Imagine growing up in a hut on the side of a mountain, on a dirt floor with the walls built of sticks or mud. The nearest school is more than a day’s walk and you don’t even have the legal I.D. you need in order to attend. Since 2006 Love for the Poor, a registered 501c3 non-profit organisation, has been fighting poverty and providing hope for orphans and disadvantaged children that society forgot.
Through our centre called The Father’s House, we have been helping these children receive the medical care, housing and schooling they need in order to break the cycle of poverty. Check out our Facebook to see more.
Now after many years, the first kids we took in are coming of age. Our very first graduate Caleb, has a great dream and we are excited to help him realise it. His dream is to give back and help more kids like himself by opening a restaurant. Since we have opened, operated and sold a restaurant in Hong Kong in the past, we’re really excited that this is what Caleb wants to do! Building on the model pioneered by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohammed Yunus, we will help Caleb build this restaurant as a “Social Business” in which the purpose of existence is to maximise the social good the business can provide. Yunus put forth these criteria every social business must adhere to:
- Business objective will be to overcome poverty, or one or more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and environment) which threaten people and society; not profit maximisation.
- Financial and economic sustainability
- Investors get back their investment amount only. No dividend is given beyond investment money (except this one since we are crowdfunding this)
- Company profit stays with the company for expansion and improvement
- Gender sensitive and environmentally conscious
- Workforce gets market wage with better working conditions
- ...Do it with joy!
Hope for the future
Every year there are a few older students who feel it is time to quit school and start working because of extreme poverty. Unfortunately, the only work available to them is highly exploitable and they continue to suffer from the threats of poverty.
Through Caleb’s Noodle House, these students will be able to work part time and not feel such a need to drop out of school. It will also provide the opportunity to impart to them valuable skills in the food and beverage business as well as management training. A ladder to success. Since this is a social business, the surplus/profits will stay in the company for further expansion and investments in the dreams of more of our graduates. In that way the poverty they were born into is abolished and they can live a life of dignity.
Not our first RODEO! (we've done this before)
I (Dan) worked in restaurants for years before starting Love for the poor with Cassy. In 2013, our local staff was doing a great job running The Father's house, so when the opportunity to open our own place in Hong Kong came up, we jumped at the chance. We started it from the ground up and really enjoyed being part of the community near The University of Hong Kong (HKU), of which Cassy is alumni. After two years, we decided it was time to sell it and return to Kunming, China so we could better assist our older kids at The Father's house as they transition into adulthood.