Social Entrepreneurs Needed!

If you're running a Social Enterprise and can spare 30mins to contribute to Chloe's, LSE-based, postgraduate study - please see the call for interviewees below..

"Participation needed for an LSE-based postgraduate study exploring social enterprise and the varying tactics and connections utilised to carry out development practice. If you are directing, helped found or are setting up an enterprise and are interested in being involved for a short (in person or via skype) interview please get in touch. A copy of the final transcript is offered to participants which can hopefully provide a useful resource;   bringing together development, social interest and the rise of social entrepreneurialism, and a point for comparison with other enterprises"

CONTACT: Chloe Last, MSc Urbanisation and Development, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Elevator Magazine Feature

Red Button Design features in a double-page article in this quarter’s Elevator - Private Equity and Philanthropy magazine.

The piece describes Midomo as ‘an extraordinarily effective solution ..that could very quickly change the lives of millions of people,’

and the Midomo Bracelet initiative as the ‘kind of inspired thinking that makes the difference in getting a project and a product noticed.’

It’s always good to hear such praise about ventures you’ve been working relentlessly on, and when that praise is distributed throughout the UK, USA and Switzerland, and to a global digital readership, it’s especially rewarding.
The full issue is available to purchase online, or you could try and pinch one from a 1st class airport lounge or office waiting room…

Update: You can now read the article in PDF form here

Introducing a new stockist for the Midomo Bracelet: Ethique.

After seeing the recent photographs of the Midomo launch in Mwingi, more and more of you have been inquiring as to how you might personally sponsor a Midomo into a community. Fortunately, this surge of interest coincides with us teaming up with an independent, but similarly principled, stockist for the Midomo Bracelet… Ethique.

We met Pimmi, Ethique’s founder, at last year’s Ethical Just Got Fabulous event. Back then we were excitedly showcasing the newly launched Midomo Bracelet; designed by Alex Monroe, made from sterling silver, and the cost of each one funding the donation of one Midomo, which could then be tracked online. Pimmi was there to scout talent for the boutique addition to her online ethical concierge service. Whilst chatting, we quickly discovered that the core values underlying both our separate projects were startlingly similar – ‘ethical’ and ‘luxury’ should not be mutually exclusive. It was Pimmi’s aim to help consumers discover what these terms mean to them, and gently introduce them to products that fulfil both criteria. A short while later, we’re pleased to report that the Ethique boutique has successfully launched and the Midomo Bracelet is one of their few, discerningly selected jewellery products on display.

So if you would like to help Red Button address the global water crisis, in a very stylish way, please check out this latest avenue of doing so. There’s plenty of other ethical eye-candy to browse over whilst you’re there too...

Successful launch in Mwingi!

Following on from my last blog post I am very pleased to report that we had a successful launch in Mwingi!

The Midomo units arrived in Mombasa complete apart from steel work and wheels, (though with unexpectedly *bright pink* tap attachments!) We began the local fabrication process in our warehouse in Nairobi moving work into the local community at Mwingi as soon as we'd gauged their capacity. In the end there was very little that James and I needed to co-ordinate centrally. The significant hours of design work we'd devoted to engineering a product suitable for local manufacture / maintenance seemed to pay off; next steps will involve securing a secondary, African, factory site for the tricky process used to mould Midomo's robust plastic tanks... but more on that later.

For now, I don't want to say much more - pictures, 1,000 words, all that - so I will leave you with some of the stills we captured from the day the units arrived, and will shortly be uploading some of the video footage and interviews with members of the community at Kavoko and with Farm Africa, our NGO host.

In the mean time, we'd welcome your thoughts and feedback either via the comment function below or, if you're that way inclined, on our facebook group itself :)

Midomo units to reach Mwingi, Kenya - this week!

I write this cautiously, from a pleasingly well tech-ed up Methodist education centre just outside of Nairobi.

Cautiously, not just because of the number of keywords this network will flag as inappropriate (I’ll be watching my language for once!), but because after three years of development and, more recently, what amounts to months of frustrating delays* we’re about to introduce the first batch of Midomo to a community in Mwingi.

If you were one of our Midomo Bracelet customers prior to the end of March, then it’s your units the community will be receiving this week! Read on with pride! If you’ve yet to discover our collaboration with jewellery designer Alex Monroe .. we’re really proud of it; check it out.

