Janine and I had a marketing company in Toronto. Janine founded it and was there for 16 years. I joined and was there for about 10 years. We worked with packaged goods companies like Disney.
Janine was in New York City on September 11, 2001, and I was on an American Airlines flight flying to Chicago. Our worlds were turned upside-down, and we were really looking at our lives, because we had everything, but we could have lost it in a second. From that, Janine started a journey and went to Africa to see what was happening in Zambia, in Lusaka. Then she went to Kenya, saw what was happening there, and really felt that we needed to do something more than we were doing.
In 2004 we closed down our company and started focusing on working in Africa. In 2006 we started Heart for Africa, and we worked in Swaziland, South Africa, Malawi, and Kenya, just helping where we could from an agricultural standpoint. Our focus then zeroed in on Swaziland because of the great need there. The HIV pandemic there was leaving a country filled with children and elderly people. The children were hungry and starving and they needed help. We decided to combine all of our resources and efforts in that country to help them.
In so doing, in 2009 we purchased a piece of title deed land and started Project Canaan. That's how we got there.