Launching my business

     I still remember the night in 2004 that I watched a documentary about the Rwandan genocide.  I could not shake the fact that 800,000 people were murdered, mostly by machete, and I had paid little attention to it.  Before that night I didn’t even know where Rwanda was or that a genocide had occurred.

     I made it a point to learn more about Rwanda and Africa.  I learned that a person in Africa dies every three seconds from something that is preventable or treatable.  The reason for all these deaths? Poverty.  I decided I would try to do something about it.  Could I create a project that would change lives?

      It seemed the best way to help would be to create a business that would provide poverty stricken Africans the means to take care of themselves.  Why not start a company that would give ownership to the workers?  They could take the profits of their business and feed their families, pay school fees and build houses.  They could even save some of this money and start other businesses.   Instead of waiting for a hand out they could be empowered to help themselves.

      The biggest challenge was trying to figure out what to produce.  This product needed to be relatively simple to construct, easy to ship and would ideally help the buyer in some way.

      This business concept kicked around in my head for a couple years.  I began to doubt if I was being truthful to myself.  Did I really want to try and make a difference?  Would I really be able to do this?  The answer came in early January of 2007.  A friend suggested we produce reusable cloth shopping bags.  Africa Bags was born.

      A cloth shopping bag could be made on a treadle sewing machine that didn’t even require electricity. These bags are light enough to be shipped in bulk.  We could also market the bags as a solution to plastic shopping bags which use petroleum in their production and create pollution in their disposal.

     Just 4 months later my wife, Holly, and I were on our way to Malawi, Africa, one of the poorest countries in the world.  Training and production started and steadily grew.  In 2008, our first full year of bag making, over 4,000 Africa Bags were purchased.

      The 5 villages of Africa Bags are flourishing.  A community center, an orphan care center, a micro-lending program, and fertilizer for village crops are all by products from bag profits.  Can a cloth shopping bag change a life?  The answer is yes.  My life was the first one changed.

Advice for others

The most important ingredient for success is passion. We have been able to grow Africa Bags because of our passion for fighting poverity in Malawi . It is the first thing we think about in the morning and the last thing we think about before we fall a sleep at night.