Kickstart – Martin Fisher and Nick Moon
After working for developmental agencies in Africa, Nick Moon and Martin Fisher became disillusioned with the lack of sustainable impacts they were having on poverty. They formed Kickstart, a nonprofit social enterprise that aims to help millions of people out of poverty. Nick and Martin found that the number one need of the poor is a way to make money. Of the 1.1 billion people who live on less than $1 per day worldwide, 70% are small-scale rural famers, working on approximately an acre of unproductive land. To improve the lives of these farming families, they need to be moved from subsistence rain-fed farming to commercial irrigated farming. Irrigation allows farmers to grow 3 or 4 crop cycles a year instead of 1 or 2, and to have crops available for sale in the off-season when prices are high. Kickstart designs and markets low cost pumps and equipment that have been used by thousands of farmers to establish profitable commercial enterprises in Tanzania, Kenya and Mali. Kickstart tracks and quantifies the impacts created by their technologies. KickStart’s Impact (as of July 1, 2011)
- People Out of Poverty 570,400
- Businesses Created 114,000
- Jobs Created 173,200
The cost to Kickstart to get one family out of poverty forever is just US$300 www.kickstart.org