Insights Wanted

17 Pithy Insights For Startup Founders

The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.

I happened upon Dharmesh Shah's OnStartUps.com and found the above. It struck me as good advice for startup-social entrepreneurs to reflect upon.

What pithy insight on social entrepreneurship would you offer those starting-up new social ventures?

The Build A Village Project - Malawi

Justin M. Rose of Nu Skin Enterprises (NSE) has recently e-mailed NSE's associates announcing  the company's participation The Build A Village Project in Malawi. He writes of the project:

The Build a Village Project has two goals. The first is to build an actual village in Malawi, Africa. The second goal is to make this village a “living classroom.” Farmers from throughout Malawi will come to this village and be educated and trained in numerous disciplines including fish farming, drip irrigation, sustainable farming, forest conservation and tree farming, and more.

The ultimate goal is to train a cadre of self-sufficient farmers who will pass on what they have learned in their home villages. The Force for Good Foundation is undertaking this project with Napoleon Dzombe, the owner/operator of the Vitameal plant, Malawi Project. The program will be conducted in cooperation with the Malawi Government, the Ministry of Forestry, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture, and the Bunda College of Agriculture, University of Malawi. Progress on Stage I of the Project has already been made, including the construction of a dam resulting in a lake; the planting of trees; and the beginnings of a nursery, with 134,000 plants now in the ground. We have also secured the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Forestry, and the Malawi Revenue Authority. To reach Stage II of this project, we need your support to help build housing for farmers and their families, classroom and administrative blocks, a laboratory, livestock fences, and more. Your cash contributions to the Force for Good Foundation will help make it possible.

The Build a Village Project brings governmental, NGO, philanthropic, corporate, charitable and social entrepreneurial resources into action. If this project proves successful, senior managers at NSE have told me they will attempt to replicate it through the Nourish the Children initiative in other regions of need.

technorati tags:Social-Entrepreneurship, malawi, nourish-the-children, nuskin-enterprises, africa, hunger, philanthropy, charity, entrepreneurship

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Smith, Ford & Social Entrepreneurship

'No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable.' Adam Smith

'A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.' Henry Ford

technorati tags:social-entreprenurship, Ford, Quotations, Adam_Smith