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KickStart in the United States
KickStart established an
office in San Francisco to raise funds for our work in Africa and to
foster collaborations with industry, academics, and the development
community in the USA. Our San Francisco office serves as KickStart's
worldwide headquarters and is a registered US non-profit 501(c)3
organization.
The goals of our San Francisco office are as follows:
- Raise
the funds needed to take our existing technologies into other countries
both within and outside of Africa - demand is high from both local
entrepreneurs and other non-profit development organizations in
countries such as: Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, South Africa, and Mozambique.
- Raise
the funds needed to research and develop new irrigation, processing,
and transport technologies for small businesses in Africa.
- Raise
awareness about the strengths and successes of this new way of doing
cost effective economic development in developing economies through
lectures and media outreach.
- Help launch and manage new country programs in Africa and eventually the rest of the world (excluding North America and Europe).
- Establish
local collaborations with US companies to improve our design
methodology, assist with technology development, and recruit new
interns and staff - KickStart is currently working with IDEO in Palo
Alto on a low-cost, manually operated deep well water pump and
Foundation Design in San Francisco on a new manual well drilling
technique.
- Establish collaborations with US universities to promote interest in appropriate technology and business for developing countries and open the KickStart model up to peer review within academic circles. The Harvard Business School has written a case study
on KickStart's unique development program. We have collaborated on
course work with and hosted MBA interns and PhD students from Stanford
and helped supervise engineering students at the University of
Maryland.
- Develop implementation partnerships with other development
non-profit organizations. Xtracycle Foundation is working with
KickStart's design and manufacturing teams on the production of a new
Xtracycle design for Africa
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