Apricot Info
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Transcript of Apricot Info
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www.apricotproject.org
Making education universally accessible. One child at a time.
The Promise of Education
One in four children born annually in a developing country will not finish primary school. Yet studies have
consistently shown that in these countries, for every additional year of school completed, an 8-10% increase in
income is realized. Because of this, the United Nations has made universal primary school education one of its
Millennium Development Goals. Most experts agree, however, that such a target will not be achieved any time
in the near future. It is a little known fact that 84% of primary schools in developing countries charge some
form of tuition. Tragically, too often families do not have the financial means to send their children to school,
despite the presence of schools nearby. Our mission is to provide scholarships to children who may otherwise
never have the opportunity to experience the promise of education.
The Apricot Strategy
Building upon the belief that education transcends all boundaries, we are creating a web portal with the goal of
consolidating all of the worldwide scholarship programs already in place. Today's landscape of scholarship
programs consists of distributed charities, often focused on one specific country or region, each performing itsown fundraising and often competing with other charities doing similar work in different regions. We want to
change all of that. We believe that having a centralized resource will be a more efficient method for obtaining
scholarship funds. Our goal is to support the range of organizations working in the field.
We have designed a new donation system that we believe will change the paradigm of child sponsorship
currently used by the not-for-profit sector. By taking advantage of crowdsourcing, an emerging phenomenon
in online social media, we hope to not only support, but also increase, scholarship aid to children in developing
countries. Crowdsourcing describes the online mobilization of a large group of people, each doing something
small, to accomplish something big (e.g. Wikipedia). When applied to a social cause, crowdsourcing has two
components: (1) the exponential diffusion of ideas (e.g. Twitter), and (2) the combined generousity of the
crowd (e.g. K iva). We believe that our team has the creativity, passion, and talent to create real social change
by taking advantage of this largely untapped opportunity.
Apricot Project will be an intuitive, appealing website where people can make donations towards scholarships
for specific recipients on a one-time basis. We want to encourage widespread participation, which we believe
goes against solicitation for monthly commitmentsthe current status quo. Our website will feature the
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children provided by our field partners who need sponsorship for their education, in addition to social
networking tools for donors and interactive charts for full disclosure of our operations. Keeping with the spirit
of learning, we plan to initiate Apricot Labs, an area to test more experimental ideas in charitable
crowdsourcing, such as mobile apps.
And here is the punchline: 100% of the money that we receive for any scholarship will be given directly to the
field partner to fulfill the scholarship, or to backfill their accounts if the funds were already awarded. ApricotProject's operating costs will not come from any part of these donor contributions, but from a separate account
consisting of our own grants, donations, and other resources. Our field partners will receive complete credit for
providing the scholarshipswe will be fully transparent about their organizations and involvement.
Apricot Project does not plan to provide scholarships directly. We believe that our role is best served in support
of the organizations and programs that are already performing excellent work in the field. We will strive to
collaborate with field partners to determine how we could better serve their particular programs and regions,
so that they in turn could better serve the 26 million children born each year who deserve, but will not, receive
a primary school education.
The Status of Apricot
We have a high intensitypro bono team working diligently to realize what we believe will challenge the current
fundraising paradigm and improve the lives of more children, more efficiently. Our multidisciplinary team is
focused on doing well to do good, by applying social marketing, research, and innovation to our mission.
Current Tasks
Design and develop website architecture, graphics, layout, and features. Prepare documents for incorporation and 501(c)(3) filings. Engage potential field partners in website and organizational development. Formulate experiments and methods for first-round beta testing. Compose grant applications and create budget based on expected financials.
Current Team
Ta-Ming Shih PhD 2011 (Massachusetts Institutute of Technology) Angela Zhou MD / PhD 2015 (New York University) Pokai Chen ASICs Design Engineer, Juniper Networks / MS (Stanford University) Bonnie Tsung Educator, Nanjing International School / EdM, MA (Columbia University) Hui-Wen Shih PhD 2012 (Princeton University) Danielle Wang Tax Senior Consultant, Deloitte Tax LLP (University of California, Berkeley) Alvin Tai Co-founder of Clean Slice, Inc. (University of California, Berkeley)Are you interested in joining our team? Would you like to partner with us? We'd love to work with you!
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]
