CHESTERFIELD — Not many 20-year-olds aspire to launch their own nonprofit to support businesses in a developing nation. But then Forrest McSweeney isn’t like most 20-year-olds.
McSweeney grew up on a farm in Chesterfield in a house entirely off the electric grid, instead relying solely on solar power. In his childhood, McSweeney often traveled across the world with his parents, who took him to exotic locales in places across Africa and South America.
After graduating from Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, McSweeney took a road trip across the American West, visiting Wyoming, Montana and Washington as well as the Mexican state of Baja California and the Canadian province of Ontario.
But it was working at local organization, Cloa’s Ark Animal Sanctuary in Hadley, where he truly found his inspiration.
“It made me understand how much opportunity there is, especially around here, where people are so generous and so giving,” he said. “When they see an animal in need or when they see a person in need, people tend to rise to the occasion.”
That led McSweeney to start the Uplift Project, which launched its website and first fundraising campaign this week. Through the project, McSweeney hopes to raise funds to support Indigenous-owned businesses in the South American country of Guyana, a place McSweeney has visited several times in the past with his father.
“Guyana was a place that we both just kind of fell in love with,” McSweeney said. “The people there are amazing, and it has the most beautiful tropical rainforest with the animals, the flowers, you just kind of can’t believe it especially coming from here and seeing a place like that.”
A former British colony on the northern part of the continent and bordered to the east by Venezuela, Guyana has historically been a poor nation. But recent discovery of oil reserves off the nation’s coast has brought on new cash flows and turned it into one of the world’s fastest growing economies.
But McSweeney noted most of that new money is contained within the nations’ coastline, where its capital city of Georgetown is located. Further inland, a region dominated by landscapes of the Amazon rainforest, lives the various Indigenous groups, who still mainly rely on agricultural products such as rice and cassava, a starchy crop used in making tapioca. It’s these small agricultural businesses that McSweeney hopes to benefit with his new fundraiser.
“The Amerindians live off the coast, in these small, rural villages that are just connected by rivers, so transportation access from them to the capital is very limited,” McSweeney said. “I’m trying to help these rural, isolated communities to grow their small businesses and connect their small businesses to all this new opportunity that’s in the capital.”
The Uplift Project’s initial goal is to raise $6,350 for four different grants to be given to Indigenous-owned businesses in the Guyanese village of Wakapau, populated by the Indigenous Arawak people. McSweeney also intends to travel to Wakapau, where he said he’s already developed contacts, to meet with local businesses leaders sometime in late February to early March.
Once there, business owners can fill out applications for a grant, detailing how they would spend the money, and McSweeney plans to a hire locally to evaluate and assess how the businesses grow as a result of the grant.
“The main thing for fundraising is that I’m going to do a newsletter, I have a big email list of connections and contacts, as well as family and friends I’ve been working with every step of the way,” McSweeney said. “There’s a few local businesses that I know through personal connections who have pledged to make a donation.”
If the initial campaign is successful, McSweeney said he hopes to expand the project by seeking funds from various foundations to award additional grants to help businesses development in Guyana.
“This idea of microfinancing, which is certainly not something I’ve invented, it’s a proven method of giving the power to the people to do what they know best,” he said. “That’s something that really resonates with me, giving directly to the people you’re trying to help and let them do the work with it.”
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at [email protected].
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=678972a7ce87406cb461bf95726b9875&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gazettenet.com%2FUplift-Project-in-guyana-58922338&c=7950977722147318233&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2025-01-16 06:24:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
