Open Source Ecology Forums

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Thuy Phung wrote:

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Dear the Open Source Ecology network,

My name is Thuy Phung and I am a Sustainability Intern with Challenge Your World (CYW).

At CYW (www.challengeyourworld.com) we are building a global collaboration platform/ social network that connects the academic with professional worlds to work on sustainability issues. Our model is that Project Organizers, such as NGOs, corporations or governments, will create projects on the CYW platform, where they can lay out an overview of the problems they want to address. Interested academic contributors, such as professors, researchers, or students, would then do research on these projects and help formulate solutions. In the beginning we are focusing on college students: Professors can include these projects as case studies required in their classes, or students can choose to do research on their own.

Our website is still in development and over the next few months it will improve significantly and provide better resources and tools to facilitate collaboration between project organizers and university professors, students, and staff. Our directors are on an Asia tour right now to establish partnership with universities over there, we're also actively developing the university network in North America and Europe, and will visit other regions soon.

Currently we are inviting organizations to present their projects, referred to as "Sustainability Improvement Opportunities", on the platform and place questions that will serve as research topics for students. For example, if you go to one opportunity and click on the Dialogues section you will see the questions:
http://www.challengeyourworld.com/opportunity/utilizing-power-community-build-solar-energy-projects

I wonder if the OSE is interested in participating in our platform. From your website and forum I see that you are encouraging collaboration with universities. Students of engineering, agriculture, and development studies, as well as of finance, marketing, and business.. can work on OSE problems as part of their studies or independently. I see a student is doing a documentary film for OSE as part of his studies, and a McGill University student is hoping to start a club, and I hope that collaboration with Challenge Your World will spark more of these sorts of projects (McGill University is actually one of our pioneer partners as CYW originates from Canada).

The discussions can be on OSE forum or CYW platform. We hope you will find the network of universities, student groups, youth organizations, social entrepreneurs, NGOs.. that we are building beneficial. In addition, we would also want to act as a facilitator to match your project needs with professionals or with students who are looking for jobs, volunteer, or internship opportunities.

Please visit our website and contact our team members for more information. We welcome all suggestions on how to improve our CYW platform and how CYW and OSE can collaborate. Many thanks and best regards!

Thuy Phung

Howdy, Stranger!

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