Volunteers Needed: You Can't Improve What You Don't Measure!

By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

How do you measure a great education? You tell us! In 2021, Mali Rising is overhauling our approach to measuring the quality of education in our remote, rural Mali schools. We are searching for 2 to 3 people with skills in education, monitoring, and evaluation to help us really understand how to change lives through education.

Advisors will engage with our board committee (Internal Affairs Committee) on this issue and devote 4 to 6 hours a month to research and discussion. We ask Advisors to commit to 10 months of engagement (March-December) if possible. In exchange, Advisors will get to know a wonderful group of volunteers, explore how education works in a different culture, and have access to special content from Mali and our schools.

Interested in learning more and perhaps getting involved? Contact Merritt.

We Need a Few Good (Great!) Communicators

By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

Work hand-in-hand with our board to make a difference — be a Mali Rising Advisor!

Are you a skilled communicator? Maybe you have a background in advertising, or marketing, or public relations? Or maybe you’re an expert in recruiting volunteers and keeping them happy? Or you’ve got mean skills in setting up web-based outreach campaigns using social media, websites, and other online tools? If so, boy do we want to know you better!

Mali Rising has a small staff so volunteers are truly core to all of our work. Without volunteers, we would not be able to build schools, help teachers change lives inside those schools, or send kids off to higher education with scholarships.

Some of our most dedicated volunteers are our board members, but our board needs help! We are looking for two to three Mali Rising Advisors to help our board tackle our 2021 communication goals, without the Advisors having to sign on for the full workload of board service (although Advisors may decide they want to consider board service later!)

These Advisors will work with our External Affairs Committee board members to tackle our 2021 priorities. These include:

• Dramatically expanding our Volunteer Project to engage more volunteers in ways that will inspire them but also provide real help for our schools from afar.

• Helping to design and launch a new Adopt-A-School campaign that will raise much-needed funds for each participating school while allowing supporters to connect with the work and the students.

• A review of our branding and communications style, with a goal of creating an updated style guide and exciting, updated look.

In addition, staff will be working on overhauling our annual gala (which may stay virtual) and expanding our electronic community of friends and supporters.

If you think you have skills that could help us with any of these goals, we’d love to get to know you! Advisors will be asked to participate in bi-monthly zoom calls with the committee, as well as spend several hours each month working in support of a project or projects. In total, we expect Advisors will spend 4 to 8 hours a month volunteering. All work can be done virtually, so you can be based anywhere in the U.S. Interested in learning more? Contact us!

We Were Overwhelmed With Great Youth Ambassador Applications!

By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

Okay, this isn’t the most substantive blog post ever…but I had to share my excitement. Last week was the deadline for 20/21 Youth Ambassador Project participants and we had SUCH an amazing batch of applicants.

In fact, our applicants were so outstanding we could not bring ourselves to limit the group to just ten Ambassadors. Katie Murphy, Mali Rising board member and Youth Ambassador liaison, and I just could not say no to many of the great kids who applied. As a result, the 20/21 Ambassador class will be nearly double the normal size!

Stay tuned to hear more about the new Ambassadors in the coming week. And we predict you will be hearing A LOT about their great projects all school year long! So exciting.