The idea behind Paper for All was born in 2005 following a trip made to Burkina Faso by one of Paper for All's members.  At that time, 25 people (10 volunteers from Europe and 15 local volunteers) gathered to teach during one month in a local school in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

 

While teaching, the main problem appeared to be the lack of academic resource, and especially paper.  It was outrageous to see so many children (classes of 30 were filled with as many as 80 children) who were so willing to learn but just could not write for their lessons/exams/exercises.

 

Following this experience, a ‘channel’ was created by one of the volunteers, where some teams would provide the funding (UK based team, then France and US based team as the entities expanded) while others would buy and distribute the academic resources (Burkina Faso based team) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

This channel then grew to become Paper for All, a charity registered in July 2006 in the UK that aims at supporting education to enable development.  The charity was subsequently registered in Burkina Faso in March 2007, in France in January 2008.  The US registration process is currently occuring.

 

 

Paper for All organization

 

Paper for All has since grown in size and enlisted the help of other members.  A core team of ten is now helping with the charity and several other volunteers or donators have helped Paper for All grow.  Finally, Paper for All can count on its P4A Knights to communicate about the charity, its purpose and actions.  For more details, please see our Contact us section.

 

Your support can today be materialized through the How you can help section to help grow the channel.

 

We are confident that Paper for All will continue growing to have a bigger impact.  Please see the What we do section for more details about our vision for the future and the Contact us section to get more details about recent communication/fundraising events and to know more about the team.  Please also visit our What we do section to have access to our presentation documents (leaflet, one-page overview document, newsletter, etc.). 

 

 

Specific Contacts and Team

You can also contact the Paper for All Charity core team members.  Please note however that we prefer receiving messages at the general contact email mentioned above. 

 

Our contacts section, with individual profiles, contact details and positions has now moved to our Who we are section. 

Please visit this section to know more about the Paper for All teams in the different countries where it operates.

 

 

The Paper for All core team

 

Paper for All UK

 

Paper for All Burkina Faso

 

Paper for All (Cahier pour Tous) France

 

Paper for All is a charity registered in the UK.  To maximise its impact, a second entity was created in Burkina Faso in March 2007, and a French entity was created in January 2008.

 

 

Team Member Profiles

 

Emmanuel Cassimatis is Paper for All's chairman and created the charity in 2006, following a humanitarian trip to Burkina Faso he made in 2005. Of French and Greek origins, Emmanuel is a current Harvard Business School MBA student and received his Grande Ecole Master's in Management and M.Sc. in Strategic Management from EDHEC Business School in France. Among others, Emmanuel worked at Deloitte & Touche in Consulting for two years. Emmanuel is thankful for having met so many great people to build the charity. His strongest desire is to continue expanding the scope of action and number of schools reached in Burkina Faso, while developing the fundraising activities in additional countries.

 

 

Alfred Kadsondo is the President of the Burkina Faso entity of Paper for All. Born 30 years ago in a small village near Ouagadougou, he lives today in the capital city, where he works in a pharmacy and manages his own bar/restaurant. He met Emmanuel during the 2005 humanitarian trip, after which they decided to found the organisation. Alfred handles the charity's relationship with the supported schools, as well as the distribution of the school supplies.

 

 

 

 

Cyrus Farhangi is responsible for Paper for All's orientations for expansion. He joined the Paper for All team in Ouagadougou in November 2007 in order to collect further information on local needs, in line with Paper for All's objective to increase its impact five-fold within a year. Of Iranian origin, Cyrus grew up in Paris, and studied Industrial Engineering at Cornell University. He then got his Masters in Economic Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, which convinced him that development was, before anything, a grassroots process triggered by education. He was therefore very interested in joining Paper for All, which bypasses all bureaucracy and is in direct contact with the community it aims to support.

 

 

Emma Stevens has been involved with Paper for All since February 2007 and is primarily responsible for Partnerships/funding . She is British, 27 years old and lives in London, having completed a Management Sciences degree at Southampton University and spent a year travelling. Emma currently works at Deloitte Consulting, which is where she met the P4A team and got involved with the charity. Emma was inspired by Paper for All's purpose to promote learning and development in Burkina Faso, through such a simple idea of providing academic resources. She has submitted several funding applications so far and while she continues to do so, is exploring other partnership routes for the charity.

 

David Azoulay has been involved with Paper For All since January 2007 and is responsible for the French subsidiary of the charity which he helped to create. David has always been a true Parisian and still lives there. He completed an Engineering Degree in Environment, achieved his specialization in Finland, and a Masters in Strategy and International Business in Em Lyon. David currently works for Eurogroup and heard of the P4A purpose through his good friend Cyrus. Having a local team constantly present in Ouagadougou and clear fundraising objectives for the teams in UK and France, in addition to the wonderful idea of helping children getting a better education, has been a major incentive to join the P4A project. David is currently gathering people and launching the activity in France in as many directions as possible.

 

 

Adélaïde Chassort is French, 25 years old and lives in Paris, where she is working in a media agency. She has been involved with Paper for All since December 2007 and is trying to develop the charity in France after its great success in the UK.

 

 

 

 

 

Karina Drif is Paper for All's Secretary and she has been involved with the Charity from its set up in 2006. Karina has already successfully exposed herself to a varied background of business and science; from being an accountant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers to developing her practical Marine Biology skills in the waters around Greenland during her PhD. Karina believes in holistic solutions for her vision of a better world, in which she sees the part in which Paper for All helps filling a gigantic gap in the educational needs in Burkina Faso.