Adii Rockstar

I’ve often wondered whether anyone else considered why I would be involved with a charity such as The Rockstar Foundation, as perhaps the business / entrepreneur persona versus the charitable / giving persona weren’t as obviously aligned. So I figured that I’d share a few reasons for my (personal) involvement in the Foundation…

1. I have an absolute passion for kids and helping out kids that are talented, are willing to work extremely hard & as a result have the ability to become the leaders & game-changers of tomorrow.
2. Every time I get to see Mariana & Okuhle (this doesn’t happen often), my faith & investment in the Foundation gets confirmed. I love these two, amazing girls to bits and since joining the Foundation they’ve done incredible work.
3. South Africa is an amazing place, but the country needs every little bit of help it can get to eradicate the not-so-great things. I believe that education is a great way of enabling a better future for all South Africans, which is why we are targeting such talented girls to be history makers going forward.
4. I’ve been incredibly blessed as an entrepreneur & as an individual. I have so many great things going for me in my life (on all levels) and the Foundation is a way of giving back and saying thanks for all the privileges that I have been allowed thus far.
5. I also share the exact same passion, ambition & drive for the Foundation as I do with my business ventures. For me, the Foundation also represents a challenge & a massive learning curve; both which I love embracing as I continue to evolve & develop as an individual & entrepreneur.

We’re trying something new over at The Rockstar Foundation: creating a fun giveaway to hopefully generate some more donations and take the foundation closer to sustainability.

What do you think of it?

I’ve made a decision to stick to what I know best, as well as sticking to those people I know best.

This may sound a little random, but it’s pretty unique in relation to how I see us growing The Rockstar Foundation & turning it into a self-sustaining organization. So who & what I currently know is the tech startup scene that I’ve been working in (via WooThemes) for the last couple of years and I’ve got some great ideas in terms of using those connections and leveraging the startup principles that I’ve learned with the Foundation. Can you say The Startup Charity?

Towards the end of 2009, I founded a charity to fund the education of exceptionally talented, but disadvantaged, girls in South Africa and in the months since then, we’ve done a lot of work in getting our structures in place to ensure that our first 2 girls are flourishing within their new environments. It is also for that reason that I’ve been purposefully less vocal (compared to some of my other projects) about the charity online…

Today however, I would like to announce the “launch” (and probably the wider, mainstream unveiling) of a brand new era for The Rockstar Foundation, which we’re also celebrating with a superb, new website.

Startup Mode

Since founding the Foundation, we have been very much in startup mode; similar to the kind of startups that I blog about on here regularly. For example: bootstrapping in our world has meant that I have been solely responsible for 95% of the funding of the Foundation and we’ve been fortunate that a handful of amazing peeps (I’ve thanked them here) have donated their skills to help us make the new website a reality.

Going forward, I’m very keen to explore the running of the Foundation as a startup and you can expect me to blog more about my experiences both here and over on the Foundation’s blog.

And if you maybe share our passion in terms of educating the leaders and history makers of tomorrow, we’d appreciate any kind of contribution.