Sponsored by the Bates Student Philanthropy Club, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6129.

Brothers Bert and John Jacobs began the company that would become Life is good in 1989, when they designed their first T-shirt. They started in Boston, selling their shirts college to college, dorm room to dorm room, but had little luck until they designed what is now known as the “Jake” shirt: a cartoon drawing of a face with a contagious grin, sunglasses and the words “Life is good.”

In September 1994, the brothers presented their new Jake shirts at a street fair in Cambridge, Mass. The shirts were a hit. Since then the small company has grown to a much larger enterprise, with Jake the trademark figure. Today their merchandise is sold across country and the company has reached sales of more than $100 million a year, without a dollar spent on traditional advertising.

The company is known for its nonprofit organization, The Life is good Kids Foundation. The Foundation receives financial support principally through the company’s donation of 100 percent of the profits from the sale of select products and public donations at Life is good Festivals held in major cities across the country.

The foundation supports extraordinary charities that create a lasting positive impact on children facing unfair challenges, including the traumas of violence, poverty and loss. So far, more than $4 million has been raised for this cause.

Roy Heffernan is “chief operating optimist” for Life is good, ensuring that the company delivers on its promises. His presentation is sure to offer solid lessons for entrepreneurs, philanthropists and optimists alike.

The Bates Student Philanthropy Club provides Bates students the opportunity to become acquainted with the philanthropic process, increasing philanthropic awareness on campus and strengthening the Bates community at large.

Cornell University professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen offers a lecture about the impacts of globalization on poverty, food security and nutrition at 8 p.m. Monday, March 2, in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52), Alumni Walk. Sponsored by the economics department, the talk is open to the public free of charge.

Pinstrup-Andersen is J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship, H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy, and nutritional sciences professor in applied economics and management at Cornell. He received the 2001 World Food Prize for his contribution to agricultural research, food policy and dedication to the interests of the world’s poor and hungry. In 1993, he launched the 2020 Vision Initiative, dedicated to solving global challenges where international security, energy and the environment come together.

An agricultural economist by training, Pinstrup-Andersen has studied such issues as the effects of European Union policies on agriculture and nutrition in Ghana, and how China’s membership in the World Trade Organization affects the nation’s nutrition. He has elevated the role of sound policy research and exchange in ensuring food security.

Pinstrup-Andersen’s talk is the first of three at Bates relating to issues around food justice, nutrition, food production and distribution.

Bates alumni involved in food production and nutrition in Maine discuss a variety of issues in a panel presentation at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 16, also in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52).

Food activist and author Mark Winne, a member of the Bates class of 1972, gives a talk titled “Food Justice and Good Food — When Shall the Twain Meet?” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 30, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. A reception and book signing follow in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

The events on March 16 and 30 are sponsored by the Bates Contemplates Food Planning Committee. For more information, please call 207-786-6336.

This academic year, inspired by the opening of a new dining Commons and a $2.5 million gift supporting the use of organic, natural and farm-fresh foods, Bates launched Nourishing Body and Mind: Bates Contemplates Food. The initiative explores the ramifications of our food choices and spotlights Bates’ own award-winning sustainable food-service practices.

Behind the Ben Ayers ’99–Kirsten Walter ’00 farmhouse, barn designer and friend Brad Morse ’99, along with neighbor Bruce Bell, was cutting beams from hemlock timbers that Bell and son Nat had milled. On Morse’s T-shirt was the phrase “Measure twice, cut once.” An understatement, actually, said Morse with a smile. “I’m pretty picky about everything, so I do it more than twice.”

There were a few concessions to modern convenience — the whine of Bell’s Big Foot circular saw represented one — but other sights were pure Americana. Graybeard neighbor Ian Ormon, seated at a shaving horse, was using a drawknife to shape oak pegs. The next day, a huge wooden maul (“commander”) would be used to bang the pegs into place to fix the mortise and tenon joints.

