Families Without Borders

Terri Khonsari, the Founder and Executive Director of Families Without Borders, was born and raised in Iran and lived in Germany for ten years where she earned her Master’s Degree in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Hannover. 

Terri is also a graduate of the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders at Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Terri possesses broad corporate management, consulting and coaching experience with extensive expertise in business management in the medical industry, which she gained prior to founding of Families Without Borders in 2011. 

Concurrent with her leadership of Families Without Borders, Terri supports the TechWomen program since its expansion to Sub-Saharan Africa in 2013. Terri is a recipient of the Global Citizen Award from the United Nations Association in recognition for her initiative, innovation and the impact of Families Without Borders on global development. 

The world’s poorest communities suffer from significant under-investment in human capital, which compels them to remain underdeveloped and under-empowered, despite their intrinsic potential. 

Families Without Borders identifies and nurtures future leaders committed to improving the lives of those in need in rural West Africa’s poorest communities, reducing poverty and developing both community and capacity. 

We work with high-achieving high school graduates from impoverished areas who could not otherwise afford to continue their education. After completing a foundational year focused on community-building and project management, participants receive a scholarship to one of their country’s top universities, including room, board and healthcare expenses. 

Participants continue to give back and build leadership skills through community-service projects, internships and workshops during their college experience. The program’s focus on integrity and service culminates in graduating students “paying it forward” by contributing to another incoming student’s tuition over four years.

According to the United Nations, Sierra Leone ranks among the ten poorest countries in the world. Sierra Leone has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world; nearly 57% of the population cannot read or write. Often, families cannot afford to send their children to school with access to education especially limited in most rural areas of the country. 

While the Sierra Leonean government is making moves to eliminate fees and make primary and secondary school education free, subsidies for universities are being reduced, a mere 7% of university-aged students access college education. 

Families Without Borders selects top-performing high school graduates from different tribes and religions from financially disadvantaged backgrounds with an emphasis on female and rural students and provides them access to otherwise inaccessible college educational opportunities. 

To further develop our Emerging Leaders’ capabilities, our students identify service projects and actively participate in their implementation in many rural communities based on the needs of each community across Sierra Leone. Current projects include installing solar systems to address the lack of electricity; constructing simple water wells for access to clean water; training girls to make reusable sanitary pads; and teaching adult literacy and numeracy to rural populations. 

Families Without Borders selects top-performing Sierra Leonean high school graduates from different tribes and religions from financially disadvantaged backgrounds with an emphasis on female and rural students and provides them access to otherwise inaccessible college educational opportunities. 

Families Without Borders takes a holistic approach, providing these future leaders with a full college scholarship, including tuition, housing, food and health care, while encouraging them to lead in their communities by taking ownership of challenges and nurturing strengths. 

During the first year of the program, our Emerging Leaders perform community service and are trained in computer use, financial management, entrepreneurship, leadership and ethics. Students continue to give back and build leadership skills through community-service projects, internships and workshops held during their college experience. 

The program’s focus on integrity and service culminates in graduating students “paying it forward” by contributing to another incoming student’s tuition over the next four years as well as continued involvement within their own communities. Upon graduation, our fellows receive support to advance their careers and, in some cases, start their entrepreneurial ventures.

We serve the rural poor of West Africa through providing increased educational opportunities.  Our students come from communities where less than 3% of adults are college educated. Nearly 57% of the population cannot read or write; 49% of people walk over half a mile outside of their villages for clean water; and only 2% of the rural population have access to electricity. 

We regularly consult with our students and constantly revise our training and support package to ensure that it meets students’ constantly evolving needs. 

We provide not just tuition, but housing, internet access, a meal program and sometimes transportation. 

In terms of greater benefits, our impact extends behind our students to their families, friends, neighbors, and the larger community. Our program emphasizes fostering unity among different tribes on a local level through service and leadership development with a focus on ethics and integrity. 

Students identify service projects based on the needs of each community and conduct those projects across different tribes and build a spirit of unity.

We support developing rural communities through increased community stability and an educated population capable of transformation addressing issues locally.

There is a direct correlation between lack of education and poverty. We identify some of the brightest youth from the most impoverished rural areas in Sierra Leone and provide them with the education and skills required to transform their communities from within, thus tapping into the great potential of their own human resources. 

Students are encouraged to explore their talents and focus on ethical leadership and service. During and after the program, our students actively engage in community transformation. We elevate opportunities for the students in our program and their families, communities and beyond.

