When you visit Project Isuga’s home page, you are greeted with the photo of the cutest little boy sporting a Spiderman lunchbox, all dressed in his school uniform with a beaming smile. Next to this photo is the project’s mission: “For every scarf purchased, Project Isuga feeds one school child for one day in Africa.” Former JMU Duke, Gaby Zamora, is currently working with the organization as a social media intern (totally embodying our school’s motto, “Be the change”) and told me some more about the awesome work they are doing.
Project Isuga was founded in September 2010 by a generous native of South Africa, Sean Coetzee. He started the project simply with the hope of being able to help those in need in his home country. As a close friend of Robert Graham, the Executive Director of South African Children’s Resiliency Project (SACRP), Coetzee was able to identify a clear mission for his organization—helping to educate and feed children in South Africa who have lost their parents to AIDS. AIDS is a very real disease and has become an epidemic in many African nations, orphaning a child every 14 seconds in South Africa.
Both organizations work to educate, house, support, and feed these young children who so desperately need help. The SACRP reported that among all the work they do to provide for the children, lunches were a huge cost for them and so stepped in Project Isuga. Just providing a meal for these children is huge and promotes better learning ability and happiness.
With better performances in school, the hope is that these children will gain the skills necessary to succeed in life when they may not have otherwise. Since the organization’s beginning, more than 2,000 school lunches have been donated to the SARCP in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. In addition to providing lunches, the organization also makes several trips a year to South Africa from their home-base in Arlington, VA to help with schooling, donations, and mentoring.
Project Isuga’s ability to donate these wonderful lunches comes from the sales of beautiful handmade scarves through their website and retailers in various locations across the U.S. Each scarfis $45, a small price to pay for helping to bring about change in Africa, specifically in the lives of the children in need. They come in all different colors and are made from organic cotton—each is one of a kind! Gaby told me that Sean chose scarves because they are an emotive product that transcends age, ethnicity, and geography. Not only that, but scarves can be worn in many different ways to express oneself individually.
When asked why she got involved with the organization, Gaby told me, “I was immediately interested in Project Isuga’s social media internship because of their amazing mission to give back to these orphaned children in South Africa. It has been a great experience for me so far because I have had the opportunity to explore the business side of social media and it has opened my eyes to so many different things. I love that I get to apply my public relations skills while working with such an amazing company.”
Gaby is a great example of someone who has coupled her interests and knowledge with passion. If you think you might want to take a path similar to Gaby’s, try searching around the internet for different organizations that have the same core values and passions that you do—they may have internships or other volunteer opportunities for you to take advantage of and you can help make a difference!
Check Project Isuga out on Facebook and follow them on Twitter for updates on the amazing work they are doing!