Five Starling Collective Fellows Awarded with Excellence Award
Grassroots leaders and organizers around the world are working with greater urgency than ever before – and often under even greater constraints and with little to no resources. But it is exactly the kind of innovation and leadership they bring to the table that will prove crucial for transforming the current systems and structures that are clearly not serving us.
To uplift, amplify, and connect more leaders and foster innovative ideas, GivingTuesday created the Starling Collective – a learning collaborative for grassroots leaders to identify new best practices that can be replicated and scaled to mobilize more collective action, now wrapping up its fourth cohort. The five-month program supported 50 grassroots leaders, representing 35 countries, and ranging in age from 14 to 57. Being a part of Starling Collective fellowship “has raised my belief in humanity,” said Lalaina Randriarimanana from Madagascar, Africa region.
The Starling curriculum gave participants the tools and knowledge to transform society from the bottom up. During their 5 months together, the Fellows:
- reflected on their theory of change and who comprises their community
- strengthened and built forms of collective action that will solidify into new practices and infrastructures
- learned how to use data equitably and ethically to measure their impact
- crafted their stories and honed their messaging to scale not only their projects but generosity broadly
- built a tight-knit community of generosity practitioners who they can seek advice and encouragement from in the future.
For the second year, the program concluded with the Starling Collective’s Starling Excellence Award. Five cohort participants who demonstrated exceptional leadership and the commitment to increase generosity and drive systems change received an additional $5,000 USD each to help rapidly implement ideas that can have an immediate impact. Starling Excellence Award winners include:
- Sharmain Chin (Singapore) is the co-founder of Total Wellness Initiative Singapore (TWIS) which aims to empower people to take a more holistic and preventive approach to caring for their personal wellness.
- Wardah Noor (Pakistan) is a social activist, avid researcher, aspiring lawyer, and founder of KhudKaar, and has a mission to generate economic activity of half a billion dollars per year in Layyah by 2030.
- Caroline Galvez (Philippines) is co-founder of The Pitak Project, which aims to regenerate peoples and places by applying replicable farming approaches based on their context and experience.
- Jehan Chreiki (St. Lucia) Jehan co-founded Bandy, a pan-Caribbean time-banking app that will enhance social mobility, identify sustainable sources of income, empower people and communities.
- Jennifer Richmond (Barcelona) is an English teacher in Barcelona, Spain, and the founder of Teachers For Peace, an international union of 50 volunteer teachers from Japan to Brazil, bringing smiles and hope to women and children in Ukraine and other countries, as an alternate focus from the ravages of war.
Sign up for our newsletter to find out when the next Starling Collective application period opens.
