The following is a guest post, written by Chris Rawlins from The Scholar Match— The consistently rising cost of higher education has left many bright and high-achieving high school students in the Bay Area without the financial resources to attain their goals, dreams, and ambitions of a college degree.  As a result, I have partnered with other Silicon Valley professionals in starting a new financial scholarship fund through the combined organizations of Indiegogo.com and ScholarMatch. Our goal is simple.  To provide college scholarships for 12 very special and deserving students in the Bay area.  This program will also be offering more than just financial assistance.  We will follow these young adults through their college years, providing support and mentoring as they face the many challenges of a post-secondary education. We need your help.  The 12 scholarships will require a combined total of only $16,150 dollars.  We can easily meet this goal with only 646 donations of only $25.  It is our hope that the wide reaching arms of the social media will help our Indiegogo Campaign to quickly “GO VIRAL”.  All funds exceeding the original $16,150 will be used to help even more students from the California, Bay Area area…. read more →

The following is an interview with San Francisco’s April 2013 grantee, Hunter Franks, about his SF Postcard Project. The SF Postcard Project encourages community connection through storytelling exchange. 1) Participants in marginalized neighborhoods fill out a postcard with a positive personal story of their community. 2) Postcard is mailed to a random San Francisco resident to initiate stronger connections between people and communities. How did it come about? Hunter: While I was working for the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation, I had the opportunity to work with youth in the marginalized Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. Bayview is tucked into an isolated Southeast corner of San Francisco. Most San Franciscans don’t have a reason to go there. They only know what they see on the news: violence, drugs, and poverty. But, there is much more to these communities — stories that the larger population never sees or hears about. The youth I worked with wanted to tell these stories to the rest of the city. They wanted to change people’s perception of Bayview and they wanted to attract people to the positive stories and places in Bayview. Perception and behavior change are not easy things to accomplish, so I set out… read more →