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TEDx Kelowna: Taylor Conroy's plan to educate the world, 33 people at a time

Conroy founded ChangeHeroes.com, an organization which builds schoolhouses all over the world on donations of $3.33 a day.
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Taylor Conroy


If you couldn't make Kelowna's independently organized TEDx Talks, don't worry... the event lives online, and always has.

TED Talks, much like the ideas and ideals peddled at them, have exploded from the croud-sourced comforts of couches all across Canada, America, and – in some way – the world.

On YouTube, speaker Taylor Conroy's talk – titled "How 33 people will educate every child on earth" – details his company ChangeHeroes.com, which aims to build school houses from the participation of (you guessed it) 33 people.

Conroy, a Canadian, told the Kelowna audience he came up with the idea for Change Heroes after a trip to Kenya, during which time Free the Children was building a school in the village he was visiting. Conroy sold his real estate business and founded his new "friend funding platform".

"33 friends giving $3.33 a day for three months equals $10,000," he told his Kelowna audience. "$10,000 is enough to build one of those schoolhouses I walked into... these schoolhouses (in Kenya) educated 50 children a year for well over 20 years. That's 1,000 kids that will get to use one of these schoolhouses."

On the TEDxKelowna website, Conroy's profile says the organization has raised $530,000 for over 50 education-focused projects in nine countries. The text below TED's YouTube video calls him a "disruptive thought leader in social entrepreneurship, an avid surfer and meditator".

He likens the $3.33 to the price of a cup of coffee – or a couple – that someone in North American would spend every day.

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