Chapter 2: Think Different

Be Creative

We knew that the transition from conventional to innovative projects depended on our people. Fortunately, we ensured that our association had a combination of both creative and performer entrepreneurs to create and implement our projects.

Our latest innovative project “Sustainable ECO-Roofs” was the brainchild of one of our creative entrepreneurs. It began as a simple idea taken from the study “Global Cooling: Increasing World-wide Urban Albedo to Offset CO2“ of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California. As mentioned in the first chapter, the study proposes painting the roofs of white to reduce global warming. However, we decided to go beyond being environmentally-friendly, and for this we had to use our creativity.

After several months of planning, implementation of pilot projects and listening to the needs of the communities that we wanted to work with, we decided that the focus of the project should not only be environmental but also social.

The result of a meeting between the leaders and members of Sustainable ECO-Roofs was a dramatic shift in the mission FROM “contribute to the environment preservation through volunteer work of young people engaged in painting roofs of white ” TO “Creating ECO-Communities in poor areas of Peru to improve the quality of life”. The change of mission not only meant an alteration of the statement, but a shift in the way in which we will manage the project.

Furthermore, this new vision meant that we would not only paint roofs of white, we would also paint the external walls of the houses of white, plant trees, and provide with ECO-Sustainable training to the members of the community in order to increase the quality of life and create awareness about global warming.

Finally, always remember that you do not need to reinvent the wheel, you can take an idea that has already been developed and use your creativity to give a higher added value to that idea; then you can come up with a greater project that will generate greater benefit for the people you want to serve. Just as we did with Sustainable ECO-Roofs!