LivFul: Justice Through Health Innovation
“When will I feel safe? When will things go back to normal? When the curve flattens? When a vaccine is created?”
As the world continues to reel in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic fallout, those in the developed world are particularly shaken by this microbial threat and all the uncertainty surrounding it. But in many parts of the globe, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, these kinds of dangers are normal parts of daily life.
Heartache Spawns A New Venture Capital Company
On a Wednesday evening in the spring of 2004, Erik was driving from his work as a fundraiser at the University of Portland to Athey Creek Middle School in West Linn, Oregon, the location his churched used as a meeting place for its Sunday services and Wednesday night Bible study. On this particular afternoon when it seemed like everyone was either out mowing their lawns or running in the warm sunshine, the desire to run hit Erik deep in his core. The only problem was that Erik hadn’t run – he hadn’t walked or even stood up on his own – in nine years. Erik had been paralyzed in an ATV accident on his family farm in 1995 when he was just 16 years old.
Rethinking Risk/Reward as a Steward Investor
“Was Jesus’ work as a carpenter as valuable as His work in public ministry preaching and healing?”
That seemed to stump people I asked, until one day, a friend of mine responded, “Don’t you realize that everything Jesus did was simply in direct obedience to the Father? So when Jesus was working as a carpenter he would have been out of the Father’s will if he had chosen to go into public ministry too early.”
Ethiopia: Jobs, Not Aid, Is the Most Urgent Need
“Jobs, not aid, are the most urgent need of these starving people,” I thought. We crouched on the dirt floor of a twelve-foot diameter grass hut in the Omo River Valley of Southern Ethiopia. Twenty-one hours away from the capital city live the Kara, Hammar, and Benna tribes—people who use cell phones to communicate but whose ways are otherwise unchanged from those of their ancestors who settled the region thousands of years ago. Picture the most remote tribal images you have seen in a National Geographicmagazine, and you are likely thinking of these people groups.
An Entrepreneur’s Daughter
In the late 1980’s, before it was vogue to use the word “startup” my mom became the first employee of a new business. As the youngest of five in a financially strapped household with a single mom, I spent many hours at my mom’s side while she worked. I went with her to talk with employees, respond to alarm calls in the middle of the night, visit bankers, talk through negotiations with lawyers, review marketing materials, and fiddle with broken copiers.