Students: Peterson K. Njamunge '14 | Shauna Godfrey '14

Kenya Reads is a literacy project that seeks to establish the first shared inter-school library in the remote Kiamaina slum of Kenya. This will improve the academic standards in the region and also enable deprived students to compete better nationally, opening them up to more educational opportunities such as high school scholarships. In Kenya, a single national examination score determines the pupils who get offered the limited secondary school places. The initiative will also be purging gaps between conflicting tribes by facilitating Pamoja reading sessions which will promote meaningful interactions between different ethnic groups.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2012

Students: Vasil Zlatev

The Football BarN—Plovdiv’s first sports bar—takes care not only of its customers, but also of the environment.

Students: Steve Bii

Fostering entrepreneurial ventures that cross ethnic boundaries through comprehensive conflict resolution.

Students: Nathaniel Gelb

Rockstarz Clinic aims to stimulate an interest in music among youth by holding dynamic summer camp workshops, performances, and lessons.

Students: Avery Waite | Lisha Gu | Yejin Lee

Students: Joseph Blasher

Building a self-sustaining outreach program through the Afro-Brazilian martial art form, Capoeira Angola.

Students: Hillary Neff '13 | Rachel Manning '14

The Lynch Community Garden project aims to empower a small coal-mining community that has little access to fresh produce. We will start a garden that will allow residents to work together to grow their own food and provide youth with an alternative activity to risky behaviors. After the initial setup in the summer of 2012, the garden will be maintained entirely by Lynch residents, as we believe they have the power to create positive change in their own community. We hope the garden will offer Lynch residents fresh, local produce and healthy outdoor activities for decades to come.

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Creativity Fun Recipient, 2012

Students: Thao Phan

Starting a non-profit agency in Quang Tri, Vietnam that will install infrastructure, make soap, teach students about hygiene, and network with other non-profit organizations in Vietnam and the United States.

Students: Grace Amber '13

In the future, I hope to open a center comprised of three sections: a thrift store, a seamstress shop, and a repurposed clothing boutique. These three sections will work symbiotically to create a store that provides clothing relevant for all demographics, instills environmental standards, and even offers low-income outreach services. It will be called Gracy’s Green Earth, a recycled name that initially represented a store my parents owned in the early 90’s. This summer, I will start researching this idea by creating and selling repurposed clothing and observing thrift and vintage shops.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2010

Students: Chris Mees

Students: Poy Winichakul

Helping Oberlin Maintain Equity, Inc. (HOME) is a local nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Oberlin residents access comprehensive foreclosure help resources.

Students: Alexander Boland

Entrepreneurship Scholars Project: Interactive Storytelling is a new technology that will allow video game players to participate as a character in a story in order to both experience and influence that story's outcome.

Students: Ryan Magiera '12

My idea is to launch a poetry publishing press where the poems and authors published are chosen by randomly selected readers. With the Creativity Fund, I will be traveling to New York and San Francisco to conduct research, visit publishing houses, meet alumni and people of interest, expand my network, and test my ideas through an online format in order to best prepare to launch my venture.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2011

Students: Lauren Manning '12

I will go to Denmark to research the world-renowned Danish music education system, then travel to Holland to visit the Musicians Without Borders headquarters and receive training in conducting workshops and using music as a means to heal the wounds of conflict.

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CIGSIE Recipient, 2011

Students: Michael Fry

One World, One Rope teaches jump rope to children in Tanzania and Kenya, using it as a means of fostering confidence, teamwork, and leadership, and providing an infrastructure in which participants can succeed, develop healthy lifestyles, take on leadership roles and strengthen social ties.

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Fellowship Recipient, 2009

Students: Alani Gaunt '10

Upon graduation from Oberlin College, I intend to establish myself as a self-employed, freelance makeup artist. I see makeup artistry as means of storytelling. All of our personalities, experiences, and emotions leave their mark on us, affecting the way we hold our faces and bodies, the way we style and present ourselves, the condition of our bodies, and the texture of our skin. Makeup is the art of creating and shaping these markers of identity through the painting and sculpting of the body.

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Creativity Fund, 2010

Students: Francesca Krihely

Entrepreneurship Scholars Project:   Queens Community Media Center promotes media literacy through the production of community journalism.

