The Constellation: SUSTAINABILITY 🌱

Published: Thu, 03/01/18

Hello, March!

Along with the launch of the Spiritual Alchemy Community, March brings another issue of The Stardust Startup Factory's monthly newsletter,

The Constellation!

In this newsletter, we highlight a microgrant recipient and a Stardust Board/Advisory Board member who offers keen insight into one of Stardust's focus areas of health, learning, and sustainability.

In this issue, we will focus on those that best exemplify the focus area of sustainability! You'll learn about Ted Cope, a Board Member of The Stardust Startup Factory, whose interesting perspective on sustainability makes for a great read!

And finally, The Lumbrick Project (whose mission is to create a sustainable source of cooking fuel for Kenyan refugees) visited Kenyan refugee camps this January, and their publicly documented experience really puts their hard work into perspective.

Ted Cope on the Importance of Sustainability

for the Stardust Startup Factory

Ted Cope - Board member for The Stardust Startup Factory, and long-time friend of Stardust co-founder Laura Jean Palmer-Moloney - made one thing glaringly obvious when we sat down together and discussed sustainability: his passion for science, education, and the planet is immense. And interestingly, Ted views sustainability in two ways.

Ted expressed that sustainability exists within the context of the Stardust Startup Factory itself.

The company is a "dynamic, living entity" that must continuously evolve and adapt to the changes in the corporate "ecosystem." In fact, one of Ted's most important roles within the organization is to ensure that Stardust does just that.

As Ted puts it, "Stardust's donors and funding sources, Stardust's participants and contributors, Stardust's initiative owners, and competitors for resources and attention in the constantly changing world arounds us," all creates the ecosystem in which Stardust exists.

Ted helps to foster a balance for the use of everyone's time, energy, attention, and focus, and this balancing act is what Ted cleverly refers to as "Stardust's bite-to-chew ratio."

Through this guiding principle, Ted and The Stardust Startup Factory try to be thoughtful of the right balance between fundraising activities, expenditures of the resources to execute and nurture what the company already has in motion, and how many new initiatives they can award - going forward.

And what makes such an important balance possible, as Ted expressed, is continuous communication, assessment, and decision-making to keep Stardust true to its purpose.

Ted's unique perspective as a Stardust Board member really helped reshape my personal understanding of sustainability. The concept of sustainability ultimately applies to everyone because we all constantly work to maintain balances in our own "ecosystems."

Whether its business, love, health:

we strive to create sustainable conditions all around us.

Overall, Ted's consideration of others, his humility, and his unyielding eagerness to learn and grow make Ted not only a special Stardust Board member, but a person we could all stand to learn from.

-Nicolette LaPalme

Click Here to Read More About Ted and Board Members Like Him!

The Lumbrick Project: The Ingenious Idea of 'Green Charcoal'

Awarded in the Spring of 2017, the Lumbrick Project stipulated early on that they had a lot of work ahead of them.

Boy, were they right.

The Lumbrick team, with Stardust's help, traveled to Cameroon to test out their product of green charcoal briquettes in 2017, and in January of this year the Lumbrick team was actually able to collect field research in Kenya (the location of their intended customer basis).

After 3 weeks of visiting refugee camps, testing their technologies, gaining insight into cooking methods and strategies, and forging partnerships with briquetting companies and learning institutes, the team has presumably come out of the experience with lots of valuable data.

From drying waste, to the compacting of the briquettes, the Lumbrick Project is working feverishly to develop the solar-powered technology to aid those who need increased access to efficient and eco-friendly fuel sources.

Through the Lumbrick initiative, Kenyan refugees will be less exposed to the harmful fumes of old materials like charcoal and lighter fluid. As Lumbrick themselves explains, "traditional forms of cooking cause significant health issues such as respiratory infections, pneumonia, and lung cancer, which result in 1.6 million deaths every year."

Lumbrick's work will also benefit the health of the forests by finding an alternative to chopping down much-needed trees. "[Traditional forms of cooking's] consequence on the environment is also dire, causing 49,000 football fields of deforestation each year and accelerating desertification in many regions," says Lumbrick.

In conclusion, the Lumbrick Project perfectly exemplifies a sustainability project; their consciousness on the health and safety of Kenyan refugees, the local and global ecosystem, and challenging traditional fuel sources makes them a truly inspiring project.

If you have the time or funds to aid such a venture, I implore you to visit their website (www.lumbrick.com) or Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Lumbrick/) and consider reaching out today!

-Nicolette LaPalme

Click Here To Read More About This Project!

Do you have a story related to sustainability, health, or learning? We'd love to feature our followers' knowledge in future issues!

email nicolette@starduststartupfactory.org to share!