A League of His Own
Monday, June 18 : 8:52 AM : 0 comments :
While visiting New York, I met this incredible guy, a friend and semi co-worker of Leslie's -- her foundation, Echoing Green, provides support for young social entrepreneurs. Andrew's dedicated himself to helping farmers in Kenya raise more profitable foodstuffs. Okay, that's a terrible way to explain it. Here's what the organization he started is doing (in a good explanation):
Now, lots of people go to Africa or other countries on humanitarian missions, religious missions, non-profit work, looking for adoptable babies, etc, but Andrew is there making a huge difference in people's lives almost by sheer willpower, dedication, and drive. I was fortunate enough to catch him during one of his trips stateside when he was giving talks and acquiring additional funding."Andrew Youn works with farm families living in permanent hunger conditions in Kenya. Recognizing that 80% of the extreme poor in Africa are farmers, he is demonstrating a model that increases food production for these farmers by 4x immediately, and brings them within reach of high value export markets.
His organization, One Acre Fund, provides small holding farmers with a complete solution, starting from 1) organizing producer groups, 2) providing appropriate capital and technology, 3) extension services, and 4) harvest consolidation and sale. The target social impact is 300% growth in farm income, and 50% reduction in child mortality rates.
Importantly, Andrew also hopes to show that this can be done at a profit, by recapturing a portion of the farmers' harvest. This creates (a) sustainability (non-reliance on donor funds), and (b) scalability (potential for private sector replication)."
I'm hardly a humanitarian at heart, I'm not inclined to look too far outside my own selfish needs but meeting Andrew, who is my age and doing so much, was immensely inspirational and awe-inspiring. You know how you're always glad that there are people out there doing good work (even if you're not)? Well, here's a person doing good works. Like a real person doing good works. He saw a need, had an idea, and now he's over in Kenya.
If anyone is interested in learning more about Andrew's work, looking to take some time off from the corporate world to help him out, or to make a donation, email me and I'd love to get you guys connected. Andrew's not only patient, nice, cool, and friendly but also potentially really good at Squabble; isn't that reason enough to befriend someone?
