Shaping Youth in SemiFinals for Echoing Green Fellowship

echoing-green.jpgRemember those team tryouts or school elections as a kid where you ended up competing against your best friend and got all flustered? Well, I’m having an ‘echo’ moment here.

Shaping Youth is proud to be selected as a semifinalist for the Echoing Green fellowship, an exciting social entrepreneur org that gives seed money to groundbreaking global projects and embraces the concept “Be Bold.”

I was nominated by my Women Leaders for the World roomie, Ruth DeGolia who was a 2004 E.G. fellow, launching Mercado Global to serve Guatemala. (video of her work here)

In my glee to share the news with eco-collaboratory pals, I found out that unbeknownst to me, the gang at Envirolution (Abby, Alex, Tim, Antuan et al) who I met at Ease’07) applied and made it to the semifinals too! So now I’m wondering if we should’ve filed as a ‘team’ or if we can align/collaborate in phase two to increase our chances for the top 20 international projects!

Oh, wait…it gets even better. Out of 1500 global projects reduced to 25% semifinalist contenders, this tangentially involves my own BROTHER and the Earthseeds nonprofit where I serve on the advisory board! (that’s me in the second photo w/our eco-crewmembers in San Mateo)

I’d mentioned to him that he should take his ‘susbus’ concept (sustainable edu-school bus regionalized w/local sponsors) into a VIRTUAL world prototype, and my guess is now we’ll both end up in the same arena for the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning competition next year, too. (btw, here’s MacArthur’s new MIT book series on digital tools/learning, a must read!)

Anyway, the irony doesn’t escape me. Yet it reinforces just how interconnected we all really ARE on this planet, and why we need to overlap closely and team wherever we can to make the ripple reach beyond our individual project scope.

There will always be an uncomfy echo from grade school moments of “rushing to the names posted on the wall w/your best pals” only to find the joy mitigated by guilt or empathy for whoever gets left out…

Regardless of what happens, it’s an honor for ALL of us to get this far, and validates our programs, projects, and positivity to create a healthier planet. Congrats, everyone! Let’s echo the good work again and again…

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