For the past six months, student Leah Keogh has been working on co-founding a nonprofit: Lifethought International.
She said some organizations that aim to make a positive impact with regards to community improvement projects are not very sustainable.
In a case study from her social impact class, for example, Keogh learned about an organization that built wells for several communities in Africa that were far away from sources of clean water. Research conducted after the wells were built revealed they were not really used because the act of traveling with friends and family to obtain water was deeply intertwined with the community’s social life and culture.

“That's their community and their life, so you can't just drop your idea into the middle of it and hope that it changes something,” she said.
This kind of disconnect is part of the reason why Lifethought aims to take a more personalized approach. A statement from its website reads: “We envision a world where every individual, regardless of geographical location or socioeconomic status, can develop the capacity and have access to the skills they need to become an agent for positive change in their community.”
“Lifethought’s vision and mission is to find those people that are already trying to make a difference in their community and then supporting them in the ways that they need,” Keogh said.
Throughout her adolescence and to this day, Keogh has had exposure to the international education space through her mom, a global education consultant who develops curriculums for and trains people to teach English as a second language.
Six months ago at an International Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference, Keogh’s mom connected with a teacher from Mali named Korotimi Haidara. This connection eventually grew into a working relationship with the Keoghs as Lifethought came to fruition along with its first project: a service-learning curriculum for children.

Service-learning, an academic approach in which students learn about serving each other, their community and how they fit within their community, is widely recognized in the academic world and particularly in Panama. However, Keogh said educators in Panama have identified a problem in their schools with dual immersion language programs because they do not have service-learning materials specifically geared towards English language learners.
“You can't just take a random curriculum and give it to them because it's not designed for ease of language learning (...) especially in an elementary school,” Keogh said.
Keogh had previously interned for the Fundación Gabriel Lewis Galindo and the organization reached out to Lifethought in an attempt to fill this need. From this effort came the Make a Difference curriculum which includes several activities for children aimed at fostering motivation for community service. The curriculum was developed by Keogh and a masters’ student specializing in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
The service-learning curriculum has now been piloted by Korotimi Haidara in Mali and the Fundación Gabriel Lewis Galindo in Panama. During the summer, Keogh was able to utilize the curriculum in Romania, where she has worked for the past two years at an English immersion summer camp for kids.
Since that initial connection with Korotimi Haidara, Lifethought International has become officially registered as a nonprofit in the state of Arkansas, where Keogh and her family are from.

Future plans for Keogh and Lifethought include the creation of a conflict-resolution curriculum for teenagers in partnership with the new BYU Peacemaker Project, partnering with a nonprofit in Zambia, creating an arts integration curriculum for TESOL programs and producing needed resources for English teachers in Panama who work with students who have special needs. In September 2024, Keogh was able to present at Intermountain TESOL Fall Conference.
All this work is being done while Keogh is a full-time student majoring in Spanish with minors in both Latin American Studies and Global Community Impact. She said that while balancing priorities and managing expectations has been challenging, her work with Lifethought has been deeply transformative.
“This phase of life can feel so self-centered (...) but at the same time, I don’t have to be only focused on me,” Keogh said. “I feel like I’m a completely different person than I was six months ago (...) I just want to do what I can to do good in the world and help people and be an advocate. I always felt that way, but it's so much more possible than I thought it was.”