World We Dare To Imagine Final

All students should have mentors. But for the underprivileged, access to mentors is a necessity. In the United States, there is only a 7.5% chance that children born into the bottom income bracket will reach the top. Those that actually achieve that feat are even fewer. [1] Why is this the case? In my experience while starting and working with the volunteer organization Career Gear, I have observed one general cause: underprivileged individuals don't have access to the social capital necessary for upward mobility. Career Gear provides professional clothing and career development opportunities to those in need. However while running the program, our leadership team would notice the people whom we had provided help, dissapear. Or as we would say, "fall off the face of the Earth". Similarly, In The Blue Sweater, Jaquiline Novagratz began her journey by providing financial capital to the underprivileged through microfinancing. Yet throughout her experiences, Jaquiline seems to learn that the poor required larger investments and prolonged involvement to help businesses grow. By providing access to social capital in addition to financial capital, people were more likely to achieve success for their companies. I hope to create a solution that will serve as a global platform to help connect the underprivileged, at all stages in life, with capable mentors in order to achieve success at a personal level.

My solution begins with the formation of a network of capable mentors at a local level. Expansion from then on will involve the development of local mentorship networks in cities across the state of California. After local networks have been established, and mentors have been formally recognized, the work of connecting with those in need will begin. Mentors will partner with schools and community development programs to form relationships with those in need of guidance. Our platform will launch phone applications and a website which will offer a 24/7 chat feature with all of the local mentors from our program. The people being helped in our program at this stage in our development will benefit from the state-wide connections that are offered as well. For example, a student from Inglewood may benefit from a mentorship contact gained though our network in Oakland. Guidance offered through this program can range from academic, personal, or professional topics. Mentors will be required to provide adequate qualifications prior to signing with this program.

The long term goal of this organization is to connect with the underprivileged at a national and global level. So that an individual from Karachi may reach out to a mentor living in Palo Alto, and vice versa. And our organization could sponsor travel expenses for office visits. To create sustainability for this program, and ensure that mentor turnover in this program is small, our objective is to make the people initially being helped through our program into mentors themselves. Therefore, the people being helped through this program will first be accountable to their mentors and then, later, to their mentees. One potential weakness of this idea is providing access to computers and phones, so that people may communicate with mentors from our program on a consistent basis. But through financing, our foundation Mentors For Life would be able to provide technology to those in need.



[1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantcheva/files/lecture1.pdf