Metaphorical Bates pegs abounded. All the wedding guests — including 35 Bates alums — would etch their names into the transom’s stained glass, created at the Maine Art Glass Studio in Lisbon Falls, co-owned by Jim Nutting ’76. Wedding guests would enjoy a meal prepared by L’Acadie Catering, owned by Jon Weislogel ’94. His goal is to create “100-percent Maine, organic…food that supports the emerging green and fair-trade economy.”

The fare reflected Ayers and Walter’s social mindset, as each is wise to the ways of social entrepreneurship. After graduation, Ayers founded Porters Progress to help Nepali mountain porters and says he fueled it with high-octane idealism. Recently, he found it hard to build a sustainable management structure for the nonprofit, one that didn’t depend entirely on his vision and direction. The lesson learned? “Sometimes you have to renegotiate your idealism.”

For Ayers, this renegotiation has yielded a balanced, rewarding life. While his current work is with dZi Foundation, supporting social programs in Himalayan communities, Ayers is also involved in Maine forestry (he logged the timbers for his barn). Settled in an old farmhouse, and looking ahead to restoring it with Walter, is “something I thought I’d be able to do only when I was an old man.”

When writer and illustrator Eric Sloane wrote An Age of Barns in 1967, he thought that the American ethos behind great 18th- and 19th-century timber-frame barns had eroded. Gone were farmers (who were also woodsmen, teachers, artists, weavers, farriers, and more) who executed diverse tasks with a “reverence for excellence.” The term “sustainable” wasn’t available to Sloane in the ’60s, but when he bemoaned the erosion of excellence, he was lamenting the loss of a sustainable ethic.

A new timber-frame barn now stands beside a circa-1800 farmhouse in Leeds. Its physical and ethical construction reflects Sloane’s revered principles — the triumph of experience grafted to idealism — and it was built by Bates people who live that ethos.

Barns, Sloane wrote, are shrines that “ought to be remembered.” The barn of Ben Ayers and Kirsten Walter is a shrine all right. It’s a monument to what Sloane believed was fading, but has not.

By H. Jay Burns, Editor

The Bates College Seminar Series on Entrepreneurship presents Kaile Warren, founder of the nationally known handyman business Rent-A-Husband, at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27, in Chase Hall Lounge, Campus Avenue.

Sponsored by the Bates Office of Career Services, the event is open to the public at no charge. For more information, please call 207-786-6232.

Warren, a veteran contractor and Cumberland native, founded the Rent-A-Husband franchise chain in 1996. Since then he and the business have been profiled in such publications as People, Good Housekeeping and The Washington Post, and on television’s “Today Show” and “Oprah Winfrey Show.” Warren is also the resident home improvement expert on the CBS “Saturday Early Show” and the co-author, with Jane MacLean Craig, of the book The Official Rent-A-Husband Guide to a Safe, Problem-Free Home (Broadway Books, 2001).

Rent-A-Husband provided Warren with a route to recovery after a debilitating car accident cost him his construction business, home and marriage. Starting as a one-man operation designed to tackle all manner of household projects, from air-conditioning installation to yard raking, the business today has franchises in six states.

Quimby will also cover natural products’ social and environmental impacts and marketing strategies with a social consciousness.

Burt’s Bees is a $14-milliion manufacturer of lotions, creams and other personal care products sold in boutiques and health-food stores. The company was launched in 1984 when Quimby joined forces with rural Maine beekeeper Burt Shavitz to make and market candles from the abundance of beeswax in his honey house.

Customers swarmed to the product and soon the pair was selling the all-natural products at craft fairs throughout New England. The business grew and grew, eventually employing 40 women. By 1993, when the operation – by then selling to exclusive outlets such as Bloomingdale’s in New York – cleared $3 million, Quimby and Shavitz decided to relocate to Raleigh, N.C., to take advantage of the region’s lower taxes and skilled labor force. Quimby automated production, hired a professional management team, refocused the product line, and bought out her partner’s share in the business. Burt’s Bees sales have tripled in the last three years.

