Sprout E-course Alumnus Story: Adele Joy Advento

Adele Joy Advento is from Manila, Philippines and attended the Asia Pacific Microsoft YouthSpark event through the msn.com wildcard competition. Her team’s pitch for an online recycling initiative (“eBay for recycling”) is no longer in development, but she has become connected to several other social innovations and remains active online with people from the event.

“Before [the event], I had very little exposure to helping people with social enterprises, so I am very thankful [this program] brought back my passion towards helping.”

The event also lead her to enroll in TakingITGlobal’s Sprout e-course, where she learned a host of concrete skills related to project development and marketing, as well as the necessity of making connections. “I learned through the Sprout e-course that when you have your idea, it’s just an idea but when you tell other people about it, it becomes a real project... it allows other people to give you feedback and the opportunity to pool your resources and spread awareness.”

Currently, Adele is building a team to develop a project that leverages social media to provide free online education for underserved youth and adults. In the Philippines, low income and Indigenous groups often have limited access to formal education. However, they are often aware of and use social media.

Her team aims to use social media platforms to connect with underserved youth and teach English, Math and other skills.

In building the project, Adele has been deeply engaged online with participants in YouthSpark and TakingITGlobal programs like Sprout. She finds that people respond quickly, and are ready to share information as well as “tech savvy”. The platform’s free flow of ideas also provides her with inspiration to keep going, as she tracks other projects worldwide that are navigating difficult circumstances and yet managing to reach the launch stage.

Adele can connect throughout the region and globally with like-minded social entrepreneurs using TakingItGlobal online. Because she works full time and has other projects as well, she finds the online community is especially helpful because it is so flexible. Providing feedback on others’ projects strengthens her own work as well.

“In the Philippines we formed an [online] group. There is also one for the Asia Pacific attendees of [YouthSpark]. We constantly contact each other if there are events so that we can encourage [this] to spread. If there is a project happening in Thailand or Cambodia, they will let us know through [YouthSparkcommunities] and that way we can share the news with other people as well.”