World Connect
Co-Investing to Advance Community Development
Fast Facts
42 countries, with hubs in Malawi, Rwanda, Guatemala, Nigeria, Ecuador, NYC
Ellen Goldberg and JJ Ramberg
2021, 2022-2023, 2024, 2025
Economic Development, Education, Health Services and Agriculture
How World Connect Is Making a Difference
World Connect trusts that local leaders around the world understand their community needs and opportunities best — and when they design and lead development, it achieves the most enduring impact. World Connect co-invests with communities to launch locally-generated projects in high-poverty geographies that deliver improvements in education, health services, agriculture, and economic opportunity.
World Connect has issued $9M in direct grants to 2,136 community-led projects that have sustainably impacted 4M+ people. The high project success rate (80% at four years from funding) demonstrates the power of communities to lead development on their own terms.
What World Connect Does
- Co-invests with communities to implement projects that are determined, designed, and implemented by local leaders, supporting a virtuous cycle of development from within.
- Supports local leaders to project success with training and guidance in project design and management.
- Helps communities leverage additional funding opportunities by being an early investor in projects and organizations.
- Promotes local ownership of development by moving grant-making through locally-led development hubs, staffed with regional experts, in Malawi, Rwanda, New York City, and Guatemala, with emerging hubs in Ecuador and Nigeria.
Initiatives Supported by Project Redwood
2021: $30,000 to support four projects for women in Malawi by funding machinery, transportation, job training, sustainable-agriculture instruction, and role modeling to support business growth in poultry and maize farming and in herbal products milling.
2022-23: $30,000 to construct a primary school and library in Malawi to improve student attendance, enhance teaching, lead to increased government funding, and improve education quality.
2024: $40,000 to fund equipment and materials in Malawi to conduct training in welding, fabrication, tailoring and design, information technology (IT), and briquette production; and to fund a facility and equipment for cooking-oil production and marketing for a local farming cooperative.
2025: $30,000 to support the development of a girls’ hostel in Malawi to increase the number of students in vocational training; expand the scope of vocational training programs to include tailoring, plumbing, welding, carpentry, bricklaying, and food production; and help fund the construction of a warehouse for the storage of supplies and the provision of classroom space for training farmers in seed multiplication and agribusiness.