For more information, call the Bates College Office of Career Services at 207-786-6232.

The Bates alums are Darrell Williams ’86, president and CEO of Washington Emerging Technologies Center, Washington, D.C.; Mark Cauchon ’78, owner of Legal Advice Line Inc., Baltimore, Md.; and Bob Parks ’92, senior sections editor of Wired Magazine. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

Aimed at both students and community members, the Bates Seminar Series in Entrepreneurship is an integrated set of lectures and presentations covering the entrepreneurial process: its history and manifestations from conception to implementation of a new venture. The sessions focus on attributes of entrepreneurs, their search and assessment of opportunities and the identification and obtainment of resources that transform ideas into new ventures. The series exposes the unique ways that the fundamental characteristics of a liberal arts education can be applied in a variety of new ventures.

The seminar series will rely heavily on Bates alumni, parents and Maine entrepreneurs, as well as experts and researchers in the field. The next presentation will be Entrepreneurship and the Next Century: Trends, Developments and Implications at 7 p.m. Friday, April 7, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives.

Dr. Holt is an ophthalmic surgeon in Portland and the CEO of the Eye Care & Surgery Center of Maine. He has been a member of the  New England Ophthalmology Society for eight years and has chaired the organization’s medical legal liaison for five. Dr. Holt is also a fellow of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and a member of the American College of Eye Surgeons. He is a Vietnam veteran and received a Bronze Star medal for his work in the army as a medical officer. A native of Calais, Dr. Holt earned his masters degree and doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical School.

Aimed at both students and community members, The Bates Seminar Series in Entrepreneurship is an integrated set of lectures and presentations covering the entrepreneurial process, its history and manifestations from conception to implementation of a new venture. The sessions focus on attributes of entrepreneurs, their search and assessment of opportunities and the identification and obtainment of resources that transform ideas into new ventures. The series exposes the unique ways that the fundamental characteristics of a liberal arts education can be applied in a variety of new ventures.

The seminar series will rely heavily on Bates alumni, parents and Maine entrepreneurs engaged in a variety of ventures, as well as experts and researchers in the field. The next presentation will be The Electronic Revolution, E-Commerce at 7 p.m. Friday, March 3, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.
For more information, call the Bates College Office of Career Services at 207-786-6232 or check the seminar series web site here.

Jamie Merisotis `86 and president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, D.C., will join Richard Willing, executive director of L/A Arts; Marty McIntyre `73, executive director of the Sexual Assault Crisis Center in Auburn; and Paul Rubin, executive director of Faithworks in Lewiston for the presentation.

The identification and management of opportunities in social renewal through private and not-for-profit initiatives or community agencies will be carefully reviewed at this meeting. Topics to be explored include how social change, charitable and health and human service organizations share in the entrepreneurial process. Particular attention will be given to the creative and skillful identification of foundation, community, government and corporate involvement for these ventures. Since most service and community enterprises return profits into benefit enhancements, entrepreneurial success for venture developers and managers in these areas also will be investigated.

Aimed at both students and community members, the Bates Seminar Series in Entrepreneurship is an integrated set of lectures and presentations covering the entrepreneurial process, its history and manifestations from conception to implementation of a new venture. The sessions focus on attributes of entrepreneurs, their search and assessment of opportunities and the identification and obtainment of resources that transform ideas into new endeavors. The series exposes the unique ways that the fundamental characteristics of a liberal arts education can be applied in a variety of new enterprises.

The seminar series will rely heavily on Bates alumni, parents and Maine entrepreneurs engaged in a variety of projects, as well as experts and researchers in the field. The next presentation will be “Scientific and Medical Entrepreneurship” at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives.

For more information, call the Bates College Office of Career Services at 207-786-6232 or check the seminar series on this web site.