will enroll 5 fee paying students in every class to enable parents who are able to pay fees to participate in the education of needy girls. The strategy we have adopted to provide quality education to these girls is through the establishment of a boarding school known as Akili Girls Preparatory School which will provide holistic education that addresses both the physical and emotional needs of the girls while creating dignity through self-reliance