Kristoffer is a 7th grader at St. Andrew’s School (Saratoga, California). He presented his Heritage Oak Initiative today to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. Kristoffer collected 1,000 acorns from the immense oak tree that dominates the church-school campus. These acorns were grown into 250 starts that are being sold to collect donations for Embrace.
The award-winning Embrace Warmer is designed for hypothermic infants in developing countries. It costs a fraction of the price of a standard incubator, doesn’t require constant electricity, and is portable, hygienic, and reusable.
Embrace now works in 11 countries and has helped over 87,000 low birth weight and premature infants. Kristoffer wrote on the Heritage Oak Initative website:
The Heritage Oak Initiative was founded with two objectives: First and primarily, I wanted to help people who are less fortunate than me, and second, I wanted to give the church and school community a living memory of Saint Andrew’s. The Oak provided a perfect opportunity to do both through its annual production of acorns, which means that the program can live in perpetuity benefiting a separate charity each year.
In addition to being an impressive and generous project by a very young man, today’s presentation was of particular interest to me because Everwise CEO Mike Bergelson and I and used Embrace as our example for quick and successful product development when we presented at the FutureNow event last month. I just bought two of Kristoffer’s oaks today for my own garden!
Images Copyright 2013-2014 by Katy Dickinson
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