Global Youth Fund was founded in 2005 by Charles Tsai and Amy Eldon, two journalists behind the documentary series, PBS GlobalTribe.

Their profiles of global changemakers inspired them to create new bridges between ordinary citizens working for change. Thus, the Global Youth Fund was born.

Charles first met Amy when he produced a CNN documentary on Amy's brother, Dan Eldon - an artist and photojournalist.

Staff

Charles Tsai
Founder & Executive Director, Global Youth Fund

Stephanie Klaus
Program Director

Arash Rahmanian
Strategic Development, Universities

Board of Directors

Amy Eldon
Founder, One Global Tribe

Salimah Ebrahim
Chairwoman & Founding Member, Spirit Bear Youth Coalition

Lara Honrado (Chairperson)
Founder, Kina Social Ventures

Simon Jackson
Founder, Spirit Bear Youth Coalition

Marlene Travis
Director & Treasurer, Global Youth Fund

Charles Tsai
Founder & Executive Director, Global Youth Fund

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. ~ Woodrow Wilson

A journalist and television producer, Charles Tsai produced GlobalTribe, a PBS series that profiles social entrepreneurs and explores global issues through adventure travel. Prior to producing GlobalTribe, Charles worked as reporter and producer for CNN, specializing in long form features for the network's educational program, CNN Newsroom.

Charles is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and University of California at Berkeley, where he studied Rhetoric and English Literature.

He has facilitated dialogues and debates for radio and various events, and has created & moderated several online communities.

Charles spent his childhood in Taiwan, Thailand, Malawi and the United States before moving to Vancouver, Canada, where he now lives.

Arash Rahmanian
Student, University of British Columbia

Arash is a outspoken and avid supporter of education in his local community and abroad. He is a co-founding member of his local library’s Friends of the North Vancouver City Library. His interests in his local library led to the start of many projects for young adults.

His passions for the struggle with poverty and lack of healthcare in developing countries made him become a leader of his school’s Roots and Shoots Club’s Humanitarian Division where he co-led and organized events and fundraisers for the aid of struggling children and parents in the developing world.

He is delighted and honoured to be a part of Global Youth Fund's Founding Committee.

Amy Eldon
Founder, One Global Tribe

Amy Eldon is host and associate-producer of  "Dying to tell the Story," the two-hour Emmy-nominated film that received both Director's Guild of America and Independent Spirit nominations, and was selected as the "best documentary on television" by the National Headliners Association.

Amy co-produced and co-hosted "Global Trek: In Search of New Lebanon," a half-hour travel program for CNN International, and co-produced "Soldiers of Peace: A Children's Crusade."  Most recently Amy hosted and co-produced the PBS series GlobalTribe, a show looking at people who are finding solutions to the challenges they face in their communities.

Amy is the co-author of three books, "Soul Catcher: A Journal to Help you Become Who you Really Are," "Angel Catcher: A Journal of Loss and Remembrance" and "Love Catcher: A Journal to Invite more Love into your Life," and is the author of "Angel Catcher for Kids", published in September 2002, by Chronicle Books.

Salimah Ebrahim
Chairwoman & Founding Member, Spirit Bear Youth Coalition

Born in Nairobi and raised in Vancouver, Salimah is a journalist and young global humanitarian who has spent the past decade working for the protection of Canada’s white Spirit Bear and its remarkable habitat in the Great Bear Rainforest.

She knew from an early age that she wanted to promote environmental sustainability and created Kids for Saving Earth Club at the tender age of 11. A chance meeting with Simon Jackson (see below) a few years later inspired Salimah to catch the ‘spirit of the bear’ and over a first meal of burgers and chocolate cake, the pair established the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition – what has today become the largest youth-led environmental organization in the world. Salimah, Simon and the Youth Coalition have enjoyed the support and mentorship from many high profile figures – ranging from Dr. Jane Goodall to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Backstreet Boys.

