The Win-Win-Win Approach

What if we began problem-smashing to find innovative solutions?

This is exactly what Lucy King did.

She turned three seemingly unrelated negatives into a positive.

1. Elephants are afraid of bees. 2. Elephant crop-raiding was causing severe damage for farmers. 3. There are an abundance of poverty-stricken rural communities.

Lucy King swirled this seemingly negative energy into a hive of hope.

Her Elephants and Bees Project explores the use of novel Beehive Fences as a natural elephant deterrent, reducing crop-raiding damage while simultaneously creating a social and economic boost to poverty-stricken rural communities through pollination services and the sustainable harvesting of “Elephant-Friendly Honey”.

Impressive. Inspiring. Innovative.

So, I thought, okay, do I have any incredible problem-smashing solutions.

Let’s just say I’m working on it. To date, my efforts have been a bit less sweeping in their world-saving scope. One might call them, domestic.

And humble.

I take the ongoing problem of how to create meaningful ways to spend time together as a family and smash it up against our extensive To Do List.

I realize this is the marketing equivalent of corporate “forced fun” after-work get-togethers as if you haven’t seen enough of the people all day long.

Here are my latest top three Innovative Domestic Projects.

There is my “Family Reading Circle” in which we all help Finny get ready for Grade 4 by consecutively each reading a chapter of Wind in The Willows.

There is also my “Save the Backyard Apple Trees Family Initiative” in which we all pull yellow cedar rust pock-marked leaves and then spray organic fungicide.

Fun-Fun-Fun!

But wait! I have not yet gotten to my “Mindful Awareness Family Breathing Session” where we attempt to find inner peace by somehow integrating the incessant barking of the German shepherd two doors down.

This does not include my “Kale is Fun for the Whole Family” green program. Nor my “Frosty Ice Cream Fridays for Clean Rooms”.

Sure,this is not exactly the equivalent of increasing the bee population while reducing crop-damage and rural poverty in Kenya.