Charitable organization
Kickstart International Inc
About KickStart KickStart's mission is to help millions of people out of poverty. We promote sustainable economic growth and employment creation in Kenya and other countries. We develop and promote technologies that can be used by dynamic entrepreneurs to establish and run profitable small scale enterprises. KickStart believes that self-motivated private entrepreneurs managing small-scale enterprises can play a dynamic role in the economies of developing countries. These entrepreneurs can raise small amounts of capital ( $100-$1, 000 US ) to start a new enterprise. KickStart then helps them to identify viable business opportunities and access the technologies required to launch the new enterprises. In addition to promoting small enterprise development, KickStart's technologies, expertise, and methods are widely applied throughout Africa to support programs in agriculture, shelter, water, sanitation, health, and relief. IN 1991, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon founded ApproTEC, which in 2005 became KickStart. Their model was based on a five-step process to develop, launch and promote simple money-making tools that poor entrepreneurs could use to create their own profitable businesses. KickStart's early efforts focused on building and food processing technologies. But in Africa, 80% of the poor are small-scale farmers. They depend on unreliable rain to grow their crops and have, at most, two harvests per year. With two valuable assets, a small plot of land and basic farming skills, KickStart realized that irrigation would allow people to move from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture. In 1998, KickStart developed a line of manually operated MoneyMaker Irrigation Pumps that allow farmers to easily pull water from a river, pond or shallow well ( as deep as 25 feet deep ), pressurize it through a hose pipe ( even up a hill ) and irrigate up to two acres of land. Our pumps are easy to transport and install and retail between $35 and $95. They are easy to operate and, because they are pressurized, they allow farmers to direct water where it is needed. It is a very efficient use of water, and unlike flood irrigation, does not lead to the build up of salts in the soil.