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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Life Is Beautiful

And I love the people in mine!



I just wanted to be in touch with an update and an invite because so much has changed on my end in recent months.

In early February, I quit my non-profit job in LA with a plan to take a real shot at establishing and growing my company HaitiHub (www.haitihub.com).  The LA StartingBloc Institute for young social entrepreneurs was a great way to start building up momentum (www.startingbloc.org) - I'd highly recommend StartingBloc to anyone interested in social innovation.

I decided to move to Durham, North Carolina where my long-time long-distance girlfriend, Emily, lives.  This made sense for our relationship, for sure, since it had been tooooo much long distance for us in recent years.  But it also made a lot of sense for HaitiHub - there are a lot of Haiti-focused organization here, including the authors and publishers of the most popular English-Creole text, Creole Made Easy (the book I learned from in 2007 and the book we currently use for all our HaitiHub Intro classes).  It's also an awesome city with a really great startup culture.  HaitiHub was fortunate enough to make it into a business accelerator program called the Bull City Startup Stampede - an initiative put on by the Chamber of Commerce and several other organizations.  Through the Stampede we get connections, mentors, access to investors, free office space and wifi, discounts on services, and all kinds of other resources designed to help us succeed and contribute to Durham's startup culture.  http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/12442379/article-11-companies-get-free-office-space?instance=homesixthleft

All in all, I feel like things in life are lining up fantastically right now.  I'm so thankful for it because I know that's not always the case.  The only thing I would change would be to have all of you within walking or biking distance, but I know you all are up to awesome things too.

If you are ever in North Carolina, in the research triangle area perhaps doing something at Duke or UNC Chapel Hill, you must come visit!  You have a place to crash in my little brick duplex apartment!

More soon!  I love you guys and hope to see you sooner rather than later.  Also, I plan on this being the start of the revival of this blog.  (we shall see...)

Love and prayers,

Carlo