As Co-Executive Producer for the groundbreaking The Spirit Bear – the first major Hollywood animated movie with a mission to protect its namesake - Salimah is dedicated to a new approach to environmentalism where global social and economic bottom lines finally allow for the establishment of a new paradigm of social entrepreneurship – one that constructively engages young people and adults alike in tackling global issues

Salimah is also a highly accomplished journalist, having traveled the world to cover some of the most engaging and important stories of her generation: global youth movements, Middle Eastern politics, international G8 & G20 summitry in Italy, Canada and France, and most recently the war in Iraq.

Lara Honrado
Founder, Kina Social Ventures

Activism is my rent for living on this planet.

~ Alice Walker

Lara Honrado is the co-founder of Kina Social Ventures, a registered Canadian charity that supports women’s literacy, girls’ education and mountain porter communities in rural Nepal.

She began her career in public relations as media director for the first global Microcredit Summit in Washington, DC. Since then, she has worked as a communications strategist in the corporate sector and for a leading international activist media foundation. She has served on the boards of two leading AIDS organizations: Pediatric AIDS/HIV Care in the U.S. and Positive Women's Network in Canada.

Currently, Lara runs mango, a multicultural communications and social marketing firm based in Vancouver, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

Simon Jackson
Founder, Spirit Bear Youth Coalition

At the age of 13, Simon heard about North America’s rarest endangered bear – the white Kermode or spirit bear – and knew he had to help.

He founded the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition with the hope of creating a new type of environmental advocacy group. Its message resonated with young and old - from students in Morocco to Prince William - all around the world, and led to a successful letter writing campaign that brought the issue to international prominence.

In 2001, Simon, 18, and the Youth Coalition helped create an historic land-use agreement with logging companies, First Nations, all levels of government, and environmental groups to create a framework for sustainability – economically, socially, and environmentally – on the BC coast. The agreement helped protect half and defer development in the other half of the spirit bear’s last intact habitat. It was the largest land protection measure in the history of North America.

Today, Simon and the Youth Coalition are still working to help the Kitasoo First Nation and the BC government protect the remaining unprotected half of the spirit bear’s last intact ecosystem.

In order to help facilitate this challenge, Simon is producing The Spirit Bear – the first major Hollywood animated movie made for the specific purpose of saving its namesake. When the full-length CGI movie is released in the spring of 2008, a portion of every ticket sold will go toward helping save the spirit bear.

Simon remains the full-time volunteer Executive Director of the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition which is backed by, among others, Dr. Jane Goodall, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., J.K. Rowling, Nickelback, and Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys. It is the largest youth-led environmental organization in the world with a network of more than 6 million in every province in Canada and 64 countries worldwide.

  
Marlene Travis
Director & Treasurer, Global Youth Fund

Born and raised in Alberta, Canada, Marlene is an entrepreneur both socially and in business. Friends call her "Janie Appleseed" after Johnny Appleseed who spread apple seeds to grow apples across America. Likewise Marlene starts new ventures for positive social change and growth.

Beginning in the 1960s, Marlene has created many organizations & programs to serve women, children and young men about to be conscripted for war. They all speak to what she sees as her life's work: to foster education and activism that promote and enhance peace through more equitable sharing of the power and the wealth of the earth.

Among organizations she has founded or co-founded: The Rochester, Minnesota Peace Center; Chapters of the National Organization for Women in Marshfield, Wisconcin and Brainerd Minnesota; The Mid-Minnesota Womens' Center; The Crow Wing County Sexual Assault Task Force & hot line; Crow Wing County Task Force to Eliminate Sexism in Education; Crow Wing County Task Force for Women & Children in Violent homes which resulted in the founding of a shelter for women and a resource center for children from violent homes.

In the 1970s she helped to change laws to give young girls equality in education and served on the Emma Willard Task Force providing workshops on Human Rights for teachers throughout Minnesota. President Jimmy Carter appointed Marlene as a coordinator for the statewide Minnesota Women's meeting in 1976. Meanwhile, Marlene co-founded several businesses making breakthroughs in the use of computer based healthcare informatic products used throughout the world.

As President of the Travis-McIlroy Foundation Marlene and her husband, Dr. Gary McIlroy are very proud to have provided seed money to Global Tribe, the predecessor of the Global Youth Fund.