Many thanks to Megan Stewart for helping spread the word and covering our Longboard Trek! (Link to Story)
Entrepreneurs skate and ski for African development
Funds will go towards business training centre in Kenya
by Megan Stewart, Vancouver Courier, September 1, 2010
Les Robertson and Rob Foxall are crossing Kenya from the capital to the coast on four small but robust urethane wheels. Justin Long packed freestyle skis to a 16,000-foot summit to descend a disappearing glacier.
These Vancouver entrepreneurs are pursuing extreme and exhausting feats in the name of social enterprise–the business of making money and making change.
“If my blood, sweat and tears will encourage my peers and network to perk up and pay attention enough to give–then sweat, bleed and cry I will,” wrote Robertson from rural Kenya earlier this week during the Skate4Kenya trek.
A UBC Sauder School of Business graduate, both men will longboard skateboarding from Nairobi to Mombasa, 440 kilometres to the east, in support of a business training centre for young entrepreneurs in Kenya.
The graduate program runs a course called Social Enterprise 101, which under the guidance of associate professor Nancy Langton, connected business mentorship and opportunity with youth living in one of the continent’s largest slums.
Robertson and Foxall, both riding longboards made in North Vancouver by Rayne, are raising $20,000 to open a business training centre year round.
They also hope Kenyans will take note of their example. “Westerners are not just about ‘aid,’” said Robertson. “We are invested in the positive growth of the nation and its people.”
His aspiration is that “global entrepreneurial citizens” will grow out of their efforts to teach fundamental business skills.
He said a lot of the Kenyans he meets through the Sauder program want to create socially beneficial businesses such as garbage collection, eco-tourism, educational programs for street kids, safe toilets in underdeveloped neighbourhoods, and a text messaging service that delivers pre-natal and maternal health care to mothers.
“In Kenya… any business creates a social benefit because the economics of it help drive prosperity. Entrepreneurship–self sustenance–will help end poverty,” he said.
“The biggest misnomer is that a social business cannot or does not turn a profit. Social does not necessarily mean purely not-for-profit or charity.”
By tackling the challenge of distance and over-land trekking, Robertson says he shows his commitment to his cause and draws attention to it.
Justin Long shares this sentiment.
In June he ascended the Stanley Plateau Glacier in Uganda, widely considered one of the most dangerous summits in Africa, to raise money for children’s health and support a Ugandan hospital.
When he reached the peak, he strapped on a pair of skis.
He couldn’t see 15 feet ahead because of fog, but the visibility was not the greatest challenge. “The glacier is breaking apart,” he said once back in Vancouver. “There were crevasses on either side of me.”
A lack of fresh water threatens to become a major health concern in eastern Africa, said Long, who is a Nevada resident in his fourth year at SFU.
He aspires to climb and ski the most perilous peaks on each continent to show others that giving a little support to a worthwhile cause is straightforward but significant.
“It’s a dangerous thing to do, but the danger element is a great way to get people involved,” he said.
Fundraising demands a little blood, sweat and tears. The adrenaline is a bonus.
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