From a high school junior’s overseas charity initiative to a global social enterprise, ámaxa (meaning vehicle in Greek) is a company led purely by NYU Abu Dhabi alumni and current students that seeks to transform an individual’s intention to do good into real impact.

Lauren McMillen, ámaxa’s founder and CEO, was inspired to start ámaxa after her own experience in high school. “When I was a junior in high school, I wanted to make a difference, but most nonprofits in the area wouldn’t even respond to my emails. Then, I met Jeff Boyce, my Environmental Science teacher at the time. He believed I could make a real impact at 16, and with his help, my friend and I raised $10,000 to purchase solar panels for the Nyaka School in Uganda. That summer, we traveled to Uganda with solar panels in tow and installed them on the roof of the computer lab,” explained McMillen, talking about her motivations to found ámaxa.

“The experience was nothing less than life-changing. The solar panels we purchased had a real impact on the people there: now, computer classes could continue even when the government turned off grid electricity,” said McMillen. On returning to the United States, Lauren’s thoughts turned to the idea that more people could do what she did. She realized that people wanted to do good, but didn’t know where to start or how to go about it. And so, ámaxa was born. Yet, while Lauren laid the foundations, it was only after ámaxa’s current team came together that it became what it is today: a social enterprise with the mission to become a one-stop shop for anyone to make an impact.

The team started with the theory that high school students were an overlooked demographic for impact — they had much more potential to create real impact than most people thought. The ámaxa Student Impact Program matches high school students with a remote global team and an expert mentor who guides them to solve a real problem at a global nonprofit over 4-6 months. As it turned out, the team’s theory was right. After launching in January 2022, they have created eight teams of students from over 10 countries. Right now, some of their students are raising funds to build an ambulance for pregnant mothers in rural Ghana, planning remote cultural exchanges with Palestinian students and implementing Mental Health First Aid training at their schools in Dubai.

Caption: A snap of two ámaxa teams hard at work!

After not even a full year in operation, the ámaxa team are proud of the impact they have made not just on the problems they set out to solve, but on the lives of their students. Their very first student to complete the program, Maitha, launched an Instagram account for the ISNAD Community Center in Palestine.

She told ámaxa after the program: “Working with ámaxa has been an experience I’ll never forget. It's not every day I come across a program that treats students like global leaders.”

In addition to the student program, the ámaxa team is excited to announce that they have begun developing a mobile app that empowers the everyday person to make a real impact in the world. This “social donating” platform will aim to make it more convenient for people to donate to nonprofit projects they are passionate about. Their team believes that integrating a social aspect into the donation process has the potential to change the way the everyday person donates to nonprofits. The platform is currently in the development stage, and they will release it to the NYUAD community when the first version is ready. User feedback will be of utmost importance to them, so stay tuned for how you can be a part of the next iteration!

ámaxa’s journey from an idealistic vision to an investment-ready social enterprise — a journey which even included a cease-and-desist letter! — was not only a result of building a strong and committed core team, but also the consequence of that team being so diverse in nature. Their core team of five comes from the U.S., Hungary, Moldova, Vietnam and Taiwan. They believe that their global perspectives have enabled them to become a global enterprise in record time, attracting students and nonprofits from 15+ countries in their first year of operation. More than that, they believe that their diverse nature is one of the assets they bring as they begin to seek funding from investors in 2023.