Go Campaign initiates $500,000 drive to help youth solve world problems

Leaders of the non-profit Go Campaign announced at a June 9 Newsmaker a $500,000 fund drive to help youth "solve real world problems and combat poverty in developing nations."

The initiative will support a five-year grant program to find the innovators and entrepreneurs who will inspire youth to tackle challenges in their communities and around the world.

Campaign board member and exercise guru Tony Horton, who will be a marshal at the June 11 Club 5K race, touted the drive.

"We need something new in the fitness world...to help people to help their friends and neighbors" to be healthy, he said. "We need to create better health and change people's lives. We need to identify people who will inspire and provide educational and job opportunities."

The campaign, based in Los Angeles, supports orphans and vulnerable children in the developing world. Joshua Schuler, Lemelson-MIT executive director, joined Horton in announcing the fund drive. He said MIT has invested $150 million in "training folks to solve problems in energy, health, housing and agriculture."

Horton and Schuler were on a panel that also included Scott Fifer, Go Campaign executive director, and Bernard Kiwia of Arusha, Tanzania, the 2011 recipient of the Go Innovation Award for inventing a cell phone charger that attaches to bicycles and motorbikes.

"Go strives to continously encourage youth to be agents of change, philanthropists and to actively shape the world in which they live," Fifer said in an earlier statement.

Kiwia, a former bicycle repairman whose father is a mechanic, said he spent a month at MIT to become an inventor. His creations include a bike-powered water pump, solar water heater, drip irrigation kit and pedal-powered drill-press.

He said he also teaches by "showing students how things work and [introducing them to] new technology. We help the economy grow and increase productivity."

Lily Munanka, deputy chief of mission of the Embassy of Tanzania attended the Club event.

After the program, Kiwia was to visit a D.C. elementary school to address students, demonstrate his inventions and try to inspire them the way he does youth in Tanzania.