UGA Grad Honored for Creating Non-Profit

Dyci Manns is among the four women younger than 25 who will be honored on a BET awards show. The UGA alumna will be honored on the network’s Black Girls Rock! which will air at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 6.

A native of Atlanta, Manns founded and now directs a non-profit called MODEL26. The initials stand for Making Opportunities by Developing Emerging Leaders. The 26 is taken from Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to education.

The focus of MODEL26 is “to connect young people with volunteer opportunities that reduce poverty and educational disparities.”
      

“I’m excited about the exposure that this award brings to MODEL26,” said Manns, who graduated in May 2011 with a BA in Spanish from UGA. “I hope it will encourage young people to visit our website, learn more about the work we do and support us as we continue to grow.”

The inspiration for the organization came to Manns during a 2008 Franklin College Study Abroad Scholarship experience. At a village in Belize, she saw school children erasing writing from their composition books because they couldn’t afford new ones.
       

After two years of research, Manns founded the precursor to MODEL26, an organization called Bookbags with Basics. In six months, the organization collected book bags with school supplies for more than 1,000 students in Nicaragua, Uganda and the U.S.

Despite this success, Manns realized that simply providing school supplies wouldn’t break the cycle of poverty. As soon as the students’ pencils wore away and their pens ran dry, they’d be in the same situation.
       

Manns wanted to harness the energy and enthusiasm of college students and direct them to non-profits focused on policy addressing social inequities She saw an opportunity to drive lasting, transformative change.

To that end, she restructured Bookbags with Basics into MODEL26. The non-profit hopes to develop leaders by providing financial assistance and counseling to college students, especially to  minorities and low-income students, who pursue social policy and human rights internships or participate in short-term volunteer programs abroad.
       

Since its founding at UGA, MODEL26 has established a presence at Louisiana State University, Clark Atlanta University, the University of Maryland, the University of Florida, Hope College, Purdue University and the University of Central Florida.
       

“A lot of people call us the ‘me generation,’ but I think that we care more than a lot of people give us credit for,” Manns said. “Whenever I studied abroad or volunteered, I rarely saw any other minority students. And it’s not that they’re not interested. It’s just that they don’t know how to navigate the process of finding volunteer opportunities.”