Mwingi is an Eastern province of Kenya about 3 hours drive North East of Nairobi with a population of 304k, 79% of which do not have access to safe drinking water.

The main source of drinking water (accounting for about 69% of users) is surface water and you’ll easily see from this photo we took last week why it isn’t considered to be safe. In addition, with 66% of the households reporting that they did not treat their water before consuming it, irrespective of the warning signs, it isn’t surprising that at any given time around 1 in 8 of the population is suffering from a water related illness.

Midomo is ideal for this community; not just because it’ll take the water from the dam and make it safe to drink but because, like many similar communities, water is collected from many kilometers away from the home. In Mwingi a majority of households (65%) take more than an hour fetching water, with the average time estimated as 1 hour 44 minutes.

You can imagine carrying 20 or 30 litres of water this far in the African heat and humidity is hard work, and we saw in Mwingi many of the innovative ways the women used to make this task easier - including using wheelbarrows to carry the full jerry cans! With existing habits like that we already know that Midomo will fit in well here, so we’re thrilled that Farm Africa got in touch and have been so supportive and informative in our visits. Part of Red Button Design’s ‘Design Against Dependency’ philosophy is not to introduce anything unnecessary into the community, be that materials, products or skills, and Farm Africa have been invaluable making sure that everyone possible, from our translators to steel fabricators, were members of the local community.

I’d say we’re excited, and to a degree we are of course, but as many of you will appreciate this has been a long time coming(!!) and with every new setback, be it an hour, a day, or a week, the tension mounts.

Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, we’re taking with us a film crew for some BBC 2 business show we just can’t keep away from ;)

So I’ll leave you on a cliffhanger..
Pending any more delays, they should be on site by next week! Stay tuned!


*(everything from the Mombasa Port Authority’s computer system ‘going down’ for 10 days, to stocked trucks getting locked in warehouses over the weekend!)

**source: KNBS / Unicef

*** more pictures!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011 one and all!

Apparently January is meant to be about austerity, gloom and greyness, yet over here at RBD we’re all pretty cheerful. The reason for this out-of-season elation (aside from the bottomless Haribo stash) is that the Midomo Bracelet Christmas campaign was successful enough that we’ll be sending our first full crate of Midomos to Africa very shortly! This means that over 250 people who were previously without, will now have access to safe drinking water in 2011.

To anybody who received a Midomo Bracelet this Christmas, we hope you’re loving wearing it and are looking forward to the first tracking email regarding your sponsored Midomo. To those who were not so lucky as to receive the ‘ultimate Christmas gift’ we have some more good news…

Thanks to the good will of Alex Monroe, and the support of so many individuals, we’ll be extending the initiative until Valentines Day! Hopefully with a bit of luck, this means that a second full crate of Midomos will be being sent out to where they are needed, within another month.

Valentines Day has a bit of a bad rep as a Hallmark holiday, but we think any excuse to send a beautiful love-token can’t be that bad. When that token is a designer charm bracelet that funds clean water for a family in Africa, there’s really no reason to dislike Valentines Day at all (even if your Valentine is your gran)

So here’s to a productive January and a Lovely Feb,

Onwards and upwards
Sophie x

Global Innovation Game won by RBD supporter nominating Midomo!

GiG was the official game of Global Entrepreneurship Week and- to our surprise and pleasure- shortly after GEW we received an email informing us that a winner of GiG had nominated Midomo as an idea!

The Global Innovation Game (GiG) challenges an international community of players to create, buy, and sell solutions to problems facing the world. It creates an effective stock market of ideas, where proposed solutions are traded and find value in the ‘ideas market.’

We are so happy that Hilary Singer, who writes for Startup Cafe was impressed enough by Midomo to have nominated it as a solution to a global problem. That Midomo gained enough value on the ideas market to become a winning idea has genuinely given us a real boost- (there may even have been some high-fiveing.)

The mission of Global Mind Games, who created GiG, is to use social games to spark debate and encourage real world change. What GiG has done for Midomo is a brilliant example of an online game creating interest in a real product that can create a difference in real people’s lives.

We’d just like to extend Hilary, and all those who supported Midomo in the virtual market, our sincerest thanks! It’s always been vital to our development that people take an active role in learning and speaking about Midomo and we’re ever grateful for new interest.