Bootstrapper brings social conscience to entrepreneurship (Part 2)

Filed in archive Bootstrapper Profile on October 16, 2006

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According to Wikipedia, Santiago de Cali (Cali for short) is the capital of Valle de Cauca, one of the most important of 32 "departments" making up the Republic of Columbia.

With an area of 209.7 square miles and a population estimated at 2,068,386, Cali is also the South American nation's third largest municipality, and a place of desperate poverty, as the Wikipedia entry notes:

Nowadays Cali is a sprawling city of over 2 million inhabitants, many of them recent immigrants from poor rural areas, who have created squalid slums on the outskirts while they absorb the skills needed to prosper in an urban setting...

In this environment, exacerbated by a history of violence due in part to the activities of a notorious local drug cartel, Styles' sister-in-law had endured considerable hardships in a home built in close proximity to a river polluted with sewage.

There, a press release from Styles' fledgling new company says:

Cracked floorboards throughout the home provided a view of the polluted waters running below.

Since an initial visit with her husband in 2001, Styles had been searching for a way to help.

"It's always been a sore spot with me," she said.

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