Change You Can Make
Creating summer placements for girls at tech companies, saving three-month old baby boy Bwanakei (and 5,000 other patients), empowering a father in Palestine to start a mobile coffee shop, and providing sustainable aid in Nepal. Here we present some of the work that our supported organizations are doing, and what is happening at Creddon.
It’s been exactly five months since Creddon was born at Startup Weekend East Bay and now we want to give you an update: First, a look at the causes we are supporting, and then, for those interested, an update on what we’re doing at Creddon.
What you are contributing to
Below are examples of the kind of work the tweets made through Creddon contributes to.
Girls Who Code
This summer, Girls Who Code placed 1,200 talented girls in a wide array of companies, including Adobe, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Google, Pixar and The Honest Company. The girls received seven weeks of intensive instruction in various computer science concepts.
Over 77% of Girls Who Code alumni from previous Summer Immersion Programs said they changed their academic path because of the program. Today, 90% of former participants are majoring or planning to major in Computer Science or a closely related discipline in college.
Watsi
This week, Watsi reached the milestone of funding healthcare for 5,000 patients! One of them is Bwanakei, a three-month-old baby boy from Kenya.
Bwanakei had an abnormal head size due to accumulation of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain. Bwanakei’s father shared, “I came here in faith with nothing but bus fare for my wife and child. I am hopeful that Bwanakei will get treated.”
Thanks to Watsi donors, Bwanakei received treatment. The medical partner reports: “The treatment has helped stabilize his intra-cranial pressure minimizing the risk of life-threatening brain damage. Bwanakei is recovering well from the surgery and he has been discharged from the hospital.”
Bwanakei’s mother said “I am moved by the compassionate love and support you have shown us.”
To celebrate reaching 5,000 patients, donations to fund patients are matched on Watsi.org until Sept. 28.
Kiva
Kiva reports about Mohammad, a father of 6 living in the West Bank. He was sometimes forced to borrow money from neighbors just to buy bread or pay the rent for the family’s apartment, before starting a successful coffee business, thanks to loans funded by Kiva and its Field Partner FATEN.
Mohammad had noticed that the coffee in his part of Jenin was not great, so an old friend offered to teach him how to make quality coffee. With the first loan he was able to start a café, making $6 the first day. With the second loan, he bought a cart so that he could make his coffee business mobile. Within a year he was able to repay the loan.
When asked how his life has changed, Mohammad nearly broke into tears with happiness and pride. He reflected on the times he couldn’t feed his family. Now they eat well and the family feels secure with their financial situation. His oldest son is 14 and receives very high marks in school. Mohammad is able to set aside money for his children’s education.
To make a loan to borrowers like Mohammad in Palestine, and around the world, visit Kiva.
Effect
Right after the quake, Effect mobilized 125 volunteers, 75 motorbikes and 8 vehicles, while purchasing 500 kg of food, 4,o00 pieces of medical supplies and 1,500 tents every day. They built NepalRises.com in 8 hours and a bot scanning Twitter to understand who needed help and act immediately.
After the emergency life saving relief, the needs changed and Effect adapted. They partnered with Portal Shelters to provide temporary class rooms, which were locally produced, costing $100 each and taking only 30 minutes to set up. Effect also partnered with Smart Paani (water) to provide families clean water with gravity feed water filtration systems that last 6 months and only cost $40. Now, the focus is to provide permanent classrooms, sustainable shelters and clean water for families and schools.
What we are doing
Two weeks after Startup Weekend, I had to go back to Sweden to finish my Master’s degree and I defended my thesis about Word-of-Mouth Marketing on August 14, yay! (Here is a one-pager about the most interesting result.)
On September 4, I came back to San Francisco, and my cofounder Melinda Dinh also joined me here a week ago. We will look for investors and partners that can help Creddon scale up.
In the meantime, we’re doing things that don’t scale, as Paul Graham famously recommends, and obsessing about product/market fit. To make Creddon more rewarding for the people that come to our site to pick a cause and tweet it, we thought:
Let’s count retweets toward donations.
For now, we decided that each retweet, within 2 days of the original tweet being made from creddon.com, will give another ¢50 to the cause. The original tweet is still worth $1, because the original tweeter is the spark that lights the fire!
This blog post is our first effort to give feedback to our users (can we call you Creddoners? Cred-donors?) about their impact. We believe feedback is one of the critical components in making Creddon something people want. What do you think? I would be delighted to hear your thoughts, just tweet or email me on <fredrik at creddon.com>.
Thank you for all your support,
Fredrik
Support a cause with a tweet from creddon.com.
The first tweet gives $1, RTs within 2 days give ¢50.
