UC Irvine Challenge for Charity Organizations

 The mission of Special Olympics Southern California is to provide sports training and competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for Southern California children and adults with intellectual disabilities, providing them with opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and share their gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community. Special Olympics events typically happen on weekends. Let me win – But if I cannot win – Let me be brave in the attempt.

 

Junior Achievement (JA) Worldwide is the world’s largest organization dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs. Junior Achievement programs help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace. Students put these lessons into action and learn the value of contributing to their communities. JA’s unique approach allows volunteers from the community to deliver our curriculum while sharing their experiences with students. Embodying the heart of JA, our 287,000 classroom volunteers transform the key concepts of our lessons into a message that inspires and empowers students to believe in themselves, showing them they can make a difference in the world.

Project ECHO was founded in 1996 by Chip and Vicky Goodman with the vision of providing additional career pathways for high school students in New York City. In 1997, Project ECHO relocated to Santa Monica, CA and began working with high schools in Compton, Santa Monica and Los Angeles providing the business plan curriculum and on-campus business support. In the 2004-05 school year, Project ECHO launched an Annual Business Plan Competition which has proven to be successful in engaging students in entrepreneurship. The goal of Project ECHO is to create additional career choices for every high school student.  The organization does so by providing (1) interdisciplinary project based learning to develop entrepreneurial business and life skills, (2) a competitive edge for college entrance and career development, (3) positive role models to the students through graduate level mentors, (4) an increased awareness of entrepreneurial opportunities, and (5) networks/alliances between our students and their communities.