Students: Gregory Solow '10 | Christopher Plumb '10 | Eliot Lesar '10

The game industry is broken. Financial obligations to blockbuster games see large publishers discourage innovation and release endlessly similar products. Audiences not serviced by these products are ignored, passed over in the system's momentum. geakStudios addresses these problems by allowing the desires of the user, rather than the ego of the designer, to determine game creation.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2010

Students: Max Rivlin-Nadler

Queens Community Media Center promotes media literacy through the production of community journalism.

Students: Rachel Rothgery

The Niger Stove Project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the respiratory health of families by disseminating low-cost, fuel-efficient stoves through an alternative-income program benefiting disadvantaged women.

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Fellowship Recipient, 2010

Students: Kaitlyn Price '13 | Greg Schram '14 | Bridget van Breeman '12

“Record Wreckers” combines the gameplay of traditional tower defense games, one of the most popular game types on the mobile markets, with the ambience of the also very popular music game genre. The core mechanics of the game have been reimagined to focus on digital music layering, while still maintaining the concepts that make tower defense games popular in their own right. This game will be released for Android phones and iPhones. We will differentiate ourselves by creating a game that will combine two of the most popular genres of mobile games today (music and strategy) into a new, immersive experience for the average mobile gamer.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2011

Students: Alia Kate

Kantara Crafts is a fair trade business that partners with Moroccan artisan cooperatives to offer finely crafted, handwoven textiles from Morocco in a socially responsible, environmentally conscious fashion.

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Creativity Fund & Fellowship Recipient, 2008

Students: Ty Diringer '14

Since private sector startups provide a testing ground for the acquisition of meaningful entrepreneurial and life skills, I am interning at Picky Bars, a small start-up company in Eugene, Oregon. The company makes and sells gluten- and dairy-free snack bars. The internship is an ideal opportunity to learn about marketing a niche product within a year of its conception.  I have been tasked with improving the company’s marketing strategy and the website. My current goals are to cement the company’s personality, increase the number of hits the website receives, and heighten the name recognition of the company.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2011

Students: Danielle Koplinka-Loehr

Students: Emily Arons

Valley Community Kitchen aims to promote economic development in the Coal River Valley of southern West Virginia by supporting food entrepreneurship.

Students: Allison Swaim

Creating sustaining partnerships and launching a radio initiative.

Students: Garrett Openshaw

Students: Shuangshuan (Amy) Liang

Project High School is a youth league which provides high school students with a more colorful extracurricular life and works as a resource center to coach students on holding their own school events and programs.

Students: Jessica Saw '12

Numerous studies indicate that music helps minimize patient stress in hospitals.  Many hospitals have thus implemented programs that provide live performances to patients. Through this project, patients at Mercy Allen Hospital’s Skilled Nursing Center will be able to participate in such programs by requesting one-on-one performances by volunteer conservatory students. 

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CIGSIE Recipient, 2011

Students: Tim Ballard | Andrew Flachs

Students: Ted Rankin-Parker '08 | Joanthan Corey '08

WonderRoot is an Atlanta-based non-profit arts organization committed to uniting artists and community to inspire positive social change. We would like to present a series of workshops and concerts through WonderRoot' s Creativity for Kids program in which Wonder Root artists go to schools, partner with mentoring organizations, and partner with other community service organizations to teach art production methods. The workshops will be titled "Sound as Material" and will focus on concepts we have learned at Oberlin through studies in contemporary music, dance, sculpture, and experimental improvisation through these media.

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CIGSIE Recipient, 2009

Students: David Midler '09 | Noah Goldman '09

SpinItIn is a hip tennis company designed to serve street cred to the sport of tennis with unique apparel and tennis gear. Targeted at the growing tennis youth population Spinitin offers comfortable clothes and funky designs to the modern tennis player and tennis fan. The perception of tennis as a country club sport is rapidly changing and the Spinitin brand exemplifies the shift from a privileged sport to a hip fun culture. Bringing an urban feel to the style of the sport coincides with this evolution.

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Fellowship Recipient, 2009
Creativity Fund, 2009

Students: Sara Krugman | Gabriel Cohen | Jolie Signorile | Asa Ivry-Block

We are the Bread & Butter Collective-- a group of print makers dedicated to earning their daily bread while creating a space to enjoy life’s butter: community, progressive change, and creative process. We are a collectively owned and operated silkscreening studio in Long Island City, Queens.