My inspiration came in 2010, when I visited my daughter in Sierra Leone. My driver, Ibrahim, had lost both of his parents and was supporting his younger brothers and sisters, although his dream had always been to attend college. I decided to pay his tuition at a local university. 

Shortly after he started at the university, I realized that Ibrahim had taken my gift and already began to pay it forward. Ibrahim learned how to repair computers and soon was able to pay for his brothers to go back to middle and high school. He helped his girlfriend go back to school too, all while still attending university himself. 

That's when I had a profound realization. Supporting college education for top performing high school graduates and empowering them to take on community-building work in their own communities could produce tremendous results and be a resource multiplier. 

Helping a single high-achieving and community-oriented young person get the education and support they needed in their early years ultimately had a great impact on multiple lives in a rural town. I started Families Without Borders to identify and help as many Ibrahims as possible, changing the world through this chain of impact.

I believe strongly in the transformational power of individual people. Traditional donors and nonprofits are often too hesitant to invest in people. They seem satisfied with small investments like one or two days of free lunch, but not real sustained investment: education, sustained training, mentoring and encouragement. 

My academic research work focused on tapping human potential because I am very passionate about people. Families Without Borders works in Sierra Leone because the need is so great, and so many communities are dependent on outside help. I believe that these communities can build themselves from within and that our graduates can affect positive change and give back. 

I travel to Sierra Leone three to four times a year to recruit new students, support current students and graduates, hold leadership retreats on various themes around our values, and meet with potential partners. 

In the beginning, I had no personal connection to West Africa nor did I intend to become a leadership development specialist in that region. I know now that my own success was built on a solid foundation through the mentoring and educational opportunities that I was able to access and I want to empower others to do the same.

Families Without Borders' current project is celebrating a successful decade of work in Sierra Leone having produced 15 university graduates, all of whom have not only continued to sponsor another incoming student, but who stand ready to actively support our continued expansion. 

Families Without Borders' continued track record of success in locating, educating and empowering young community leaders with great potential leads to the creation of a replicable and scalable system that can be implemented beyond Sierra Leone. 

By refining our model and investing in our future leaders, our work has resulted in a large pool of capacity and organizational experience which allows us to implement service projects at extremely low costs, ensure a high graduation rate, and produce an unheard-of 100% employment rate upon graduation. 

Families Without Borders recently began recruiting our first students from Liberia, and we will open our community projects there once the current pandemic passes. 

Coupled with Families Without Borders’ proven model and string of success stories, my education, organizational and work experience in the corporate world, plus my consulting experience prior to starting Families Without Borders gives me the confidence to grow this work.

As a result of these skills and experiences, I feel well-positioned to continue to increase partnerships and expand the program for future students and with modest resources, expand and extend of the program into new countries that would benefit from the similar identification and development of local talent with our tested and trusted model. 

There are certainly challenges working in less privileged countries. Our original IT Center in Makeni suffered a violent robbery in June 2019 which was a major setback for our organization. Two were injured in the attack and many more were terrorized. Many IT assets were lost and our IT based community service projects were forced to cease operations. 

I arrived in Sierra Leone a week later, and found an organization in disarray. I took over police interactions, and immediately led a security audit, adding additional security features to our facilities and placing strong mandates on locking doors after dark. We held meetings with the local community to explain that our center could not operate if it was unsecured, and I expressed my strong worry about the safety of our female students, whose adjacent housing was fortunately not part of the attack.  

I then reached out to donors and partners to inform them of the difficulty, which was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I felt personally responsible for the losses but I was deeply gratified by the outpouring of support, which allowed us to quickly reequip the center and to restart projects. 

In 2017, many of our male Emerging Leaders requested bicycles to help them save money on transport from our housing to the campus. I was surprised when I was told that the female students did not need bicycles because “girls don’t ride.” While this was accepted by both our male and female students, I found this sexist attitude frustrating. I announced that I would buy every student in the house located the farthest from the campus a bicycle on the condition that the female students learned to ride a bicycle.

That left me to teach the girls to ride a bicycle. Admittedly with no small amount of trepidation about falling or looking foolish, I climbed on a bicycle for the first time in thirty years, and led the female students on a bike ride. We fell a lot and laughed a lot, but by the end of the day, we were all riding. 

While riding a bicycle is a small lesson, it is key insight to my leadership style. I believe that people can improve themselves; that gender and tribe are irrelevant and that you lead from the front by doing.

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The true inspiration and innovation of Families Without Borders is the resource multiplier. 

