Collectively, the team that founded Warm Heart has more than a hundred and fifty years of experience in the difficult business of grassroots community development. We have worked in the United States and Africa, Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East. We have participated in successful projects – and in complete failures. We have a huge respect for how difficult the process is and for the efforts of the many organizations that are struggling with it. So what makes Warm Heart different?
We learned hard lessons in the years that we spent working in development before we founded Warm Heart. They can be summed up in four simple, positive statements that we believe define a successful grassroots community development organization:
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Warm Heart is community-based.
Warm Heart is not an international organization that serves a local community; we partner with permanent local organizations with a board of local officials, businessmen and village elders that will never leave.
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Warm Heart is hands-on.
The principals have quit their day jobs and are on the job. We live in Warm Heart communities and accept no salary until Warm Heart’s local partner organizations are self-sustaining.
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Warm Heart is self-sustaining.
Warm Heart is a new kind of nonprofit. We accept donations as investments, not charitable contributions. Success for us means to grow to pay our way and a social dividend.
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Warm Heart is inclusive.
Our programs are designed to ensure that everyone has a stake in our success.
What does Warm Heart actually do?
Warm Heart Worldwide helps communities achieve sustainability. We don’t bring gifts or ready-made answers. We provide knowledge, skills and attitude, and collaborate with our partners to nurture communities where:
- Individuals and families can build a good life through their own efforts
- People can grow wealth while maintaining the core values of civility and family friendliness
- Education is open to all, but the beauty of traditional forms and respect for culture remain
- The environment itself is managed so that it will sustain future generations.
How does Warm Heart do this?
Let’s take the case of our current project in Phrao, Chiang Mai Province, one of the poorest districts in northern Thailand. Our local partner organization, Warm Heart Foundation, a Thai nongovernmental organization, started by asking questions and listening to the answers. Staff asked villagers, local government officials and sewing circles: “What’s wrong?” “What’s needed?” They got the same answers everywhere. “Our culture is dying. We must save it. Our children need education. We are poor. We must learn to start businesses.”
“We cannot do those things alone,” the Warm Heart Foundation staff told them, “but together we can do them all.” That’s the Warm Heart way. We provide the entrepreneurial spark. We empower people to help themselves. Warm Heart works with the entire community to unleash growth that includes the young, the old and the wayward alike.