The mission of Lift Kids, Inc. is to feed, shelter, and educate children by partnering with organizations on the ground to create small, sustainable villages according to a model that can be replicated around the world.

We are constructing villages and orphanages around the world through partnerships with local organizations. Our programs educate and empower the world's most impoverished youth and are economically self-sustaining, and all provide the option for donors to visit, via our voluntourism program.

The vision for Lift Kids began with a member of the Lift Kids board, Joseph Barrett, and his decades of overseas experiences in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Returning to the states, he pledged to remember the poverty he encountered and to leverage his over 20 years experience in senior positions of the banking and economic development industries to fight it.

Currently a CEO and professor of finance and global strategy, Joseph began to recognize both the power of the micro-credit movement and the need to infuse it with sustainable and educational components, so that recipients of credit—mostly women with children—don’t have to choose between their entrepreneurial dreams on the one hand, and feeding their children or sending them to school on the other. He also began to see how the growing trend of experiential philanthropy could empower these efforts, to the mutual benefit of giver and receiver.

Joseph joined forces with powerful, credible, like-minded professionals to shape the philanthropic model that became Lift Kids—executives from 3M, engineers from the University of Minnesota and Engineers Without Borders, and leaders from General Mills, Travelers, and other major corporations. In 2006, Lift Kids began to identify credible partners, as well as donors, for Lift Kids Villages in Guatemala, Ethiopia, Kenya and Vietnam, and to build the foundation for decades of additional action across the world.

To help clarify our business model, we have created the acronym SERVE: Sustain, Educate, Replicate, Volunteer, Empower.

Sustain. Lift Kids Villages are economically and socially self-sustaining. Rather than relying on donations and handouts to cover their operations, they provide opportunities for the children—even at young ages—to become part of a family environment that works together to provide for each other. In economic terms, self-sustaining means that the village creates enough revenue through diverse business opportunities—chicken farming and egg production, for instance—to pay the village’s operating expenses.

Educate. Each Lift Kids Village will educate on both fundamental knowledge and specific vocational affairs, using curriculum provided by the local government and modified for a comprehensive range, from sex education to social and emotional skills to health and nutrition. Classes will be taught by two credentialed teachers and will also be available, when appropriate, to children and adults outside the village, with the goal of instilling the importance of giving back and empowering others. Lift Kids will reach out to the local businesses and schools to create internship and mentorship opportunities.

Replicate. We believe the philanthropic franchise model is the best approach to empowering kids. Because it’s our model that’s replicable—as opposed to our physical building plans—we replicate outcomes instead of surroundings. This means we can move fast, create sustainable change, and ensure that our high standards are met, yet avoid the cookie-cutter philanthropy that so often alienates partners on the ground.

Volunteer. Voluntourism will serve as an opportunity for investors to observe their investments grow both interpersonally and financially by encouraging their hands-on participation.

Empower. Lift Kids Villages teach both in the classroom and through the experience of working with each other and the village management, like a family. Each villager will be given a position of empowerment in running the village’s sustainability business and in maintaining the facilities. Additionally, by limiting villages to 40 orphans at a time, we create a more intimate environment that reaches kids at a very individual and personal level. This combination of action and individual attention will help kids learn that they are important, that they should take pride in their community, and that they is capable of impacting their worlds. It is our hope that this empowerment will live long after kids graduate from our villages, urging them to leadership.

Do you work for this organization? Click here to claim your profile.