Our Crowdfunding Groups
Global Development Lab at UCLA is an undergraduate student-led organization that strives to create a community for students to research, incubate, and implement innovative ideas critical to the alleviation of poverty at home and abroad. GDL equips students with the tangible skills and connections to pursue their own capstone development initiatives that are ethical and sustainable. The lab was founded in 2015 and this past year, we had the opportunity to fund our first capstone project! As the lab enters its fourth year, we want to provide more students with the chance to compete for funding and implement the projects they work on throughout the year, as our organization relies completely on grants and outside funding. Through your support, we can award the projects that our judges determine to be the most unique, thorough, and ethical with grants to implement and travel at our presentation event in the Spring.
The lab creates a community of like-minded undergraduate students who are interested in global development, social impact, and philanthropic fields. This community allows students to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to learn real life applications through the creation of a development project. GDL’s development projects are created for communities and issues at home and abroad, representing the UCLA commitment to social justice and working towards equality. With this funding, more projects will have the ability to be implemented and will allow our students to gain knowledge outside of UCLA that can then be shared in classrooms and with professors and fellow students.
Project budgets are individual to each student or group project, as the costs will vary depending on the scale of the project and travel expenses. We expect to have 5 student-led projects this year. We would like to offer grants ranging from $2,000-3,000 at our end of the year event to the winning projects. If our goal is met, we would be able to provide funding for 3 of the projects.
Donations are tax-deductible and we will create a quarterly newsletter to update donors on the progress of each of the projects. Donors will be able to see the impact of their donation through the students’ implementation of development initiatives at home and abroad that truly make a difference on communities around the world.
Fund students’ research towards their development project to widen the scope of resources students have access to. By providing access to resources, these students will better evaluate their chosen development issue.
To ensure an ethical, sustainable, and necessary project, each student will conduct a Needs Assessment on the community where their initiative takes place. Your generous gift will provide resources to allow this to happen.
In his project last year, Govind used each $100 to provide 2 full STI screening packages to homeless clients at a Halfway House in Cape Town, South Africa. This package included a screening for 3 STI's, a pap smear and initial treatment.
A large aspect of implementing a project includes the costs of traveling to the community. Your support will allow our student researchers to afford the travel costs surrounding a students' development initiative.
Your generous gift will be given to the winning project at the end of the year so they can implement their ethical and sustainable project. You will be able to see their project presented at our End of the Year Event.