Africa Unite - how one student is changing the world

Changing the world and breaking the mold were two things I was encouraged to do at an early age. My friends and I would sit around on Sunday afternoons watching football and kicking around the ways we would "change the world." We would go on for hours addressing issues from water filtration systems in Kenya to budget inefficiencies in our school district, offering our own solutions to decade-old issues.

My first dive into social business was in 2008 in founding Canes for Kenya, an organization whose mission was to raise money to donate canes, develop a tutorial video and voice-record a curriculum for the Thika School for the Blind in Kenya. As I was in the process of acclimating to the Georgetown University campus last fall, I was driven to integrate my passion for African development with my college experience. Six months later, Africa Unite was born.

Africa Unite is an organization that seeks to modernize domestic trade for rural Ethiopian villagers that are not able to employ technology to trade with other villages. Our organization targets the bottom of the pyramid and small landholdings that lack the ability to access the free market and traditional outlets of distribution. Africa Unite envisions an Ethiopia in which local farmers are empowered not only in accessing the marketplace, but achieve a higher standard of living for themselves and their families. Africa Unite consists of three business segments:

• A commodity exchange for trading purposes
• Transportation services
• Banking services and payment methods

These three components work in tandem to create an all-encompassing, self-sustaining trade facilitator for farmers in rural Ethiopian villages.

This project has taken on a life of its own and led to experiences that I would have never otherwise considered or enjoyed. The Africa Unite team spent the month of June in Addis Ababa and Dima, Ethiopia, launching the project and engaging in a fact-finding mission for prospective member villages. The experience, people and culture were unforgettable. No matter the fate of Africa Unite, the time spent there will resonate in my memory forever. Africa Unite has the potential to revolutionize trade and the standard of living in Ethiopia -- as the mantra suggests, "one country, one people, one vision." Learn more about Africa Unite at http://africaunite.wordpress.com/.

- Nick Maida, Georgetown 2013, Compass Fellow

Compass Partners offers a dynamic two-year program called the Compass Fellowship, which enables 15 college freshmen at each university to become social entrepreneurs. Through a unique personal development and social business training program, Fellows interact with CEOs, bestselling authors and start-up innovators, they receive mentorship and guidance from upperclassmen students and entrepreneurs from the community, they are connected to internship opportunities in areas of passion, and they receive access to funding so they each can launch their own social business ventures. Fellows engage in weekly modules, team-building retreats, workshops and social business simulations, all of which challenge them to think creatively and develop innovative solutions to help change the world. There are 90 Compass Fellows across the nation, and you can find the Compass Fellowship at American, Georgetown, George Washington, Indiana and Tufts Universities.