KickStart!!! Solving Poverty Issues Through Engineering and Sustainability

One of the best ways to kickstart my new year: blog about sustainability! Recently, while looking into the water crisis and potential solutions on National Geographic, I came across KickStart, an organization whose mission to aid poor farmers in Africa through the sale of technology seemed to be the epitome of my favorite classic maxim, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." PLUS, this group combines sustainability, engineering, and social activism ALL IN ONE. What more could you ask for?!

I was impressed by KickStart because of its unique approach to eradicating poverty - instead of merely giving donations of food or money, they provide motivated individuals with proper tools to farm, stimulating both the economy AND a productive lifestyle.  

A video of Martin Fisher from youtube, talking about KickStart and its goals

In many low-income African countries, irrigation and water transportation is a huge issue for poor farming entrepreneurs. About 80% of people are impoverished, unable to earn enough money to purchase food, clothing, shelter, or other goods. The problem is not necessarily the ability or desire to work; rather, it's a lack of efficient technology, the first building block of prolific agricultural production.

Founded by Martin Fisher and Nick Moon in 1991, KickStart is an organization on a mission to lift millions of agrarian Africans out of poverty "quickly, cost-effectively, and sustainably". This team of engineers and salesmen design, promote, and sell money-making, manual tools to poor farmers in Nairobi, Kenya, Tanzania, Mali and Burkina Faso. Some of these tools include powerful pressure pumps and hip pumps for water and irrigation, as well as a stabilized soil block press and cooking oil press. The initial purchase is expensive, but lead to great results, and are designed specifically for affordability, energy efficiency, portability, cultural acceptance, sustainability, safety and ergonomics, and profitability.

Although people of these countries have been given donations of expensive gifts in the past, these are often not replenishable; technology tends to break, or become obsolete. KickStart gives motivated individuals seeking to earn their way out of poverty a few simple tools, a chance to establish a productive farming lifestyle.

Super MoneyMaker Max Pump
"KickStart :: Products :: MoneyMaker Max." KickStart :: Products :: MoneyMaker Max. KickStart, n.d. Web. 04 Jan. 2013.

There have been many success stories, such as that of Mahmoud Guindo, a Mali man who uses the irrigation water pumps to improve his family garden and sell fruits and vegetables, a side-job that has doubled his annual income. People like Samuel Ndung'u Mburu have increased their vegetable sales from $50 twice a year to $250-$500 every three months, allowing him to send his son to technical college, inspiring his neighbors to buy an irrigation pump, and buy more land for further growth.

Overall, I thought that KickStart provided a refreshing approach to helping people earn money and provide for themselves. This is exactly the type of engineering I'd love to do in the future!