ITP Alumna, Leba Haber (’03) won a Digital Media and Learning grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2008.

The Always With You network will connect young African social entrepreneurs with young North American professionals. Using mobile phone technology, which is now widespread, this network will facilitate both micro-funding and the exchange of professional advice to projects in Africa that promote public benefit. A website will share the project’s successes, lessons learned, and new ideas for scaling toward future collaborative and transnational youth partnerships.

She just launched the project, called Mobile Movement.

Mobile Movement is a next-generation microfinancing website that connects 15 groups of young Kenyan social entrepreneurs in the slums of Nairobi with the rest of the world using mobile technology. The goal is to support these young people in Nairobi as they create businesses that improve their communities socially and environmentally in ways the government and others have failed to do.

By using the Mobile Movement website and mobile phones, young social entrepreneurs with new ideas are empowered by being able to directly link to people around the world to get business advice, to explore new creative ideas, and to obtain micro-financing for their projects. Broadcasting from mobile phones allows youth from the slums of Nairobi to share their dreams and aspirations for themselves and their communities through video, photos, messages and email.

Creators Leba Haber Rubinoff (ITP’03) and Jessica Fraser want to create a movement where philanthropy is accessible, powerful and personally meaningful. By creating an environment that encourages communication between the giver and the receiver, the benefits of advice or funding offered creates a new community and a model of active philanthropy.

“People who join together have the power to lift each other.  Because I myself cannot do something – me, alone.  But if I join you and the other person and the other person, we can do it together.”

Isaac Nderitu, Leader, Kinari Small Youth Group, Nairobi, Kenya www.mobilemovement.tv