Through our time-tested and scalable system of vetting and investing in bright community-oriented young people with high potential, every dollar spent on educating these students multiplies with positive effects for family, neighbors and communities. 

We unlock the vast potential resource of human capital in poor rural communities and create community leaders who have experience innovating and managing projects to improve local conditions with regards to fresh, safe water, electricity, literacy, health and sanitation, thus improving the quality of life for everyone. 

Families Without Borders believes in people. We believe in the ultimate power of human capital and resourcefulness. We believe that individuals, if given education, training, and mentorship, have the power to change their world. By exposing participants to the opportunity to lead and to serve, we believe that they will develop a lifetime passion for helping others, and having been well equipped to do so, they will proceed to bring positive and sustainable change in their own communities, building them from within. 

Our theory of change was not crafted with the assistance of predictive models or comprehensive baseline surveys.  It was crafted slowly, painstakingly, through trial and error and represents a decade of experience in creating a working system to assist emerging leaders in West Africa to produce tangible results.  We do not believe that it is enough to equip and educate Emerging Leaders; it is also important to directly expose them to the joys of service and the benefits of ethical leadership. These activities indirectly benefit thousands in rural locations who profit from our students’ education, experience and call to service.

Having been well equipped to do so, they will proceed to fulfill their own human potential: our graduates are achieving amazing success.  In a country in which youth unemployment is consistently above 70%, we have a 100% graduate employment rate and seven graduates have started businesses or NGOs.  More than 50% hold leadership positions within their respective student bodies, and eight graduates have participated in YALI (Young African Leader Initiative).

Positive and sustainable change in their communities is the natural outcome of the program. We believe that the outcome and profits of our work will continue, as our emerging leaders continue to learn, grow and benefit their communities. This dividend will continue to flourish and pay off as more and more students come through our program, helping the next class and so on.

In 2019, Families Without Borders supported the higher education and empowerment of 78 Emerging Leaders. These brilliant young men and women performed 16,000+ hours of service through nine diverse community service projects in 28 rural communities across Sierra Leone. In 2019 alone, more than 15,000 rural people have gained access to solar lights and 20,000+ have access to improved water sources.

Over the next year, 30 new students from Sierra Leone and Liberia will join our program and we will support the higher education and empowerment of 100 emerging leaders. Through our service projects, we plan to serve 50,000+ in rural communities of Sierra Leone and Liberia and will have an additional eight graduates who will be financial contributor to our program.

In five years, we plan to serve 250 students and have 80 graduates. We hope to impact over 500,000 people in rural communities across three West African countries through our service projects. 

Within the next year we plan to expand support for our graduates in their entrepreneurial ventures resulting in job creation, economic improvement, and sustainability of our programs. We will recruit a new cohort of 30 participants from Sierra Leone and Liberia, build and strengthen partnerships with community organizations in both countries. We plan to repair/construct 20 water wells, install 20 solar systems and reach 1,000+ adults through our literacy program in Sierra Leone and Liberia. We expect to retain our sterling 100% graduate employment rate for all of our students.

Over the next five years, we plan to continue and increase all our activities and student enrollment and to develop an increasingly stable financial platform to magnify our success.  We are working hard to assure that our first Liberian cohort will, just as in Sierra Leone, have a 100% employment rate upon graduation, something we regard as one of greatest accomplishments. We ultimately hope to expand the reach of Families Without Borders replicable system to other nations.  

We are increasing and expanding our partnerships with private donors, corporate sponsors and our graduate entrepreneurial ventures to create a sustainable model that will continue the program’s overall growth and capacities.  Most importantly, in the next year (2021) we plan to expand our program to Liberia.  Two years after that (2023) we hope to expand into The Gambia and will investigate other possible regions as viable expansion targets thus continuing our mission to target the most disadvantaged communities within these countries. 

Families Without Borders faces three major challenges at this juncture in our growth:

First, we are in need of expert help and financial partners to help support our graduates in their entrepreneurial ventures. The graduate entrepreneurs will need business coaching to incubate their businesses. Successful entrepreneurs would coach and mentor our students and graduates to become successful social entrepreneurs, who will create jobs and improve their economy in countries with exceptionally high unemployment rates.

The second challenge we are facing is the navigation of different cultural and political norms as we expand into new west African countries. We are realizing that help in navigating the new local business, legal and cultural structures is essential in our expansion plans. Marketing and establishing our brand in new territories has shown to be a barrier that we need to work on.

