Echoing Green Announces Social Entrepreneurs Selected as 2010 Fellows Part 2 of 3

Echoing Green's 2010 Fellows include an array of social enterprises that foster political activism, greater access to education and advance human rights through their not-for-profit social programs. By igniting the imagination and innovative spirit in others, they are also exponentially accelerating and expanding the social enterprise sector.

Generation Citizen educates, encourages, and organizes youth to systematically develop the power of their individual political voice, inspiring greater civic engagement in the United States. By fostering students' political activism, Generation Citizen teaches these youth to channel their idealism and passions into positive social, economic and political change. The organization's long-term plans include the creation of an advocacy arm, which will lobby elected officials to make civic education for low-income youth a priority.

• Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project facilitates the resettlement of the more than 5 million people displaced by the Iraq War; more than two million of which have been stranded as refugees in Jordan, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries. With chapters at Yale Law School, New York University Law School and Boalt School of Law at Berkeley, students work to improve the plight of Iraqi refugees by providing assistance with resettling, easing the transition of resettled Iraqi refugees in the U.S., and impacting the current U.S. policy toward Iraqi refugees, who are victims of perhaps the gravest humanitarian crisis the Middle East has endured in more than half-a-century.


• PODER provides civil society clients and NGOs in Latin America with business intelligence that recognizes and highlights companies that engage in human rights violations, corruption and other illicit or unethical activities in the region. By holding corporations accountable, PODER (Project on Organizing, Development, Education and Research) intends to enhance development, simultaneously expanding democracy in the region. In addition to confronting and engaging corporations that have violated human rights and laws, the organization provides incentives, including specialized training on monitoring such unsavory practices, to strengthen corporate accountability at the local level.


• Empowering Spirits Foundation, Inc. is a national non-partisan, not-for-profit, civil rights organization focused on achieving LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) equality through community service activities that unite members of this community with other social segments. Instead of relying exclusively on public policy to solve misunderstandings and foster acceptance, ESF attempts to open the hearts and minds of people and groups traditionally ignored by LGBT organizations. Neighborhood revitalizations programs, housing projects, canned food drives and environmental cleanup programs are used to bring individuals members of the LGBT community together with people who have not previously been exposed to them to discover common experiences and similarities between them through a shared vision for the local community.


• The Real Food Challenge inspires, organizes and trains college students to demand "real food" choices from their educational institutions. "Real Food" simultaneously nourishes producers, consumers, communities and the earth by meeting criteria from seed to plate that respects human dignity, animal welfare, environmental sustainability, social and economic justice. In addition to devising a holistic concept of "real food," the organization has developed a patented Real Food Calculator and tracking system for institutional purchases. The Real Food Calculator rates each selection on four core categories: local/community based; fair; ecologically sound; and humane.


• Shining Hope for Communities combats intergenerational cycles of poverty and deep-rooted gender inequality in Kiberia, Africa's largest slum, by interlinking tuition-free public schools for girls to essential health, economic and social services. By elevating girls' capacity and options community-wide, Shining Hope cultivates a holistic, community-driven approach to breaking the cycles of poverty and abuse. This intertwined link between education and services, the school being adjacent to the community center, redefines the roles and futures for these girls, empowering them and their community to view gender inequality in a new perspective.


• Blue Engine provides "high dose" intensive tutoring for low-income high school students, channeling thousands of direct service hours to expanding educational opportunities in America. Recent college graduates sign on for one year of concentrated tutoring in high need communities to advance educational equity, excellence and opportunity, while accelerating academic achievement of high-need high schools.