African American aviation pioneer, John Robinson, who constructed his first airplane out of spare automobile parts in the 1930s, found opportunity in Africa when he went to the aid of embattled Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia before World War II. Today Mr. Robinson is known as one of the founders of Africa's most reliable premier Ethiopian Airways.
Like Haile Selassie, in 2017 Neema Mushi, founder of Licious Adventure in Tanzania, was eager to make a U.S. connection. She was looking for U.S. companies willing to carry the African textiles and other items her shop sells to the tourists her company's guides lead up Mount Kilimanjaro and to the beaches of Zanzibar. Now, however, not U.S. companies but Chinese ones, such as Anningtex, Buwanas, Hitarget, and Sanne, fill Ms. Mushi's shelves with mass produced, Chinese-made "African" textiles, called kitenge. Locally-owned African textile producers in Nigeria and Ghana, unable to compete with lower-cost Chinese goods, have gone out of business.
The point is: if you are an importer; photo journalist or documentary filmmaker looking for a story; someone interested in trying out a new teaching or low-cost home construction technique; a miner or an adventurer seeking opportunities of any kind, Africa welcomes you.
Two essential ingredients help you get started: money and contacts. With a nest egg, car to sell, or Sugar Daddy, you can plunk down $1000-plus for an airplane ticket and head for Africa immediately. Although a crowdfunding appeal, saving from a job, or persuading a media outlet to fund your project, will delay your take off, keep an eye on the prize.i Also consider submitting a Scholar Registration to Birthright AFRICA at birthrightafrica.org. This new non-profit in New York City is the brainchild of Walla Elsheikh, an immigrant from Sudan who began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs. His vision is to send young African-Americans on free trips to Africa to explore and connect with their cultural roots. On these trips, young adults also have an unique opportunity to discover ways they could begin their careers in Africa.
Economic officers in foreign Embassies and consulates should be able to provide helpful local contacts in Africa, but don't neglect seeking assistance from missionary communities. Religious orders in your home country can put you in touch with their superiors in African host countries. For example, in Namibia, Africa, China built a container terminal and nearby oil storage installation at Walvis Bay, and South Africa's De Beers Group extracted 1.4 million carats from the offshore coastal waters. I also saw Sister Patricia Crowley, at the St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, was about to leave for Windhoer, Namibia, to serve as spiritual director on a one year assignment at a Benedictine missionary community there. An appointment with Sister Patricia in Chicago could lead to a letter introducing your purpose and background to those who could help you in Namibia.
Likewise, visiting communities of Dominican nuns in a home country could provide contacts with the nuns who teach girls to make a living by sewing and using a computer in Bukoba, Tanzania, and the nuns who teach farmers to plant hybrid tomato crops that withstand heat and insect infestations in Nairobi, Kenya.
On their outposts in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, the Jesuit order can provide inspiration and information for those investigating Africa careers. While assigned to the Jesuit Refugee Service in East Africa, Father James Martin, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, helped set up tailoring shops, several small restaurants, a bakery, a little chicken farm, and the Mikono Centre that sells African handicrafts. By following in the path of African-inspired Picasso and a Mozambican wood carver who sold a three-foot-tall ebony sculpture at the Mikono Centre, artists from around the world may find fulfillment working in Africa.
In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah would appreciate a visit from a journalist willing to investigate the complicated land ownership rights, deeds held by chiefs, and government's incomplete database of mining concessions. Although the bishop thought the church held a legal deed to land a chief donated for a clinic and nursing school, Chinese miners began digging "Mr. Kumar's" gold mine on the property.
Ghana is not the only African country in need of land use planners, legal assistance, doctors, teachers and others willing to discover career opportunities in Africa.
Showing posts with label fundraising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fundraising. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2020
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Add Pizzazz to Service Projects
Sure a scout troop, school band, or church youth group can organize a car wash, run a bake sale, or collect funds for every mile walked. The trick is to come up with a new project to attract media attention.
Water Aid, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), needed a project to gain support for Goal 6 of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development objective, water and toilets for all. This wasn't a naturally attention-getting topic, like saving children or baby animals. And the place where Water Aid wanted to attract attention was New York City, center of high-priced public relations firms that make the big bucks by promoting any and every thing, such as rock stars and best sellers.
What Water Aid did was invite individuals and organizations to join a two-mile, "water walk" from 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue to the United Nations building at 45th Street and First Avenue. Two miles just happened to be the distance the average girl or woman in many developing countries walks every day to procure the family's water...time she could spend getting an education or earning an income.
On their walks through NYC, females and males of all ages and various nationalities and professions offered the media a visual photo opportunity by carrying buckets in their hands or on their heads. The buckets also collected funds from passersby.
All the walkers could explain how a lack of water and sanitation caused diarrhea, other diseases, and death; every two minutes one child under five dies from dirty drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene. Water Aid considers the right to water a human right and opposes selling water, since privatization enables cities and corporations to limit water access to manufacturers and people who can afford it.
