It is now a few days after the big pitch at the Meaningful Market in Brussels and the dust is settling. What a great night as you know if you were able to make it. For those who couldn’t be there, the market was held in the Four Winds Event Barn in Brussels which is an incredible venue. The excitement of the night (besides giving a pitch) was hearing Craig Keilburger speak about the We Movement. His speech was definitely tailored to inspire up-and-coming social entrepreneurs. He even gave a shout out to my corrugated board! Ha ha, he said great things start with these boards as his project first had one years ago. So it was inspiring to think with the right steps The Red Book Challenge could grow and grow. The result of the pitch competition was that we did not receive the prize money, but two very deserving businesses did. Thank-you to everyone who is a new visitor to the site from talking with me at the Meaningful Market. One kind lady even gave me a big hug to say “keep up the good work”. It was a great group of people to visit with on Wednesday night.
The next big exciting step for The Red Book Challenge is that Nicki Darbyson who is a social enterprise and small business coach from the Economic Development Small Business Centre will be sitting down with me for two hours to do a Flourishing Business Canvas together. I think this will really help organize my thoughts on the direction The Red Book Challenge will be going in, in the next five years and onward.
At the Meaningful Market we unveiled the logo for the first time. Here it is in all it’s glory. A very talented local artist created it for me and if you send me a personal message I can share her business information with you if you need a logo done etc. We will have this logo front and center on the web page starting today and in all our correspondence, events, etc.
Getting ready to head back to Madagascar!
I have now booked my ticket to leave for Madagascar on the 15th of February. That is coming up scary fast as I feel I have a lot to do before then. I will be staying near Berenty, in Ambovombe from Feb to the start of April and then if my application for staying at Berenty is approved, I will be at Berenty from April to May 20th. I am hoping to do a lot of work with the conservation club in Fort Dauphin, the school in Berenty and the clubs in Ambovombe such as CLEFAM which is a language club. We will be conducting mock interviews with the members of the club, as a big set-back for many university students looking for work in the area is that they don’t have experience being involved in a formal job-interview. So we will be giving them practice! It should be a busy time, so stay tuned for updates.
