How to Establish an Effective Charity-Business Partnership?

Last week, we raised the questions concerning the challenges for charities to set up partnerships with business:

•                Which commercial partners to choose?

•                How to protect our values and brand names?

To establish a charity-business partnership effectively, the foremost important aspect is to consider what commercial partners or business to choose. Charities should not consider a joint venture with companies whose core business is in conflict with their own because the differences in business objectives would harm the charities’ values and brand names.

Once choose a potential partner, it is substantial to ensure from the outset of an agreement and a framework of managing expectations which both charities and business agree on. This could provide charities a means to check and monitor the performance of their partners, in order to prevent companies damaging the reputation of the charities.

We do believe sharing similar values and setting out agreement and monitoring system are the key components of creating a mutually beneficial partnerships. We are therefore actively looking for potential partners to join our Tribes Project, which support the notion of youth empowerment and are willing to contribute to youth education/ e-learning.

If you are interested in what we do, please do not hesitate and contact us.


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Change Our World: Let the Youth Speak!

“Failing to invest in our youth is a false economy,” said the United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Three months ago, International Youth Day (IYD) was commenced to round up the UN International Year of Youth (IYY) 2010-2011. “Change Our World” was chosen as the theme of the year, which draw youth’s inspiration to take initiatives to change and bring positive impacts to the globe.

The theme represents the importance of the impact that the young generation to strive to achieve. It also stresses the notion of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism as the core principles of the UN.

The UN significantly raises youth inclusion to the global policy agenda. However, the reality shows that it is uneasy to truly empower youth. Policy and politics regard youth voice as risk. Favouring those in power is the major roadblock for genuine youth empowerment. There are critics about youth being apathetic to politics. But if they are not given channels to voice out their thoughts, how can they be motivated to participate in politics?

Nowadays, we talk a lot about sustainable development- to meet the current need without compromising the need of the next generation. Sustainability does not solely refer to environmental sense, but also all walks of social aspect. To sustain the well being of the global community, youth should be given freedom to speak and opportunities they deserved.

The question is “how can we encourage young people to speak?” In the information age, youth, the e-generation, are proficient users of all kinds of modern communications (i.e. social media and online discussion platforms). These tools have great capacity to connect youth to the outside world. We need to give young people a room to speak and shout out loud, and to be heard from people around the globe.

Seeing the boom of the e-climate, we created the online educational platform- Rafi.ki, to encourage young people to exchange ideas, inspirations and plan to make changes upon the emerging global issues. With our effort, we motivate youth to be actively engaged. With the support from governments, NGOs, and corporate, we believe it will be a big step forward to effectively empower global youth.

Show your support by following us on twitter, joining our Facebook page and telling your friends, colleagues and family. 

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What is Rafi.ki?

Welcome to our Rafi.ki and Kidogo Blog!

Rafi.ki means 'friends' in Swahili. Here, we refer Rafi.ki to our online educational community.

Rafi.ki is established by Gemin-i, an educational charity in the United Kingdom based in London. It is an online platform allowing children and youth around the world to learn about each other's cultures and beliefs. In other words, this online community acts as bridge linking students from different corners of the world together.

Rafi.ki contains lesson plans and projects to study online. Topics include malaria, HIV and AIDS, climate change and human rights. In 2011, we have connected over 2700 schools in 130 countries approximately.

Our blogging purpose is to maintain and develop the well-being of the global community through international communications. We believe listening to the voice of our next generations serves as a sustainable manner in the creation of a better global village. We aim to raise the awareness of global citizens' responsibilities and stress the significance of empowering youth.

If you find Rafi.ki interesting, please visit http://rafiki.gemin-i.org/ and http://kidogo.gemin-i.org/ to find out more.

Stay tuned for our news update about Rafi.ki, global youth issues and so on.

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