Our Chosen Grass-Roots Heroes of Peace

(Heroes from humble beginnings)

Grass-Roots Entrepreneur Assistance Training
A curriculum designed to work with the Hiram College Rotaract, Rotary Clubs, other Rotaract Clubs, and Interact Clubs to significantly reduce world unemployment.

G.R.E.A.T. (Grass-Roots Entrepreneur Assistance Training) is a program and curriculum that Roger F. Cram and Carol C. Ruggie are currently developing with Hiram College.   G.R.E.A.T.'s  goal is to travel with students to the poorest  areas of the world and help train and encourage future entrepreneurs living in or around these impoverished areas.  A successful trip to Nicaragua helping with the Children-of-the-Dump project occurred in November - December 2007 with fourteen Hiram College students. See Childrenofthedumps.org for trip details and accomplishments. With unemployment 70% or higher in many of these locations, the only hope for employment is to create a small local business and improve the economy and living conditions outward from the grass-roots level. 

For your better understanding, some examples of existing grass-roots entrepreneurs, a difficult concept to grasp, are listed below under each navigation key.

The Role-Model for Sparrow-Village Entrepreneurial Projects

   1.  Create a humanitarian project in a developing community involving children, water, education, and health.
2.  Encourage a sense-of-community culture where people take care of their own – caring for themselves and their future  – by providing for their young, their old, their unemployed workers with opportunities for safety, health, and advancement.
3.  Instead of giving money, give opportunities, thus you will attract those willing and capable of helping themselves and others.
        a.  By feeding the hungry, you encourage others to depend on you for their needs and you must feed them again   the next   day. Give a Man a fish and you feed him for a day…
        b.  By providing opportunities for those capable and willing to help themselves and others, they will feed themselves and their families for a lifetime. …teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.
4.  Use expert volunteers in various fields to train the unemployed.
        a.  This reduces unemployment and improves the local economy.
        b.  This provides the necessary vocational training and skills to build and maintain your project.
        c.  This provides the necessary vocational training and skills for your workers to find future employment upon completion of your project.
        d.  This provides the necessary vocational training and skills to maintain and expand your project in the future, for you’ve created a pool of expert workers familiar with your project.
5.  The success of a Sparrow Village encourages other entrepreneurs by example who, in turn, hire employees and, in turn, encourage other entrepreneurs, thus repeating the entire process.
6.  Once those capable of helping themselves and others are trained and employed, they become a productive member of their society, enhance the economic development of their neighborhood, provide for their families, and continue the sense-of-community culture by sharing with others. They now feed the hungry; they now care for their own.

What Main Types of Projects Should be Considered First?

WATER:

There are many areas of the world where the lack of clean drinking water prevents or impedes all other endeavors to improve life. In Nigeria, for example, children cannot go to school because they must spend each day searching for water to help insure their family’s mere existence. If they had easy access to water, they could go to school and help provide themselves and their communities with a brighter future. Water projects must among the initial endeavors of our grass-roots entrepreneurs.

HEALTH

In many deprived areas of the world the middle aged population is dying of AIDS and other diseases. This is leaving many children without parents and greatly depleting the available work force. AIDS education and prevention clinics and necessary medical care are paramount to not only protecting the current work force but insuring our youth reaches a mature age. Future entrepreneurs cannot be located or trained without adequate medical education and care existing today; therefore, health care projects must be among the initial endeavors of our grass-roots entrepreneurs.

EDUCATION

Children without education end up on our world’s streets as beggars or criminals. To help insure the future stability and prosperity of our world neighborhoods, education must be a primary enterprise for our initial grass-roots entrepreneurs.

CHILDREN

The stability and economic future of any society depends on the safety and opportunities provided for its current children. Often the majority of these children in many of our depressed societies and neighborhoods are combinations of abused children, orphans, abandoned or homeless street children, and youngsters suffering from various illnesses. Projects offering safety and opportunities for today’s children will help provide the future entrepreneurs needed to reduce world unemployment; therefore, such projects are considered important as initial endeavors for our grass-roots entrepreneurs.

             Grass-Roots Entrepreneurs

 

Starting businesses deep within the grass-roots level may be the only way to significantly fight world poverty.

 

With unemployment over 70 % in many impoverished areas, starting one's own business may be the only way to overcome poverty and the best way to start relieving the many pains of an entire community.
 

“Rotary takes ordinary men and women and gives them extra ordinary opportunities to do more with their lives than they ever dreamed possible!”

Clem Renouf  RI President 1978-79

How can these potential entrepreneurs be located?

Many current Rotary Club projects involve such entrepreneurship or encourage activities that would allow future entrepreneurs an opportunity for success. Such associated Rotarian activities include existing water projects, health services, and education / literacy projects.  It is also the intention of the G.R.E.A.T. curriculum and Modeling Future Heroes to encourage assistance and awareness for these existing Rotarian projects, for many of them offer opportunities for future entrepreneurs in the destitute areas of the world.

“Individual efforts when well directed can accomplish much – but the greatest good must come from combined efforts of many.”
 Paul Harris, 1917

How Sparrow’s Nests reduce world unemployment.

• •Improve the local economy from the grass-roots outward.

• Improve national economies as the number of Sparrow’s Nests increase.

• •Increase educational levels to help insure future jobs.

• Reduce the drain on public assistance programs making their funding
   available for others.

• •Increase children's safety, health, and education

• •Increase AIDS education, clinics, and finances for medicine.

• •Reduce crime from an improved economy.

• •Improve the quality of life for everyone!

You will now be introduced to some of these amazing people; these inspiring Sparrow’s Nests - these grass-roots entrepreneurs!

Hang on, you’re in for quite a ride! Click on the pages below.