Our Mission is to reach the unreached, to educate, and to empower.
The value of education and its impact on improving lives is undeniable. The global need for education– especially for under served and hard to reach populations worldwide – is equally undeniable. Seeds of Empowerment believes that with the aid of technologies and specialised curriculum (such as the Stanford Mobile Inquiry-Based Learning Environment and our global learning initiatives) we provide an opportunity to empower children and meet their needs. We are fully committed to assisting the hard to reach population through our pedagogies and innovative technology.
Our beginnings:
Dr. Paul Kim (founder) visited under served communities around the world and was struck by their poor education environment. Upon witnessing the conditions they lived in, he sought to find a way to improve them. With his expertise in educational technology, Paul felt strongly that basic and accessible devices, such as mobiles, could provide the simple, flexible, and robust solutions needed in the extreme conditions he found in developing countries. With this in mind, Paul set out to create mobile learning technology designs specifically tailored to work in just about any conditions and without depending on any infrastructure. About this time, Paul met Neha Taleja (co-founder) at a conference in Silicon Valley in California and she expressed her strong commitment to give back to her home country.
Paul is a leading innovator of educational technology and the CTO and Assistant Dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Neha, a learning designer, is a native of India who experienced the struggle for education first-hand growing up yet was able to succeed against difficult odds. Together Paul and Neha share a passion to make those educational opportunities reachable for the world’s underserved. With a vision to reach the unreached, to educate, and to empower, Seeds of Empowerment was born.
Seeds of Empowerment programs seek to be a catalyst and to change the story in:
Underserved and hard to reach communities
Countries with highest rates of out-of-school children and highest rates of illiteracy
Fragile and conflict affected regions or otherwise developing areas
Regions with a need to bridge the digital literacy gap
Regions with underperforming students including those that are at risk or have high dropout rates
Expanding global operations:
In late 2016 Dr. Paul Kim brought on a full-time management team in order to further facilitate operations for the company. Under the leadership of Seeds of Empowerment, the organization received a full overhaul of its website and branding. Additionally, enhancements were made to the organisational structure with new members who form a young and passionate executive team. Seeds of Empowerment continues to run its projects across countries where assistance is most needed and ensures that the vision to empower children remains unchanged. In 2017 and beyond, Seeds of Empowerment is well positioned to make global change on a scale that will truly be felt by the global community.
When I visited these countries, I saw how the children lived. It was then that I realised that these children are truly just as bright as the best of us. It was only that they didn’t have the chances we did. That’s when I decided to create Seeds of Empowerment.
PORTABLE TECHNOLOGY
We use Stanford technology (SMILE) to initiate mobile learning projects across the world
1001 STORIES
We give children a voice by publishing the books that they write into our 1001 stories databse
LEADERSHIP
We empower children to be leaders to support those who are under served
GIVING BACK
We support and send funding back to the communities that we visited
Support our cause through giving
Seeds of Empowerment creates initiatives and projects based on the amount of funding we receive. Our volunteers are all trained by professionals within our network before they are sponsored to go to teach in underprivileged communities. As we continue to find avenues to fund our vision, the support we receive from individual donors allows us to take larger strides in a smaller amount of time.
View our project page for more information on what we have in plan.