US Students Become Honey Entrepreneurs with Villagers in Ghana

By Brian Wagner, Voice of America, 6/16/2009

Sean Heron hopes to pursue video game design and creative writing when he finishes his education. The high school junior from South Florida did not expect that to change when his mother convinced him to enroll in a 12-week training program for young entrepreneurs.

He joined a group of 14 other teens who learned business basics and eventually developed their own product to sell.

"Our group [was] doing a social networking event," he recalls. "And we hosted that, and we did modestly well."

Well enough that Heron's teachers invited him to join a much bigger project that would have a much broader impact.

Nathan Burrell recruits student volunteers at one Agogo school to help gather and sell honey
It dealt with honey produced by villagers in Ghana.

The Honey Project's coordinator, Nathan Burrell, admits that honey seems like an unusual focus in this day and age, but says he wanted to find something that was both feasible and profitable.

"The bottom line is the farmers working with us are subsistence farmers," he explains. "Doing honey production and allowing them to do beekeeping provides them with another way to make money and have a living wage."…