The two-mile "water walk" idea invites groups to put greater effort into coming up with original fundraisers. I just saw an article that mentioned managers made Google great by demanding employees to think bigger and bigger. And Water Aid collected funds in buckets that were relevant to its cause. I've seen firemen and women collecting money in their big boots. A middle school collected money at a fundraising dinner in oatmeal boxes band members decorated to look like drums in the middle of every table.
Once a group has a visual event and related fund-collection containers, write a news release describing the event and the purpose of the event. Make a list of producers, addresses, and telephone numbers at local TV news programs and editors at newspapers. Send out your news releases, designate someone to call stations and papers a couple of days before the event, and get ready to welcome the attention. The world has many needs that merit your best efforts.
Water Aid, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), needed a project to gain support for Goal 6 of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development objective, water and toilets for all. This wasn't a naturally attention-getting topic, like saving children or baby animals. And the place where Water Aid wanted to attract attention was New York City, center of high-priced public relations firms that make the big bucks by promoting any and every thing, such as rock stars and best sellers.
What Water Aid did was invite individuals and organizations to join a two-mile, "water walk" from 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue to the United Nations building at 45th Street and First Avenue. Two miles just happened to be the distance the average girl or woman in many developing countries walks every day to procure the family's water...time she could spend getting an education or earning an income.
On their walks through NYC, females and males of all ages and various nationalities and professions offered the media a visual photo opportunity by carrying buckets in their hands or on their heads. The buckets also collected funds from passersby.
All the walkers could explain how a lack of water and sanitation caused diarrhea, other diseases, and death; every two minutes one child under five dies from dirty drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene. Water Aid considers the right to water a human right and opposes selling water, since privatization enables cities and corporations to limit water access to manufacturers and people who can afford it.
The two-mile "water walk" idea invites groups to put greater effort into coming up with original fundraisers. I just saw an article that mentioned managers made Google great by demanding employees to think bigger and bigger. And Water Aid collected funds in buckets that were relevant to its cause. I've seen firemen and women collecting money in their big boots. A middle school collected money at a fundraising dinner in oatmeal boxes band members decorated to look like drums in the middle of every table.
Once a group has a visual event and related fund-collection containers, write a news release describing the event and the purpose of the event. Make a list of producers, addresses, and telephone numbers at local TV news programs and editors at newspapers. Send out your news releases, designate someone to call stations and papers a couple of days before the event, and get ready to welcome the attention. The world has many needs that merit your best efforts.
Saturday, March 4, 2017
How to Become an International Entrepreneur
In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight, the creator/founder of NIKE, quotes the maxim, "When goods don't pass international borders, soldiers will." He adds, "Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity."
Knight's book encourages those who would work for world peace and their own happiness. He frankly presents the ways he handled and mishandled the challenges every international entrepreneur faces and tells them they have a big bull's eye on their backs. He observes trolls everywhere trying to block, thwart, and say no to the entrepreneurial spirit. Elsewhere, I've read entrepreneurs can best avoid discouragement by telling no one, when they first decide to start a business.
Knight's business began modestly. He sold shoes out of the trunk of his car at sporting events and opened his first office next to a pulsating bar.
He embraced a management style of telling people what to do (not how to do things) and letting them surprise him with the results. What did one of his early employees do? He set up a data base keeping information about his retail customers, not only what they bought but also their birthdays so he could send cards. And he furnished a store with comfortable chairs bought at yard sales, shelved books about running along with shoes, hung posters of runners, and gave his best customers T-shirts with the company logo on them.
Knight outlines sources of funding: family and friends; local, regional, national, and international banks; venture capitalists; trading companies; public A and B stock offerings. Each funding option has pluses and minuses. Trading companies, for example, lend money with the aim of buying out/taking over the business unless, at the offset, a business stipulates its unwillingness to sell.
Besides the never-ending need to find funding, Knight ran into other problems. Steve Prefontaine, the famous distance runner who was NIKE's first celebrity endorser, died in an automobile accident. Packing too many innovations into a new shoe led to a recall. Despite a contract, the first overseas manufacturer Knight relied on to provide the shoes he sold decided to dump him and get a new distributor. NIKE would have better luck when it was first to find a shoe supplier in China. In the US, competitors tried to put NIKE out of business by using an American Selling Price customs provision. After making a high priced shoe similar to NIKE's, US manufacturers asked the government to impose a $25 million duty on NIKE imports that totaled 20% of their American selling prices. Even after negotiations, NIKE paid a custom's duty of $9 million.
Setbacks can turn into learning experiences and worldwide benefits. After the media blasted conditions in its overseas factories, NIKE responded by becoming a leader in the factory reform movement. To eliminate the toxic process of bonding shoe uppers to soles in a rubber room, NIKE invented a fume-less water-based bonding agent that the company shared with its competitors.
And, finally, Shoe Dog teaches the cure for burnout is more work, and the Japanese word, kensho, means the aha experience of enlightenment, when you suddenly understand.
Knight's book encourages those who would work for world peace and their own happiness. He frankly presents the ways he handled and mishandled the challenges every international entrepreneur faces and tells them they have a big bull's eye on their backs. He observes trolls everywhere trying to block, thwart, and say no to the entrepreneurial spirit. Elsewhere, I've read entrepreneurs can best avoid discouragement by telling no one, when they first decide to start a business.
