Entrepreneurs - Grove City College

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Grove City College Building Bridges 34 | www.gcc.edu the G ē D U N K Benson Ocen is a Ugandan entrepreneur with the talent to create a profitable and sustainable enterprise for his community. But like so many visionaries in impoverished regions throughout the world, without financial assistance, his innovative ideas face the daunting obstacles poverty imposes. With the support of TingaTinga Capital, however, an organization led by Grove City College alumni Dan Croce ’08, Dave Dietrich ’08, Nate Jackson ’08 and Evan Addams ’10, Ocen now has been given a path to opportunity and a bridge to success. By Mike Baker ’09 |
T ingaTinga, which translates to “bridge” in Swahili, exists to support visionary entrepreneurs in disadvantaged areas around the globe. Through seed funding and coaching, the organization essentially serves as a startup for startups, encouraging the pursuit of socially responsible business concepts, such as ILA Uganda. An acronym for “I Live Again,” ILA— TingaTinga’s pilot project—is a program focused on economic empowerment for victims of war in northern Uganda. Founded by Ocen and supported by grants and low-interest loans from TingaTinga in the United States, the program provides trauma counseling services to individuals of the region who have endured considerable losses of family, shelter and earning capabilities due to a 25-year civil war in the nation. “War has devastated their culture,” Croce said, who witnessed the physical and emotional damage firsthand when he traveled to East Africa with Dietrich and other Grove City College students for a Red Box mission trip in 2007. The experience propelled Croce, Dietrich and their classmate, Jackson, to fight poverty through the development of TingaTinga and pinpoint Gulu, Uganda, as the setting for their first pioneering project in 2011. “Their community must be rebuilt from the inside out. The idea [of ILA] is to bring transformation to the lives of this broken community.” TingaTinga believes the participants of Ocen’s ILA program will grow to regain ambition in life, assess their own practical skills and employ their unique talents for post-war community development and economic recovery. “My passion is to restore my people. I cannot allow myself to sit and watch them suffer,” Ocen said. “Continuous support does not only build a strong relationship with TingaTinga, but it also helps ILA in fulfilling its objectives and transforms the lives of our local village.” In just a short time, TingaTinga has made a significant impact in the lives of hundreds of people halfway across the world. And for these invested alums, it is only the beginning. In summer 2012, senior entrepreneurship major Alex Moore ’13 served as TingaTinga’s first intern, applying skills learned at Grove City College to solve real-world challenges in Uganda. Moving forward, TingaTinga hopes to mentor groups of students at the College and recruit fellow Grovers for internships in multiple geographies around the world, including potential hubs in Peru and Nicaragua. “Grove City College is full of super talented, super bright students,” said Croce, who considers the organization’s interns cultural bridge-builders and catalysts for positive change. “We want them to have $5,000 at the end of their internship and tell us how to invest it.” TingaTinga believes this invaluable experience will lay the foundation for a new generation of students to add value to the market and drive the American entrepreneurial spirit into the future. “As a country, we were founded on a large group of people who wanted to do things differently,” Addams said. “We had opportunities, pulled the trigger and had success. It’s a risky thing, but it leads to innovation and progress. And, working in the Third World, we’ve seen it is also necessary to understand the status quo and have [an entrepreneurial visionary] think to himself, ‘There has to be a better way.’” That vision and balance of expectations is what Croce, Dietrich, Jackson and Addams take from their entrepreneurial training at Grove City College—and implement in making lives better far from campus. Fall 2012 “My passion is to restore my people. I cannot allow myself to sit and watch them suffer” the G ē D U N K www.gcc.edu | 35
Page 1 and 2: GROVE CITY COLLEGE ALUMNI MAGAZINE
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Page 9 and 10: SCHOLARSHIPS goal: $30,000,000 FACI
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Page 23 and 24: Women’s Soccer The women’s socc
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Page 31 and 32: PLANNED GIVING STAN JOHNSON ’60 A
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Page 39 and 40: Family Matters | Three generations
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Entrepreneurs - Grove City College

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