Finally, we are in need of financial support and assistance creating financial systems to sustain our programs. Currently, we rely on individual donations and small grants as we work towards self-sustainability. This spring, we were unable to hold our main annual fundraising event due to the coronavirus. Although our student-run service projects are low-cost, we need financial resources to continue our impact and expand our reach to some of the most remote communities in Sierra Leone and soon Liberia. In order to reach our goal of expanding into new countries, we need new sources of income for our projects, personnel and travel expenses. 

Our biggest hurdle is financial. We are looking to generate multiple streams of income. Our ultimate goal is to become sustainable through our “pay it forward” model with graduates sponsoring new students in the program and partnerships with businesses that our graduates are starting. We are working with the Global Executive MBA program at Saint Mary’s College of California, developing social enterprise partnerships with our graduates in Sierra Leone. One of the primary reasons we are applying for the Elevate Prize is to obtain support from experts on building an efficient business model to innovate and continue a financially self-sustainable model.

In Sierra Leone, we have established relationships with prominent Sierra Leonean leaders in a variety of industries including Academia, Manufacturing, Government and NGO. We receive advice on political and cultural norms, and we plan to continue to build and strengthen these relationships. Local community support of our program is critical to our success, and we customize our leadership development programs based on such understanding.

We are connecting with prominent Liberian leaders and partner with established organizations to facilitate our integration in that country.

In California, we have accessed our local networks and major donors to generate funds that support the work. We have consulted marketing and technical experts to revamp our website, increase our social media presence, and apply for various grant programs. We also continue to expand our mentorship program in the US, which requires a financial commitment.  

We partner with Moms Against Poverty, which helps provide funds for some of our solar light and water well service projects.  These projects leverage the human capital of our Emerging Leaders to repair/construct simple artisanal wells and install basic solar systems in rural schools. They benefit thousands of persons at a cost far below than achievable by more traditional NGOs. 

We collaborate with Rotary International both in the US and in Sierra Leone on motivating youth to start new community projects.

We partner with the Global Executive MBA Department of Saint Mary’s College of California on social entrepreneurship development and financial management. This partnership is ongoing and should lead to strengthened financial systems, more locally generated revenue, and stronger social media-based advertising. 

In Sierra Leone, we partner with the University of Makeni and Njala University.  Our Emerging Leaders attend a variety of programs across the two institutions, and we maintain strong ties to both. This has resulted in a number of sponsored events at the college campus, and strong collaboration during the Ebola Epidemic.

We also have a small number of corporate partners in Sierra Leone and the United States who have traditionally provided in-kind donations to our Annual Gala and retreats.

Families Without Borders is a nonprofit, relying on private donations. Through our ‘pay it forward’ model, our graduates sponsor another student in the program. We are attempting to incorporate social entrepreneurship, leveraging the amazing talents of our students (Emerging Leaders) and Fellows (Graduates). 

What Families Without Borders provides is educational opportunities to poor rural communities to create ethical leaders by investing in their young people who possess great potential. 

We enroll our participants in a five-year program in their own country, which starts with leadership development training, including a set curriculum of community service, providing them experience in leadership, hard work, and empathy. We focus on ethical leadership, essential skills, technology use, and empowerment.  Then we fully support their four-year college education, something only 3% of people in Sierra Leone or Liberia are able to achieve.  We provide our participants with all of the necessary resources they need to succeed.  This is done intensively, with students living in shared housing, receiving structured mentorship, academic support, medical care and free access to the internet.  

There are direct and tangible benefits to these communities. Our Emerging Leaders create real, measurable, improvements in their community, often prior to graduation.  These positive benefits result both from their work under the auspices of Families Without Borders as well as from activities we have “spun off.” As just one example, our female students, who led our reusable sanitary pad projects, are now producing face masks.

In order to expand our work and reach our goals, we recognize the strong need to increase funding. We are increasingly financially stable as more of our graduates join the ‘pay it forward’ model, allowing us to recruit new students. Our goal is to transition from a traditional nonprofit business model to a social enterprise and hence to be self-sustaining within the next five years. We are applying to the Elevate Prize in hopes of receiving both financial support and assistance in refining our business plan to launch this social enterprise. 

Our goal in creating this social enterprise is twofold. First, to support our mission by maintaining and increasing revenue and, second, to hire locals and create jobs in an economy with a high unemployment rate through the social enterprise. In partnership with our fellows, we intend to focus on generating jobs for vulnerable populations focusing on women and remote communities. In the long-run, the revenue generated by the social enterprise business model in addition to the income that we currently generate through our ‘pay it forward’ model will allow us to become self-sustaining. 

