Oliveseed Foundation

We unlock a passion for creating sustainable prosperity among people who are eager to join the wider human family facing a century of rising need and diminishing resources. We seek out communities where the desire to engage with the wider world is great. We have had success in rural areas of Morocco and Kenya and scale our model carefully.

The core of our work is developing high-quality, engaging, and locally relevant literacy programs with an emphasis on spreading education, culture of learning, creative expression, and environmental leadership. Our aim is to mobilize the energy and intelligence of young people with an emphasis toward enriching their own communities rather than leaving for some imagined urban utopia far away. Our model of library-centered literacy and sustainable tech to support it is bolstered with increasingly available communications technology that allows young people to engage with the outside world without leaving their homes. Young people we work have become entrepreneurs in the local sustainable enterprises we establish in Kenya and hundreds of young people in Morocco have become storytellers and authors reaching out to the world with knowledge, skills, resources, connections, and confidence to help build a better, more sustainable world. Our initiatives have had ripple effects far beyond individual students and, we believe, impact for generations to come. It is truly about planting and nurturing fertile seeds.

It is also our expectation that the Oliveseed model of hyper-local needs assessment and literacy-centered education and environmental stewardship will become a useful model for reaching remote communities with an indigenous cultural heritage important to preserve. We have already begun indigenous story projects with students taking the lead in preserving this knowledge.

Our experience in California, Morocco, and Kenya has demonstrated a proof of concept as well as served thousands of young people and their families, and has created an enthusiastic core of eager participant-donors. By developing skills and knowledge that will allow marginalized and remote communities to collaborate with counterparts abroad, and to use their voice for positive change, we can add a powerful new force to an already urgent global effort to give humanity the tools to survive rapid changes coming in climate and the natural world.

Our strategies are to find traditional communities with untapped potential and by targeting literacy education to young people and by providing revenue producing enterprises for young women and mothers we build an infrastructure for prosperity that breaks cycles of poverty and isolation. The emerging voices we reach have a passion to connect with people locally and globally. It is this model of literacy to prosperity to participation that unlocks the potential of people who have been yearning for a chance to join the global mission to create positive change.

Relying on grassroots expertise and locally expressed needs we seek to boost young people onto leadership tracks to have a significant impact for generations. We build strong local relationships and connect people with our passionate donors and local development staff. Gradually places with the greatest potential are revealed and here we gear up rapidly and leave a positive footprint responding directly to strong local needs and desires. As a small organization, we rely on the efficiency of local infrastructure to support our mission to upgrade education, enterprise and community solidarity. Active teachers and local grassroots organizations are both our allies and the objects of our financial resources. The communities we work with are often indigenous and marginalized, and a key component of our success is empowering them to have the confidence to reach out and share their traditions and knowledge broadly to enrich the global conversation about sustainability.

In Morocco, we built a national writing competition across the network of libraries, to elevate the voices of the most motivated young people and expand their connections, locally, nationally and globally. In Kenya, our literacy platforms have energized local groups to design sustainable enterprises that generate prosperity and become pilot projects and demonstrate hyper-efficient models of local development. In Kenya our efforts were significant in upgrading and growing the Mara Discovery Community Empowerment Centre.

In early 2021, we launched a program supporting youth environmental leaders, with their teachers and community leaders as an extension of their literacy programs. Once we have established effective and collaborative programs, we amplify their impact by forming connections throughout our Oliveseed Network to catalyze cross-cultural co-learning on a transnational scale. We have connected high school classes in California with classes in Africa, and we have brought conservation and literacy partners from Africa to California for network building and to engage the public in California.

We have a network of team members and partners who are part of the communities where we work.

In Morocco, we have a management team of experienced Moroccan English high school teachers who work in rural regions and help us with planning and logistics. These were all teachers who collaborated with us on earlier library projects and are now part of the team, making sure that we are supporting English clubs with in relevant, impactful ways. The teacher Ali Amhal is on the OliveSeed board. Another teacher, Larbi Arbaoui, runs our writing competitions on the ground in Morocco.

In Kenya, we are registered as the nonprofit Oliveseed Kenya Trust. This is directed locally by Amos Kipeen, a Maasai community leader who is on the Oliveseed board. We also have a formal partnership with the Mara Girls Leadership School and with the veteran on-the-ground nonprofit Basecamp Foundation Kenya.

On the US side, we have a team with a diversity of professional and cultural backgrounds, with experience in related fields including tech, conservation, education, field research, and the geographic areas we focus on. We also have a network of volunteers and donors in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SO FAR ...
Morocco:
- Developed English school libraries at over 50 locations in collaboration with teachers. Some are large, for the school; others are smaller, tailored to an after-school English club for very motivated students. Mostly in rural areas with majority Amazigh population. Female students are over 60% of the population of the clubs with libraries
- Developed libraries at community youth centers in 2 villages in collaboration with Peace Corps
- Ran two nationwide short story competitions for high school students
- Launched environmental pilot learning project at 3 locations on climate change and plastics pollution. Students planted trees and educated others at their school

Kenya:
- Developed libraries and learning centers for Talek Primary School, Aitong Primary, and Maasai Mara High School, all under-resourced rural public schools in the Maasai Mara
- Developed a library for Mara Girls Leadership School in the Mara
- Ran a writing competition for young people in the Mara to write about life during covid; published the stories in a printed and ebook anthology
- Built the first library /study center inside a Maasai manyatta (solar powered)
- In 2020, provided solar lights and home library to 48 Maasai homes without power
- Partnered with Wildlife Clubs of Kenya on a Conservation Club for Mara Girls. The library also contains all the nature books recommended by the Kenya Wildlife Service as a base for activities
- Renovated the Mara Discovery Community Empowerment Centre, and added a tree nursery and wildlife library
- Pivoted to focus on COVID during the pandemic in 2020. Raised funds and with teams on the ground delivered food and health supplies to 400 families over 4 months

Cross-cultural network building:
- A young member of our team in Morocco interviewed a conservationist in Kenya, which we published
- We have brought activists from Africa to California to engage Californians in multiple public events

NEXT (2022-23) ...
Kenya:
- Build a Women's Work Center in the Mara, providing income-activities in sewing, beading, and milk delivery by solar-charged ebikes. Provide business skills training for Maasai women
- Begin development of a comprehensive community center in Mara North, expanding on the model of Mara Discovery Centre. First projects are a clean water facility and the first Public Library in the region
- Develop a library and learning center at Sekenani Girls' High School

Morocco:
- 3rd nationwide short story competition, and publish the anthology in print and ebook
- Initiative with students collecting and translating traditional Amazigh oral stories, and publish the stories