Africa's Moment
Global Social Benefit Incubator
Global Social Benefit Incubator 2008
Exercise 1: Target Market Statement
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Case Study
Hosted by Charles "Hipbone" Cameron (October 2007)
David Miles Hanschell is a primary school teacher on the Island of Bute in Scotland. He is my friend and a considerable source of inspiration to me. I want to introduce him to you, and to make him a "test case" to see what this community c
an do to encourage and support a fine entrepreneur and his worthy social venture.
David was born and brought up in Barbados in the West Indies, and when he heard about the destruction of the neighboring island of Grenada in 2004's hurricane Ivan, he felt compelled to do something. With school closures, new builds and a continuous renewing of resources in Scottish schools he wanted to recycle the discarded textbooks, furniture, computers etc., and help Grenada at the same time.
Thus far, on his own initiative, he has been able to send four ocean freight containers of educational equipment out to Grenada, and is hoping to send more. Next week one of his containers will be filled with surplus from 14 primary (elementary) schools, and he already has three other 40-ft containers fully loaded and ready to go.
Through sheer persistent foot-slogging and networking, David now has a source of surplus ocean freight containers at no cost, is getting ISO certification for them, another company has offered him free storage capacity, and a large high school which is being totally re-equipped has offered him all their desks, chairs, book cases, whiteboards, and other furnishings without charge. In addition, the Justice Dept. of the Scottish Office is providing him with youths to do community service by moving everything for him. These are kids mostly from less favored socioeconomic backgrounds who grew up with his children in the neighborhood where he has lived for 17 years.
Meanwhile, David says, there are schools all over the world that are under-resourced, where the children don't even have a desk to write at, let alone a chair to sit on. And mountains of good quality surplus educational resources are ending up in landfill throughout Scotland and probably Europe.
As you see, David can do a great deal with enthusiasm and persistence: he has the entrepreneurial spirit in spades, but not the training of a businessman. He's a Scottish schoolteacher with five months to go before retirement, at which point he wants to ramp up his efforts. He's also untidy, unbureaucratic, not an "office person", wonderfully warm-hearted, and in need of support from someone who can talk him (patiently, he says) through the various aspects of taking a wonderful and desperately needed idea and establishing it, leveraging his existing efforts to create a revenue stream that can sustain and grow his campaign.
Now that David's story has inspired you, can you help him? He needs:
:: support from people with business expertise and social conscience
:: help in evaluating his project, its strengths and weaknesses
:: to know where the project stands in terms of sustainability
:: where the project stands in terms of scaling up
:: support with all the administrative issues, business planning, presentation preparations etc related to the project, and
:: help in maintaining and updating his website.
Let's talk with David. Let's see what we can do as a community.
an do to encourage and support a fine entrepreneur and his worthy social venture.David was born and brought up in Barbados in the West Indies, and when he heard about the destruction of the neighboring island of Grenada in 2004's hurricane Ivan, he felt compelled to do something. With school closures, new builds and a continuous renewing of resources in Scottish schools he wanted to recycle the discarded textbooks, furniture, computers etc., and help Grenada at the same time.
Thus far, on his own initiative, he has been able to send four ocean freight containers of educational equipment out to Grenada, and is hoping to send more. Next week one of his containers will be filled with surplus from 14 primary (elementary) schools, and he already has three other 40-ft containers fully loaded and ready to go.
Through sheer persistent foot-slogging and networking, David now has a source of surplus ocean freight containers at no cost, is getting ISO certification for them, another company has offered him free storage capacity, and a large high school which is being totally re-equipped has offered him all their desks, chairs, book cases, whiteboards, and other furnishings without charge. In addition, the Justice Dept. of the Scottish Office is providing him with youths to do community service by moving everything for him. These are kids mostly from less favored socioeconomic backgrounds who grew up with his children in the neighborhood where he has lived for 17 years.
Meanwhile, David says, there are schools all over the world that are under-resourced, where the children don't even have a desk to write at, let alone a chair to sit on. And mountains of good quality surplus educational resources are ending up in landfill throughout Scotland and probably Europe.
As you see, David can do a great deal with enthusiasm and persistence: he has the entrepreneurial spirit in spades, but not the training of a businessman. He's a Scottish schoolteacher with five months to go before retirement, at which point he wants to ramp up his efforts. He's also untidy, unbureaucratic, not an "office person", wonderfully warm-hearted, and in need of support from someone who can talk him (patiently, he says) through the various aspects of taking a wonderful and desperately needed idea and establishing it, leveraging his existing efforts to create a revenue stream that can sustain and grow his campaign.
Now that David's story has inspired you, can you help him? He needs::: support from people with business expertise and social conscience
:: help in evaluating his project, its strengths and weaknesses
:: to know where the project stands in terms of sustainability
:: where the project stands in terms of scaling up
:: support with all the administrative issues, business planning, presentation preparations etc related to the project, and
:: help in maintaining and updating his website.
Let's talk with David. Let's see what we can do as a community.
David in Bute: Initial thoughts
First that David is probably a long way from the resources he'd like to recycle, being on a Scottish Island and that the website although giving a clear picture of what he was doing was incredibly slow to load, several minutes to reveal the home page. This might be easily remedied by transfer to another server.
My instinct is that David needs to seed the idea of what he's doing among other communities, rather than scale up his own operations. I'm thinking a "freecycle" approach specifically for school equipment rather than trying to build a pyramid of management.
In the same position, I'd be doing what I'm actually doing for other causes. Getting a message out to the largest possible audience. The social networking sites with users numbering millions, that have the tools to publicise events, link to fundraising tools and even perhaps building applications that generate revenue and engender brand loyalty through their social purpose.
Having etablished the community replication, then the logistics contacts can be brought to bear, with David becoming the shipping facilitator and mentor.
If it isn't already, I'd also be re-building the website under one of the opensource CMS products, just to make the editing task a clerical task rather than a coding one.
More later perhaps,
Jeff