Dweebs Global

Dweebs Global was launched at the beginning of the pandemic to quickly respond to the number of people struggling, out of work, and facing serious mental health conditions. As a one-stop shop for career development and mental health support, we have matched thousands of people with one-on-one mentorship, access to high-quality speakers and seminars, and unparalleled resources. We have run programs and worked with individuals in the United States, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and several other countries. We don't turn anyone away and funding would allow us to continue providing our services for free.

With the support of the Elevate Prize and our proven track record of success, we would be able to grow to supporting three hundred mentees a week. That's three hundred people who could get their resumes reviewed for free, discover the next step in their careers, join stellar international teams, and get critical mental health support. We are at a crucial and urgent funding point and excited to find a partner to help us grow further. In addition, working with the MIT team and other winners would allow us to expand our reach and work more closely with a global community of advocates and partners.

I am an LGBTQIA+ Indian woman, born and raised in America. I was often turned away when I needed help and struggled to succeed on my own. I didn't know where to turn to and an organization like Dweebs Global could have been life-changing for me.

Today, I'm a national security attorney with experience at the Departments of Defense and State, the FCC, law firms, and the National Commission on Service, where I earned an award for Outstanding Achievement from the Secretary of Defense. I worked at CERN and Fermilab in particle physics, am a columnist and author, and have given two TEDx talks. At 20 years old, I was one of the youngest graduates of Georgetown Law School and I graduated college at 17.

None of this would have been possible without mentors and now, at Dweebs Global, we make sure everyone has access to that help, via an easy online contact form. We are radically diverse, with mentorship teams in Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and more actually run by people in those countries. We hope to expand worldwide, grow to thousands of mentors, and create a world in which no one is ever alone again. 

Billions of people in the world will need a mentor at some point in their life. Everyone from the New York Times to Hollywood is talking about how important that one-on-one help is, especially now.

No one but Dweebs Global provides mentorship easily, to everyone, for free. Poor communities in developing countries usually have no ability to reach out to college admissions officers in the United States or Google recruiters. When people send requests for help on LinkedIn, they are often ignored. Surveys we've conducted in India and Nigeria show that over eighty percent of people need and want a mentor.

Dweebs Global provides help to everyone about everything. If we don't have the answers, we do our best to find them. It's such a simple idea, but one that is incredibly powerful. Using unique automation and matching processes developed by an international team of programmers, we have created a platform that is easy to use for mentors and mentees alike. In less than a year, over five hundred mentors in dozens of countries joined our roster. Today, we offer unparalleled one-on-one support, seminars led by international experts, and critical resources viewed about thirty thousand times a month.

Dweebs Global has such a simple idea: provide mentorship for free by connecting people who want help with people who can give it. Here's how we work:

First, if you need help, you can just go to www.dweebsglobal.org/contact and request a free resume or cover letter edit, advice for internships, someone to talk to about depression, or literally anything else.

Second, we do not charge anything ever. We don't charge schools for our top-notch seminars where we bring in senior experts to talk about technology, video production, agriculture, and the law. We don't charge mentees or even ask for donations.

Third, we don't turn anyone away. We don't limit by alumni status, career, field, or which country you're located in.

Fourth, we retain and attract mentors (over 500 in less than a year!) by sponsoring high-quality issue projects, such as teams focused on film production (mental health mentors), improving child labor conditions (policy career mentors), and creating software to assist the blind (tech mentors).

Finally, we have a unique, internationally developed and tested mentorship matching process. We onboard new mentors in under a week, including a one-on-one interview, and mentees get matched in a few days.

So many of the UN's Development Goals fundamentally depend on uplifting communities by providing them opportunities to help themselves and others. Boosting careers will reduce inequality, support economic growth, promote gender equality and health (we have dedicated teams on both issues), and eradicate poverty.

Dweebs Global is far more than a nonprofit. It's a movement. It is fundamentally based on the premise that most people are good, most people want to help, and most people don't know how.

We are the easiest way for professionals to help others succeed, accepting volunteers from a few hours a month to eighty hours a week. You can help in precisely your field of expertise doing precisely what you want to do.

Our mentees receive one-on-one mentorship that changes their lives: our chat rooms are filled with stories of people who landed a job after our resume edits, successfully applied to universities, or were saved from suicide.

Finally, we strengthen partnerships across the world to fix global problems, meeting SDG 17, by operating teams on the ground from Lagos to Manipur.

Superheroes aren't rare. You just have to find your team. We are that team for everyone.