RE-POST

July 19, 2010

This was my final day in Africa and I had a lot to accomplish. Stop #1: Before heading back to the coffee co-op, I had a scheduled visit with Alive & Kicking – a soccer ball stitching centre in Nairobi. They are a UK initiative with an objective to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, and to create jobs for Africans.

I was interested to check out their operation, talk about their business and how we could work together. While this was not a fair trade facility, I left there feeling that Alive & Kicking was a good organization helping a lot of people while raising awareness about an important issue. I hope to do business with them in the future.

It was also very exciting to see the balls in production as I had not yet been able to visit a stitching centre.

A standard ball has 32 panels. Here are a slew of balls waiting to be stitched.