Award winning writer, filmmaker and social entrepreneur, Alec Urbach, founded 501(c)3 Giving From the Ground Up (GFGU) and its susidiary Alec’s Animated Schoolhouse in 2009 to produce revolutionary cartoon-animated math, science and hygiene film curricula and cartoon workbooks for elementary school children that can be distributed around the world, overcoming the learning divide in developing nations. Film presents a narrative, unfolds a story that can inspire and teach, and we are all hardwired to love a good story. Serving 240,000 children to date, GFGU has already opened the first Science Elementary Schools in Africa, at Lipke Bakue and Atikpui in Ghana, with government approved and sustained curricula.

Alec writes, animates and edits all material produced by The Animated Schoolhouse, including new educational comic books about pressing social issues for children: bullying, negative peer pressure, staying in school and the importance of clean water. With the collaboration of talented illustrators and a Language consultant to translate the learning modules and comic books into Spanish for Central and South America, Alec’s Animated Schoolhouse is poised to expand its new curriculum worldwide—expecting to reach ½ million of the world’s most vulnerable children by 2013. The organization is now replicating its successful model by free-sourcing the curriculum and methodologies to schools and organizations around the world.

The Animated Schoolhouse workbooks, videos and comics are jam-packed with loveable characters and creatures like Hattie the Hummingbird, Phinnaeus F. Fox, Mr. Leibowitz and Miss Olive (the math and science teachers), a global-rock n’ roll cartoon-animated band, The Digits (performing original songs on DVD to help teach each math lesson), and cartoon workbooks that rely on visual learning. By teaching the investigative process and scientific method via film and comics, whether in the absence of literacy or in the presence of learning challenges, one can be taught to innovate industry—from building windmills to testing the most drought-resistant crops.

“There are no heroics involved in making creative, consistent social change. It is my belief that to create a more peaceful, humane society, we must ensure an educated and intellectually hungry society—and we begin by empowering our children.” (Alec Urbach)