Help to Help gives young people a better future
KTH student Malin Cronqvist started Help to Help, an organisation that crowdfunds higher education for young people in Tanzania.
In 2010, KTH student Malin Cronqvist was doing voluntary work in Tanzania. She saw enormous potential in the country and its people, and at the same time identified one big problem - affording school tuition fees for higher education.
Malin wanted to help, but saw problems in the traditional charity sector. She decided to build an organization based on transparency and self-help, with long-term societal effects as the goal.
The result was Help to Help. At first it was just meant to be a side project, but when the team came to KTH Innovation in 2014, they realized Help to Help could have larger impact. Together with their coach, Malin and her team started to figure out how to run and build the organization in a sustainable way, focusing on forming a solid foundation to grow from. Malin has previously described getting support from KTH Innovation as the reason for Help to Help's rapid development in 2013-2014.
The crowdfunding platform was launched in 2014. In the first years, they helped two students. In 2017, they had supported 100 students. By 2021, they have enabled education for several hundred students in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.
"KTH Innovation supported us exactly when we needed it. A great balance between a pat on the back when things felt rough and difficult, and a kick up the back side when we hesitated but really needed to excellerate. This approach gave us the self confidence we needed to reach our goals. The honest and constructive feedback we got, and knowing that the coaches really cared about our project, was invaluable. We wouldn't be where we are today without KTH Innovation."
- Founder Malin Cronqvist
Milestones
March 2013
First meeting with KTH Innovation. By then, Malin had been working on her idea for two years.
April 2013
Help to Help joins the KTH Innovation pre-incubator program , which back then was called Student Inc. Malin joins a community where she develops her idea side by side with other founders.
November 2013
The team is working on a first version of their platform and payment solution to be launched before New Year. They have organized several events to raise money for the organization, secured paying customers, and are in discussion with donors.
July 2014
The team has launched their new website, which makes it easier to donate money and know where the donations go. They are establishing more and more collaborations in Tanzania and have visited the country on several occasions in the past six months.
September 2014
Help to Help now has ten employees and sponsors seven students in Tanzania. This is where KTH Innovation's support ends.
2019
When Help to Help celebrated their 10 year anniversary in 2019, 289 students had been admitted to the scholarship program, 120 had graduated and several thousand students had taken courses through Help to Help Academy.
Visit Help to Help's room at Teknikringen 1
At Teknikringen 1, KTH Innovation's home on KTH Campus, you can find a meeting room named after Help to Help. There you can see this illustration, inspired by Help to Help's story, in full size. The illustration was created by Jens Magnusson.
