About
OpensourceCharity (osCharity) is a project that is devoted to educating and empowering Non-Profit organizations, NGO’s, Third Sector professionals, Social Entrepreneurs and Do-gooders to understand and embrace the humanity behind the social web in order to connect with impassioned supporters across the world and instigate tribe-powered social justice. In addition to our blog, we produce courses and webinars. We offer 1 on 1 video sessions with AJ a few times a year. If you would like AJ to speak at your next event or conference, this page will be helpful.
The Open Source Charity Team
Melissa
Director of Education & Events
With a background in education and an advanced degree emphasizing curriculum design, Melissa takes the lead developing our webinars. Melissa serves as the Editor of this Blog.
AJ
Chief Trainer
AJ is a blogger, vlogger and international speaker who has helped many charities and third sector organizations understand and embrace the humanity behind social media. He coined the term “opensourceCharity” in 2008.
Jerome
Community Manager
Jerome is our osCharity Community Manager. He spends most of his time passing along useful links and engaging with our members and charities from all over the world on our twitter account.
A Brief History of our Name
In mid 2008, the founding members of the LaC project, a small creative agency in New York City, met Emmanuel Jal, an ex Sudanese War Child and one of the “Lost Boys”. Emmanuel was on an inspirational quest to build a school in his hometown of Leer, Sudan where he had been rescued by British Aid worker, Emma McCune, so many years back. For almost a year, Emmanuel attempted to raise funding to begin building the school with no success. In November 2008, Emmanuel, AJ and Melissa met for the first time and magic was in the air.
In the lobby of a small hotel in New York, they sketched the name “Emma Academy Project” on a napkin, and the rest is history. The LaC project devoted 25% of all company resources and time to the Emma Academy Project for 9 months. With no operating budget or dedicated staff, they were able to raise over $100, 000 to begin construction on the school. By simply connecting with others impassioned by Emmanuel’s story, and engaging them on the basis of their creativity as opposed to their pocketbooks, they built a vibrant international community exclusively utilizing social media.
Once the project was completed, it was obvious what had occurred was indeed something special….it was opensourceCharity, a vibrant network of thousands of impassioned people located all across the globe collaborating with the vision of social change in Sudan.