Meet Humanizmo | Non-Profit Organization

We had the good fortune of connecting with Humanizmo and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Humanizmo, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Our aim in creating Humanizmo was to advance access to children’s books in a unique way: by creating and selling children’s books on the human body and using our profits to donate these books. The impact of Humanizmo extends far beyond the pages of our books. An introduction to the human body at a young age can empower children to take care of their own health and spark curiosity in much-needed professions such as healthcare, biomedical research, and public health. We donate our books to underprivileged communities that often don’t have the best access to healthcare. By doing this, we are contributing to the overall public health of our nation by encouraging children to take charge of their own health and understand what is happening in their bodies. We recently donated our books to the North Georgia Healthcare System for use in their hospitals. Ms. Erdely, a second grade teacher at Kelly Mill Elementary School, uses our books in her classroom. Our healthcare teachers Mrs. Kochevar and Mr. Erdely use our human anatomy books in their classes to teach students about the parts of the heart and brain. Apart from this, after starting our organization, we quickly realized our book served another purpose: helping parents and children have difficult conversations about health. A radiant smile spread across our business teacher’s face as she flipped through our book Jill the Pill’s Healthy Heart Adventure. She explained to us what a great help having a book like ours that simplified the heart would have been to her and her son who was diagnosed with a heart defect at a young age. As a parent who didn’t have a healthcare background, she struggled to explain to her young son what the intricate vocabulary doctors and nurses used to describe his condition meant. Listening to our teacher’s story helped us realize that our books serve not only as educational aids for kids but also as vital tools for parents with sick children, helping them explain human anatomy to their children with colorful graphics, fun characters, and easy-to-understand explanations.
In addition, we bring other students into our project by connecting high schoolers around the world, with similar interests in medicine and public health. Whether it is partnering with other student-led nonprofits or allowing students from around the world to join our team, we aim to create a community of like-minded students. Through this, we have reached students across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Canada.
In the near future, we hope to increase the impact we make by expanding the availability of our books to bookstores, schools, hospitals, and libraries across the nation. Overall, we strive to impact every young reader who reads our book by spreading a love for literacy and science.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
A unique aspect of Humanizmo is that we are a non-profit organization. All the profits we gain go towards improving our organization and making a larger impact. When we sell our children’s books about the human body and make profit, we put the proceeds towards increasing our book supply, hosting events that can help us make a bigger impact, and developing resources that would improve the effectiveness of our business. We are most proud of the outreach we have made and how many smiles our books have put on children’s faces. Even when we sell by going door-to-door in our communities, it’s nice to see the smiles that appear on children’s faces when they open our books for the first time. We are thrilled to make an even broader impact by spreading our mission throughout the whole state, and even throughout the nation.
Business-wise we got here today through perseverance and persistence. We initially did go through struggles to gain a presence on social media and spread our mission but, through constant communication, making plans for the future, reflecting on hardships, and hosting meetings with our team, led us to overcome these challenges and come out stronger than ever. We have learned many lessons by starting Humanizmo. We are grateful that we were able to start our non-profit organization, but there will always be struggles before successes, and the important part is overcoming these struggles.
Our aim is to increase STEM education and literacy for children. It is one that addresses an issue rooted in underprivileged communities. In middle and low-income communities, there is one age-appropriate book for every 300 children.299 out of those 300 children don’t have access to one proper book to read. We believe it is important that literacy is introduced at a young age and that children have an understanding of how the human body works. By combining these two issues, we fostered our mission. By making an impact and spreading our story, we hope that other people can recognize this issue and improve the lack of literacy and STEM education in children.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Arushi Gupta, Susritha Daka, and Sudhiksha Gummudhavelly would love to dedicate this shoutout to Humanizmo. Humanizmo has been a major part of our lives since we co-founded the organization a year ago. This organization has allowed us to explore our healthcare and public health interests all while making a positive impact in our communities.

Website: https://www.humanizmo.org/

Instagram: @_humanizmo

Other: TikTok: @humanizmo