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