Social Activist group launches “Worldwide Visionaries” program to support youth projects

Oct 13, 2011 -
Los Angeles, CA – Up the River Endeavors, a consortium of organizations and individuals, has announced the launch of worldwidevisionaries.org, an online resource for young people or groups to explore and exchange positive ideas on addressing pressing social and environmental problems. The website offers a social media community for individuals to promote and present their educational and activist-oriented projects, collaborate with others, obtain additional volunteers and relevant grants, and gain visibility for their projects. Users can directly engage with the project creators, offer advice, and get more information through project and user profile pages. Users can also work with Worldwide Visionary members to craft their own ideas into projects.

“The goal of this program is to empower young people to communicate their vision of a better world to the vast potential audience that is available on the Internet,” says Carina Koury-Jones, Program Director for Worldwide Visionaries. “We hope their voices will be heard and that their projects will inspire others to get involved and join us in this exciting new endeavor.”

Although oriented toward youth, schools, and organizations, Worldwide Visionaries is available to anyone. Users can submit their ideas and projects and find support for those projects through exposure to various web resources, grant opportunities through the blog and on-staff grant-writer, information regarding corporate sponsorships and gifts, and one-one-one guidance from on staff project managers and professionals. Some of the projects include topics from “Going Green...Repairing the World: Student Art Exhibit” an art exhibit geared towards promoting awareness of environmental issues by University of Southern California student Jen Guyton, to “She Shall Go Free”, a project to raise awareness and advocacy in the fight against sexual slavery and human trafficking.

“Worldwide Visionaries is intended as a collection of resources to help young people get their emerging projects off the ground, as well as create an inspiring environment to encourage like-minded individuals,” says Joanna Arlukiewicz, Project Manager for Worldwide Visionaries. “Our broad goals were to effectively use online technology to help affect widespread, meaningful change offline, in both our local and global communities. We aim to support and connect visionaries around the world who are actively turning their good intentions into positive actions.”

The site launched with over one hundred submitted ideas. Projects that started with classroom work from college students at the University of Southern California, supervised by Dr. Amy Parish in the Department of Anthropology. Further development by Dr. Parish and URE associates are in progress to create an expanded curriculum that will be available to schools and institutions early next year while additional enhancements to the website will provide project resources for online users and project submitters hoping to make a positive change.

About URE

Up the River Endeavors (URE) is a group of organizations and individuals brought together by an innovative philanthropist, Kenneth Malcolm Jones, whose personal goal is to address the fundamental question of how human beings can reconcile with nature so that we can ensure our own survival and that of other living things that share our planet. There are nine consortium member organizations and a growing number of associate members (specialists who are invited to participate in annual meetings) involved in URE. Seventy-five percent of participants are women and are decision-makers in their organization. Each URE member individually addresses important issues such as gender relations, global warming, conservation, world peace and social justice. URE is collectively organized around the perspective that the various problems addressed by each member organization have in common one or more root causes. The consortium endeavors to identify and address those root causes and has initiated Worldwide Visionaries, as their most recent collaborative project, to help others join in the effort to
create a word that is more balanced, peaceful and sustainable.

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Press contact:

Bryon Taylor
Represent Media - PR, Online Marketing
Denver, CO
bryon@repthebrand.com
720.278.0797

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Up The River Endeavors, a consortium of organizations and individuals, has announced the launch of worldwidevisionaries.org, an online resource for young people or groups to explore and exchange positive ideas and gain support for their efforts.

Press contact:

Bryon Taylor
Represent Media - PR, Online Marketing
600 W. County Line Rd. Suite 23201
Littleton, Colorado 80129
bryon@repthebrand.com
7202780797

This release was published on openPR.