We will also continue to fundraise and expand our supporters, both through individual donations and through our mentorship program. As we grow in size and expand, our plan is to build more partnerships with organizations like Moms Against Poverty, who will help fund some of our community service projects.

To date our funding has been through generous individual donors and a small number of modest grants. Families Without Borders hosts an annual gala event as an appeal where we raise most of our operating budget through sponsorship, ticket sales, auction items and general donations. 

Occasionally we have online fundraisers and last year we had a successful year end mailing campaign.

We also administer a mentorship program where we pair our students with a mentor in the United States, and the mentors underwrite some of the expenses of their Emerging Leaders. 

Due to the Covid-19 situation, we have not been able to hold our annual gala this year. 

We currently seek to raise funds to cover our operating budget expenses which were anticipated to be $194,960 for 2020 fiscal year prior to the Covid situation mainly through individual donations. Unfortunately, our 2020 Gala, our primary annual fundraising event for the operating budget, has been indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus, though we do hope it will resume for 2021.

We are currently applying for institutional grants, and are perpetually seeking private donations from individuals, foundations and corporate partners. We are also pursuing major gifts, donor bequests or legacies, and corporate sponsorships and partnerships with an eye to creating a supporting endowment fund to support underwriting Families Without Borders scholarships and community service programs.

We are also actively trying to generate new partnerships with businesses and academic institutions to encourage and assist graduates and students to develop new business ventures for which Families Without Borders would receive an additional income stream to continue and enhance the program’s sustainability and future expansion. 

Prior to the current Covid situation, Families Without Borders budget for 2020 was $194,960 with 82% ($159,867.20) of the budget being spent in Africa and 18% ($35,092.80) spent in the United States on administrative, accounting and fundraising expenses. Our actual expenses for this year will be less due to the pause in operations brought on by the global pandemic situation. Budget documents are available upon request. 

We are applying for the Elevate Prize because we are confident that Families Without Borders has the potential to expand and educate many more future ethical leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. We believe that the goals of the Elevate Prize and Families Without Borders are closely aligned and that we as an organization are approaching a crucial tipping point where a financial nudge in combination with the support from the Elevate Prize Foundation's network could push us to achieving our crucial goal of expansion and long-term financial sustainability thus granting us the ability to deliver better lives well into the future. 

With business guidance, the financial resources and partnerships support, the Elevate Prize offers Families Without Borders an opportunity to reach many more communities to effect positive change that we have achieved on a smaller scale. Our model relies on the empowerment of individuals, and leveraging them to impact communities and create engines for social good. Our successful community service projects, from well repair to solar light installation and computer training, show the positive externalities generated by our model. All of our service projects are initiated and implemented by our Emerging Leaders (college students). Just as we empower students, we are hoping that the Elevate Prize will empower us. We would use the prize to refine and invest in the business plans developed by Saint Mary’s College and to help us expand to Liberia in 2021. 

We are currently focused on receiving support and training in marketing and media exposure, to expand awareness, draw attention to the region, and inspire passion through our numerous success stories in order to gain more support and keep the triumphs coming via interested potential new donor support and partnerships. 

Families Without Borders possesses many great stories to share with the world, and we need to let the world know what people can accomplish when given the right tools. 

We are also looking for assistance in the ongoing development and refinement of social entrepreneurship-based business models which could help to generate funding locally in our areas of operation and expand the positive impact on the communities that we serve.  

We are currently partnered with Mom’s Against Poverty and the Global Executive MBA Department at Saint Mary’s College of California, which provides consulting services and other resources for our students and graduate businesses. 

We would be open to partnerships with a wide range of organizations and to different types of collaborations with the public and private sector to assist in developing improvements in quality of life and economic opportunities for the impoverished regions we serve. Most helpful is advice and mentoring from experienced fundraisers and marketing/PR professionals and Movie industries to share the inspiring stories of our Emerging Leaders.

We would like to partner with organizations, which would help us to further the implementation both of our core mission and of our many community service projects that complement our work. For instance, partnerships with organizations specializing in the clean water industry or solar energy could significantly boost our activities in these areas to the next level.  

In Sierra Leone, we would like to partner with Easy Solar for Solar instalation and Miro Forestry to teach literacy to their farmers.

Strengthening our partnerships with organizations such as Rotary International to expand the reach of our student-run service projects. We also hope to identify and form partnerships with more organizations, whose missions are aligned with ours and active in our target areas in order to expand out impact.