Productive Flourishing Podcast Episode 17 - Life Out of the Box with Jonathon and Quinn
Jonathon Button and Quinn Vandenberg left everything behind at age 25 and moved to Nicaragua. After 6 months of living among the locals, surviving off of just $2.00 a day, and immersing themselves in the culture, Life Out of the Box was formed. They work with local artisans to create unique handmade products that they then sell, and for every product sold they give a child in need school supplies. They have traveled all over Nicaragua giving school supplies to thousands of children and have since developed Life Out of the Box products from Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Morocco, giving thousands of school supplies to children in need.
Key Takeaways:
2:58 – Jonathon and Quinn had been dating for not even a year when the idea of living life out of the box started coming together. Shortly after, they quit their jobs and moved to Nicaragua.
3:46 – Life Out of the Box goes into developing countries, works with the local artisans there to create handmade products, sells them, and for each product sold they give a child in need school supplies.
4:12 – Each product sold has its own unique number on it that the customer can use to go online and look up and see exactly what child they gave school supplies to.
7:00 – They both lived in Nicaragua, completely immersed themselves in the culture, and then went to different schools asking them what they needed most and figured out that basic school supplies were the biggest need.
12:45 – A big part of a social venture is to be able to allow people in a country to create things and use that income to support their own family.
15:59 – They are up to 5,600 handmade bracelets made.
16:53 – Their goal this year is to give to 10,000 children.
19:56 – One thing they’re trying to figure out how they can give to children around the world without them actually being there.
26:13 – Since Jonathon and Quinn are also dating, they struggle with finding a balance between their working life together and their non-working life together.
35:51 – An unanticipated problem they have run into is the large number of people who want to be involved with Life Out of the Box.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Life Out of the Box
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