Nick Moon Biography

Co-Founder & Managing Director, KickStart, director Nick Moon was born in Bombay, where his English father was a shipping company executive, and his Irish mother an interior designer. The family moved to Calcutta and later to Singapore where they stayed for 13 years.

He later excelled as a student in England. But at 17, restless, searching, a little impatient, Nick left school and spent the next seven years developing practical skills on construction sites in England, France and Italy. He later became a professional cabinet-maker and carpenter. In 1978 Nick settled in London and set up a business specializing in the restoration of Georgian buildings, and doing commissioned work for private clients.

In 1979, during a lull in the business, Nick saw a small want ad in the paper looking for a French-speaking carpenter. This led him on his first trip to Africa to build a music recording studio in Togo.

He saw that Africa was a place of energy and hope and optimism despite its troubles. The trip set the course for his life after that.

ABack in London, Nick was happy with the craftwork he was doing, but lamented that market realities prevented their business from doing as much work for needy local communities as he hoped they could when they started it. In 1981 he went again to Africa, Nigeria this time, to build another music studio. And his impression of Africa as a place of energy optimism was reinforced.

Keen to join his skills as a woodworker and entrepreneur with his interest in social development and community work, and with his new interest in Africa, Nick joined the British VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas - an agency similar to the US Peace Corps) in 1982 and accepted a posting to a small rural community in Western Kenya, where he set up a technical training school, a ‘village polytechnic’, and ran it for over 2 years. During this time he learned Swahili and learned much about how the world was viewed by his new friends and neighbours - all rural smallscale farmers.

After leaving VSO in 1985, Nick stayed in Kenya working for ACTIONAID, training community groups how to make bricks, stabilised soil blocks, roofing tiles and managing school and clinic construction programs, at first in the slum settlements of Nairobi, later in the northern districts among Kenya’s nomadic communities. It was at this time that Nick met Martin Fisher, visiting from USA to see how appropriate technologies were being applied in developing countries. And they formed a strong friendship, going on together to design equipment, build and manage school construction programs, small dams and water catchment projects, farm implements production workshops, and training schemes, generally working with women or youth groups in communities supported by ACTIONAID.

But they became disillusioned as many apparently successful group enterprises collapsed soon after they left. They realized that in many cases they were doing more harm than good. By assisting these enterprises in which the local people had no meaningful investment, nor had taken on any risk in the event of failure, they were in fact working against genuine local entrepreneurs who were unable to compete with a large charity. As a result, in 1991, Moon and Fisher went on to found ApproTEC, the non-profit that would become KickStart.

By bringing together the entrepreneurial spirit of the poor, innovative tools and technologies, and the power of the marketplace, they developed a cost effective and sustainable way to help families lift themselves out of poverty. They started to design affordable moneymaking tools and mass-market them to the poor, who in turn bought the equipment and used it to establish highly profitable family businesses. To date 129,600 entrepreneurs have created successful businesses with a KickStart's MoneyMaker Irrigation Pumps and other tools.

For his efforts and innovation, Nick has received a number of awards including TIME Magazine's 2003 European Hero award, 2005 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Schwab Foundation's Social Entrepreneur of the Year" award, as well as the 2003 Beacon Prize for Creative Giving.

In 2002, Nick received his MBA from Durham University and in 2004 was named a Fellow of the Royal Society for the advancement of Arts Commerce and Manufactures (FRSA).

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