News · W&M News · Front Page · Global Playground

Global Playground, the brainchild of two College alumni, is poised to bring its William and Mary-flavored philanthropy to bear on educational opportunities in the developing world. In less than three months, the nonprofit organization has raised more than $18,000 from its donor base of young professionals in New York City and Washington, D.C. This summer, it will sponsor its first project when it constructs a school in Uganda in cooperation with Building Tomorrow, a nonprofit founded by William and Mary alumnus George Srour (’05). After Uganda, Global Playground will look toward places like Cambodia, Thailand and Kosovo.

Edward Branagan (’03), executive director, and Douglas Bunch (’02), chairman, conceived of Global Playground during a December 2005 conversation, but they acknowledge that the preliminary dialogue extended back to their undergraduate years.

“Doug and I were good friends in college,” explained Branagan. “I was interested in international education—I spent time one summer in Bosnia. While he was a student, Doug actually started up a nonprofit organization which was dedicated to promoting classical studies in rural Virginia. We both had an interest in education and in using that as a tool to combat things like poverty, intolerance and indifference. Finally in December 2005, we put our heads together and asked, ‘Why don’t we form a nonprofit that is dedicated to this?’”

By February 2006, Branagan and Bunch had created a five-person board of directors, which includes, in addition to themselves, two other William and Mary alumni, Armistead Booker (’02) and Doug Smith (J.D. ’06). In August, Global Playground was recognized as a public charity. In October, fund raising efforts began.

Essentially Global Playground will focus its efforts discovering educational projects and then going out and finding donors. Explained Bunch, “The audience—donor base—is young professionals. Part of our feeling was that young professionals like ourselves don’t do as much as they should to promote investment in Third-World countries. The message we’re trying to impart is that you go through your life as a lawyer or a banker, you sometimes forget how things are on the other side of the world. I think if more people could see that, it would help them to put their own lives in perspective and to open up a little more in terms of being charitable.”

Pointing to the fact that donations are running ahead of projections, Branagan and Bunch believe that Global Playground has touched both a need and a nerve.

Selecting Uganda
In choosing projects to support, Booker said that Global Playground was interested in infrastructure—“not just schools and classrooms, but libraries, technology, recreation areas and playgrounds.” At the same time, the group wanted to emphasize “the importance of economic, gender and race equality,” he added. Having followed Srour’s work in Uganda primarily through stories published by the William and Mary News, the alumni contacted their fellow graduate. Subsequently, Branagan and Bunch traveled to Kampala to observe Building Tomorrow’s efforts firsthand. Each was moved by the experience.

“We saw schools that were falling apart, teachers leading classes with nothing but a stick and a poster to show students the alphabet,” Bunch said. The two alumni also saw the eagerness on the part of students to absorb the lessons. “To interact with them sort of gave us a new perspective on our own lives,” Bunch added.

At that point, the naming of Building Tomorrow as Global Playground’s first project was a foregone conclusion. “It was just very evident that George knows what he’s doing,” said Bunch. “He opened a school in May. He has identified potential sites for schools and has put everything in place that will enable us to sell what he is doing.”

More than Tribal guilt
At first, Booker, Branagan and Bunch joked that any connection between their current philanthropic effort and their experiences at William and Mary might have resulted from a “sense of guilt” instilled by the culture of service at their alma mater.

“However, it’s stronger than that,” Bunch said. “William and Mary has a way of breeding compassion for people who have less than we do and to do something to make an impact in their lives.”
 
Branagan referred to his participation in the People to People program sponsored by the Reves Center that sent him to Bosnia during the summer of 2001. There, he taught English as a means of working with children whom he referred to as “war-torn.” Although the war in Bosnia had ended six years earlier, healing only was beginning, he said. “There was a lot of psychological damage,” he recalled. “A lot of people had witnessed horrors. The war was fought very close to the civilian populations. People may have committed evil acts.” He summarized one objective of the program as “showing that Muslims and Christians could all be in the same room.” Ever since, he has been convinced that education provides a path to peace.

Booker recalled the 2003 commencement ceremony at which Queen Noor of Jordan expressed her confidence that the graduates recognized "the link between education, service and human welfare.” She cited as evidence the fact that 75 percent of the Class of 2003 was active in community service and that the College sends proportionally more volunteers to the Peace Corps than any other university.

Booker found the numbers staggering. “I think William and Mary instilled in me the desire to be a part of that,” he said. Even today he regrets that he did not take advantage of opportunities to study abroad as an undergraduate. “In a way, I feel Global Playground is kind of my semester abroad,” he said.

Related content
Srour attends first day of school in Uganda
Visit the Global Playground Web site.
Tribe Profile: Armistead Booker '02