Knight's business began modestly. He sold shoes out of the trunk of his car at sporting events and opened his first office next to a pulsating bar.
He embraced a management style of telling people what to do (not how to do things) and letting them surprise him with the results. What did one of his early employees do? He set up a data base keeping information about his retail customers, not only what they bought but also their birthdays so he could send cards. And he furnished a store with comfortable chairs bought at yard sales, shelved books about running along with shoes, hung posters of runners, and gave his best customers T-shirts with the company logo on them.
Knight outlines sources of funding: family and friends; local, regional, national, and international banks; venture capitalists; trading companies; public A and B stock offerings. Each funding option has pluses and minuses. Trading companies, for example, lend money with the aim of buying out/taking over the business unless, at the offset, a business stipulates its unwillingness to sell.
Besides the never-ending need to find funding, Knight ran into other problems. Steve Prefontaine, the famous distance runner who was NIKE's first celebrity endorser, died in an automobile accident. Packing too many innovations into a new shoe led to a recall. Despite a contract, the first overseas manufacturer Knight relied on to provide the shoes he sold decided to dump him and get a new distributor. NIKE would have better luck when it was first to find a shoe supplier in China. In the US, competitors tried to put NIKE out of business by using an American Selling Price customs provision. After making a high priced shoe similar to NIKE's, US manufacturers asked the government to impose a $25 million duty on NIKE imports that totaled 20% of their American selling prices. Even after negotiations, NIKE paid a custom's duty of $9 million.
Setbacks can turn into learning experiences and worldwide benefits. After the media blasted conditions in its overseas factories, NIKE responded by becoming a leader in the factory reform movement. To eliminate the toxic process of bonding shoe uppers to soles in a rubber room, NIKE invented a fume-less water-based bonding agent that the company shared with its competitors.
And, finally, Shoe Dog teaches the cure for burnout is more work, and the Japanese word, kensho, means the aha experience of enlightenment, when you suddenly understand.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Productive Summer Projects
One of the many nice things about summer is the free time it gives kids to read about other lands and to broaden their interests. Younger children, 3 to 8 years old might like the following books:
Kids can escape the fate of some high school students in Wisconsin who didn't graduate with their classes, because they failed to fulfill their community service requirements by learning to help people and animals who are hungry, lonely, have a disease, or are suffering in some other way. Sometimes bringing a flower from the garden or cookies they helped bake on a visit will cheer a grandparent, neighbor, or nursing home resident. To reach beyond their communities to buy mosquito nets, school books, or vaccines, students can raise money for donations from a yard sale, lemonade or produce stand, or sales of jewelry or other crafts they have made. (See other suggestions in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future.)
The following ideas for helping animals came from the World Wildlife Fund:
1) Young people with a summer birthday can ask guests, instead of presents, to contribute an amount equivalent to their ages to an animal cause.
2) If youngsters are competing in running, swimming, or cycling races this summer, they can ask friends and family members to donate a $1 per mile or lap to an animal cause.
3) Students can start writing a free blog (on blogspot.com, for example) about favorite animals: such as dolphins, sharks, tigers, wolves, monkeys, pandas, and ask blog viewers to contribute to an animal rescue or conservation organization (Some of these organizations are mentioned on the earlier blog post, "Talk with the Animals.)
- Brush of the Gods by Lenore Look introduces Wu Daozi, a 7th century Chinese artist
- Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim Bridges tells about a Chinese girl who wanted to go to a university
- The Fortune Tellers by Lloyd Alexander takes children to Cameroon to hear about a poor carpenter who tried unsuccessfully to be a fortune teller. Kids will really like the illustrations, too
- Bravo, Chico Canta! Bravo! by Pat Mora and Libby Martinez shows how it helps to know more that one language, when a multilingual mouse saves his family that lives in a theatre
Kids can escape the fate of some high school students in Wisconsin who didn't graduate with their classes, because they failed to fulfill their community service requirements by learning to help people and animals who are hungry, lonely, have a disease, or are suffering in some other way. Sometimes bringing a flower from the garden or cookies they helped bake on a visit will cheer a grandparent, neighbor, or nursing home resident. To reach beyond their communities to buy mosquito nets, school books, or vaccines, students can raise money for donations from a yard sale, lemonade or produce stand, or sales of jewelry or other crafts they have made. (See other suggestions in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future.)
The following ideas for helping animals came from the World Wildlife Fund:1) Young people with a summer birthday can ask guests, instead of presents, to contribute an amount equivalent to their ages to an animal cause.
2) If youngsters are competing in running, swimming, or cycling races this summer, they can ask friends and family members to donate a $1 per mile or lap to an animal cause.
3) Students can start writing a free blog (on blogspot.com, for example) about favorite animals: such as dolphins, sharks, tigers, wolves, monkeys, pandas, and ask blog viewers to contribute to an animal rescue or conservation organization (Some of these organizations are mentioned on the earlier blog post, "Talk with the Animals.)
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