Where is home to you? Madagascar

Francesca Raoelison is originally from Madagascar and came to the U.S. five years ago. She is a transfer student from the Northern Virginia Community College and a rising junior concentrating in Sociology, through the Organizational Studies Track. During the summer of 2019, she founded Omena, a non-profit organization committed to increasing emotional abuse awareness in Madagascar’s educational system by providing tools for students to combat and stand up to abuse. Francesca launched the venture as a participant in the Breakthrough Lab 2019 cohort, and she initially focused on solving this problem in Madagascar. But she quickly learned that this is a global issue to solve.

Omena currently has 100+ volunteers scattered around the world (13 countries and counting) and their work has been recognized by MTV, supported by the Clinton Foundation, as well as Forbes Under 30. They won Project For Peace this summer and competed for the TigerLaunch Final rounds at Princeton and were selected for the top 8 in the Brown Venture Prize in March 2020.