![Citadel Foundation For Kids [CFK]](http://www.citadelfoundationforkids.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cropped-Screen-Shot-2016-02-09-at-7.00.43-PM.png)
2016 CFK SUMMER GOALS
CFK’s current focus is improving the Nima community with a holistic approach involving education, healthcare and business sectors. These take the form of project-based learning projects led by students and young professionals. This summer, we aim to identify the best ways to improve all three sectors in Nima, and then share these with the world.
EDUCATION
In education, we are taking twelve kids—six boys, and six girls—through the WAGiLabs’ Playbook. It’s an extracurricular program designed to teach children social entrepreneurship. In brief social entrepreneurship merges a business model with the pursuit of a social cause. It ensures that the social cause is met with revenue from the integrated business model.
On one hand, people try to address social causes through charitable organizations that are mostly dependent on donations. On the other hand, people give part of their disposable income—money after important expenses have been paid—from their business initiatives to charity. They may consider business and the pursuit of social causes as entirely separate. Social entrepreneurship unites —doing business and addressing social needs. From my perspective, it presents a better way for doing both
For instance, as a charity, one way to help ten homeless people attain better living standards would be to request public donations to pay for their housing and daily living expenses. However, this model is dependent on donors’ willingness and ability to support the cause in the long-term.
When donations stop coming in, the charity built to address this cause can no longer function. From the donors’ perspective, the willingness to support the cause may not change in the long-term. However, changes in their lives, like the birth of a new child, may change the amount of disposable they have to give to charity.
This summer, we want to teach our kids social entrepreneurship so they can address social causes without facing the challenge of uncertain cash flow outlined above. As residents in their communities, they are better equipped to understand and address social problems in them through collaboration than we can. Our goal is to help them be more effective in this endeavor.
HEALTH
In healthcare, we want to remove the geographic and socio-economic barriers to the access and delivery of care. Technology is removing physical barriers between people. Now, you could simply pick up your phone and five minutes later, be on a conference call with people on three different continents.
Likewise, patients can now speak with medical professionals anywhere around the world using relatively inexpensive technology. Telehealth is the broad term for the platforms and devices that allow digital interactions among medical professionals, patients and other entities involved in the delivery and access of healthcare services.
Removing the cost of travel, waiting in line, creating, transporting and using hard copies of files etc. significantly reduces healthcare costs. As a result, financial and geographic barriers to the delivery of care to resource-deprived individuals are removed, or in some cases, eased.
Because of the barrier-removing potential of telehealth, our team is investing in developing effective models for delivering telehealth services to resource-deprived communities like Nima this summer. Once we have working models, we will share them with relevant stakeholders to scale them up so similar communities can benefit as well.
BUSINESS
Our first goal this summer is to clarify all the administrative requirements that Aseda Fashions requires. Second, we will be searching for ways to reduce all the costs associated with its business model. Third, we will be launching our last collection to demonstrate the concept in full.
The sustenance of long-term initiatives requires a sustainable source of income. They also need good people who are sufficiently incentivized to implement them. We aim to make the world a better place for kids—one community at a time. Business is just a tool that can help us get there. Specifically, we will be developing the Aseda Fashions social enterprise model.
In brief, it is designed to provide gainful employment for parents of the children we work with in WAGiLabs. We design clothing for the American market using Ghanaian fabric. We then contract these parents to make the clothes and ship them to us in the United States. Once they arrive, we market and sell them entirely online.
We call it the 30 for 30 in 30. We aim to make 30 dressed for sale at $30 each with the intent of selling hem all in 30 days. We just built the team required to complete this campaign. They are excited to get started on these goals.