Award-Winning Student Entrepreneurs Use Local Art to Help Haiti

Art could be a way out of poverty for earthquake-stricken Haitian communities thanks to an award-winning business venture hatched by two students from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Matt Brightman and Martin Weiss are the founders of Moral Fibers, a business that uses Haitian artists work to design t-shirts which are then sold via the company's website. Moral Fibers pays an initial licensing fee for the art, and artists get 15 per cent from every sale. In addition, 10 per cent of profits are donated to a nominated charity in the artist's home town.

Each design is strictly limited to 250 pieces and if an entire line of t-shirts sells out, the artist stands to make more than three times the national average salary.

The business recently won the first prize in the "For Profit" category of the Dobson Cup, a prestigious entrepreneurship competition hosted by the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill. The prize provided Brightman and Weiss with the $15,000 start-up costs they needed to invest in the business...

Read full article: News Blaze, November 12, 2011