Sandbox

Meet a Sandbox Member: Mohammad Modarres

March 2nd, 2010 by Sara Usinger

Sandbox member Mohammad Modarres is currently living in Cape Town, South Africa, where he is interning at FIFA Football For Hope as an assistant to the program director. He is a third year public health and anthropology major at Johns Hopkins University with research focuses on fair trade consumerism, initiating women’s empowerment and how social innovation can create better diplomatic ties in the Middle East, particularly in Iran. He enjoys coaching tennis to kids back home in the States and screaming at and dancing around the television whenever FC Barcelona matches are on. Mohammad on twitter and facebook.

Tell us the story of your latest project / occupation.

I’m pretty pretty excited about a project that I just started working on before I came to the ZAR, called Voice of the Earth. It’s still in the caterpillar stage and has maybe three semesters to go before it pilots around a couple East Coast colleges. Voice of the Earth will be the first student-led public health “creative” agency that will use digital media tools to raise awareness about social issues to the public, and provide free public health information online. It will set up shops in schools around the United States hoping to recruit the imaginative, graphic design/video/editing savvy kids to create awesome materials to help social profit organizations develop outreach agendas without monetary exchange. In return, students will be able to expand their portfolio, and choose between public service and academic credit.

What are you doing and how did you get there?

We are three students planning on powering up to thirty in the next year. One is recruiting the first set of student artists while the other is working to engage university faculty and staff to support our experiential learning curriculum to gain college credit for work done. I am initiating partnerships with associations across sectors to exchange our skills for pro-bono assistance and resources. It’s intimidating as just a student, but knowing we have what most companies want—the perspective of the young consumer—reaching out to them becomes much less daunting, and in many ways, very enjoyable. My previous experience with developing The Peace Project, has got me hooked on the start-up phase.

Tell us about the biggest successes and failures in your life. What worked, what didn’t, and what did you learn?

When asked about his most successful operation, world-renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital surgeon Dr. Ben Carson has been known to say, “That’s easy. It’s the last one I did.” In many ways, my successes and mistakes are changing and growing every single day and its the latest projects I have worked on that best reflect my understanding of social development projects. I’m young. It was only two years ago when I was introduced to the term “social entrepreneurship.” Before that what I did outside of the classroom was personally viewed as just that—an extra curricular activity that fed my interest to help others. Now I have scheduled it differently. As a result, I face constant difficulties organizing a schedule that battles academic work and projects. Many times this has led to poor results. However, it is my combined studies in public health theory and social entrepreneurship skills that are making me the person that I want to be. And I love every minute of it.

What do you want to achieve in a) the next week, b) the next year, c) the next 10 years?

a) I applied for tickets to the World Cup Final. I’ll find out next week if I’ll be finally living my childhood dream.
b) This time next year I will be in my last semester at Johns Hopkins. By then I hope my plans after undergrad will be ready. I’m not too worried because if all employment opportunities fail, I know my creativity will keep me busy. Plus, there are a couple things I want to cross off of my to-do list before a professional career takes over—bull running in Spain, volunteer to build a school in Afghanistan, get my pilot’s license…
c) In the next ten years I want to be in a position to encourage more nonprofit work in Iran. Passionate about nonprofit capacity development, I hope to see myself working to foster ties between a growing Iranian Diaspora and social entrepreneurship organization to oversee expansion of the nation’s citizen sector.

What was your most inspiring moment during the last two weeks?

Sitting next to a four-year-old girl speaking Persian to her dolls at my sister’s engagement party, which brought together my entire immediate family for the first time since I went to college. It was a combination of all those things at that very moment that made me think about the important things, the big things, the small things, the smaller things, and how life is unfolding right before me. It gave me a good moment to think about “life” and how blessed I have been especially in the past couple of years. Between my travels home to Portland, school in Baltimore, and my current stay in Cape Town, it’s easy to sometimes loose sight of the bigger picture.

How could other Sandboxers and the outside world support you and why would that be exciting for them?

Knowing that there is a community out there that builds off of creativity and innovation, and “thinks wrong”, is so unbelievably comforting. I believe I can help others bring the student perspective, and the overlooked power of the volunteer to the table. I’d love to shadow change makers in start-up organizations so that I can better learn how to manage and lead group projects in the making.

Mohammad’s favourites:

Movie- Dr. Zhivago
Travel destination during last year- Alaska
Food- Dad’s omelette. It’s got extra cheese and a slice of love
Quote- “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” – Rumi