Simone Marean is the CEO and Co-Founder of Girls Leadership, a national educational nonprofit that equips girls with the skills to exercise the power of their voice. In Girls Leadership’s ten years as a nonprofit it has impacted over 200,000 girls and is on track to reach one million girls by 2023. Girls Leadership just launched a groundbreaking new research report, Ready to Lead, sponsored in part by the Vodafone Americas Foundation, as well as Morgan Stanley and other companies.

In the wake of the our current global crisis, we are all challenged to find answers to overcome our latest obstacles, both old and new, that are affecting millions of people worldwide. In an effort to encourage and support solutions to address issues resulting from the pandemic, we partnered with OpenIDEO last month to conduct the COVID Business Pivot Challenge focused on how businesses of all kinds are rapidly adapting to support the immediate needs of the COVID-19 response, and enable a more just and resilient future.

The path to success is oftentimes a difficult and unexpected one! Every founder or entrepreneur has faced rejections. You are not alone. Everyone has self-doubt. Moving forward despite the self-doubt and rejection is something we all have dealt with and have in common. Thrive Global’s Mitch Russo speaks with the founder of one of our grantees, Atma Connect, Meena Palaniappan about the journey she’s made.

Every founder or entrepreneur has faced rejections. Take for example, Meena Palaniappan, Founder and CEO of Atma Connect. In 2015, Atma Connect launched AtmaGo, a neighborhood-level mobile app in Indonesia for users to share real-time information and solutions to better prepare for disasters, to improve their access to basic needs, and to address chronic vulnerabilities that has reached over 5M people in Indonesia and Puerto Rico.

On International Women’s Day, World Pulse announced the launch of their new digital impact campaign, #SheTransformsTech. In partnership with the Vodafone Americas Foundation, EQUALS, and a network of other sponsors from the philanthropy and technology worlds, this campaign crowdsources ways women can–and do–shape the future of tech.

World Pulse partners with Vodafone Americas Foundation, Equals, and women’s right networks to help women get involved in a new global technology agenda

To celebrate International Women’s Day – March 8th – World Pulse is launching the #SheTransformsTech campaign to crowdsource ways women can shape the future of tech.

Presented by Vodafone Americas Foundation this video was recorded at YoMo Los Angeles in October 2019. The Empowering Girls Panel Discussion was moderated by 5 time Olympian Natalie Cook and featured Olympians, Wellness Tech Experts and Social Entrepreneurship leaders…coming together to provide girls with some of their insights on how they can be the best version of themselves.

What happens when you focus on impacting others, and when you reframe problems to find innovative solutions? In the case of June Sugiyama, Director at Vodafone Americas Foundation, flipping the script and refocusing the lens was a daily practice. Instead of thinking about how impossible a goal is, she thought more about the opportunity. And that opportunity was to transform the lives of women and girls through technology, and make their dreams a reality.

MIT Solve, an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that advances solutions from tech entrepreneurs to address the world’s most pressing issues, today announced a prize pool of $1.25 million for its next class of Solver teams. Prize sponsors include Vodafone Americas Foundation, General Motors, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Schmidt Futures, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court, and the Andan Foundation. The prize sponsors will convene at Solve at MIT from May 7-9 in Cambridge, MA with the rest of the Solve community, including 2018 Solver teams, Members, Sponsors, and MIT faculty and staff.

It may come as no surprise that giving free phones to refugees could help them resettle, but now there are data that suggest exactly how much the phones help and in what ways. The RefugeeMobile program provides free mobile service and phones loaded with applications directed at helping refugees settle in the United States. A partnership of four organizations head the work: the mobile service provider Sparrow Mobile for All, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Refugee Services of Texas, supported by funding from Vodafone Americas Foundation.