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Fellowship Recipient, 2009

Students: Alexander Christie '09

The goal is to experience the inner workings of non-profit organization management and arts production and programming. I'm hoping to open a similar performance space in the future. The venue I am interested in creating would function as a performance space and also a larger organization that would support ventures including touring concert series, recording projects, and educational extensions.

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Internship Recipient, 2008

Students: George Saines | Nick Winter | Scott Erickson

Skritter is the answer to learning Chinese and Japanese vocab.

Students: Rafiq Bhatia '10

The New Music; New Audiences project is dedicated to developing a model for increasing access to jazz performances by simultaneously cultivating young audiences and ensembles.Working with presenters, schools, community organizations, and new media platforms, we will strive to create sustainable infrastructure in communities across America that reinvigorates enthusiasm for jazz among young people. By harnessing the available energy and capacity of emergent ensembles, we plan to provide the kind of spark that young audiences need to get interested in this music, as well as the connectivity necessary to sustain their interest over the long term.

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Creativity Fund, 2010
CIGSIE Grant Recipient, 2010

Students: Steuart Pincombe

Students: Michael Olson '12 | Theodore Anthony '12

We are in the process of laying the groundwork for a media production and marketing company. This company will specialize in video production and post-production, photography, image manipulation, web design, graphic design, consulting, marketing, branding and more. We are currently building the foundations for our company and legally formalizing our partnership so that we are in a position to pursue media production and marketing full-time following graduation. 

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2011

Students: Eliza Diop '14

The Enhancement Project is a budding organization aimed at issues around waste, waste removal and consumption in Senegal, West Africa. The Enhancement Project will work with the local community and with ecological organizations in Senegal to create a program and initiative around education on waste, and waste removal. The Enhancement Project hopes to install a new infrastructure around waste that will educate Senegalese people on the importance of watching one’s consumption, and also on the damaging effects of untreated waste. In all, The Enhancement Project hopes to create a new consciousness around the importance of waste management in Senegal.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2012

Students: David Bird '12 | Eugene Kim '12 | Christian Smith '12

ACADEMY is a contemporary and experimental music trio comprised of David Bird, Eugene Kim, and Christian Smith. Our 2012 Winter Term project will involve preparations for realizing July Mountain, composed by Michael Pisaro; as well as a five-day performance tour featuring works by Mark Poliks, Esaias Järnegard, and Pisaro.

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CIGSIE Recipient, 2011

Students: Jennifer Bower '12

This January, I will travel to San Francisco to practice Baroque Spanish organ music on historic reproductions of appropriate Spanish organs in preparation for a summer trip to Spain.  The organs are tuned in meantone and feature brilliant trumpet ranks, drums and even bird sounds.

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CIGSIE Recipient, 2011

Students: Vincent A. Alessi | Daniel Abramson

The primary goal of our project is to license the technology behind our innovative patent-pending histological device, which provides a mechanism for automating the process of mounting histological samples onto glass slides.

Students: Vince Alessi

The Oberlin Creativity and Leadership fund has supported me in the production-prototyping of an innovative histological device, and the consultant-aided design of electrical componentry associated with the continued development of my concept for a Networked Utility Dynamic Demand Energy Management system, aka, the NU-DDEMsys.

Students: Eliza Diop '14

I will be working with the Earth Rights Eco Village Institute, Senegal’s National Eco-Village Agency and Beyond Fair Trade to develop a trade model that empowers communities, expands existing trade networks and increases economic diversity and activity in eco-villages. We will ultimately be doing research to support a global Fair Trade initiative.

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Creativity Fund Recipient, 2011

Students: Gabriela Baker

A look at fog harvesting technology as a sustainable solution to water usage in the Bay Area.

Students: Amanda Medress

One recent grad empowers the next generation of environmental stewards, one storybook at a time.

Students: Sage Aronson '12 | Suman Giri '11 | David Ohana '12

The purpose of this trip will be to collect data on the social infrastructure of Phakumba and initiate communication with the villagers. This information, besides from being anthropologically novel, will be used to inform and refine our skeleton social development model with the long-term goal being self-sustainable public infrastructure. More specifically, we will be conducting informal recorded interviews in hopes of A) finding out how decisions are made at the individual, familial and public level B) prioritizing the village's need for public infrastructure (potable water filtration, medical clinic, school etc.).

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Internship Recipient, 2009
Creativity Fund Recipient, 2009