Activity Description: TransFair USA's mission is to build a more equitable and sustainable model of international trade that benefits producers, consumers, industry and the earth. They achieve that mission by certifying and promoting Fair Trade products.

TransFair audits transactions between US companies offering Fair Trade Certified™ products and the international suppliers from whom they source, in order to guarantee that the farmers and farm workers behind Fair Trade Certified goods were paid a fair, above-market price. In addition, annual inspections conducted by FLO ensure that strict socioeconomic development criteria are being met using increased Fair Trade revenues.

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Proteak’s founders, Hector Bonilla and Javier Diaz Calvo have created a profitable, sustainable teak company in a sector otherwise marred by illegal logging and corruption. Hector’s talent for spotting market potential led him to create three startups before a drive past a plantation in Mexico inspired him to research the sizable $12 billion global teak market. Both Hector and Javier were impressed by teak’s price, which is increasing at a rate of six percent annually and commonly sells at $12 per board foot, as compared to $2-$7 per board foot for most other woods.

Proteak’s vision is to operate as a business that addresses social, environmental and economic concerns. Because of its commitment to sustainable business practice, Proteak serves as a model in an industry in which illegal logging runs rampant and the major regions of production in Southeast Asia experience deforestation rates of about one percent per year. Hector candidly asserts that he does not see a separation between profits and sustainable practices. His group is committed to promoting responsible forestry practices and soil management. The 820 hectares of land that Proteak has planted are treated with the minimum possible amount of chemicals, and the trees populating these plantations take in the equivalent of 5,000 cars worth of CO2 emissions every year. The company is also committed to providing benefits for the local community; it is working to reinvigorate agriculture in a region where manufacturing has come to dominate, and Proteak employees receive better pay and benefits than the average worker in their sector.

When discussing these social concerns, Hector is quick to add that he and his board are fundamentally “all about numbers,” and argues that his 50 investors have been drawn in primarily by the 24% projected return on investment. Hector credits his management team with being one of the best and most knowledgeable in the industry. The company has bolstered its marketing strategy with extensive support from New Ventures, a program of the World Resources Institute dedicated to spurring investment in sustainable enterprise. With these strong management and marketing abilities, Proteak has raised $4 million of capital in five successful rounds of investment. In a sector notoriously controlled by inefficient, state-run companies, the Proteak team’s impressive private sector background makes them stand out as a highly productive and profitable enterprise.

Proteak’s superior business model and experienced team combine sustainable practices and solid leadership to create a reliable strategy for growth. This approach earned the company recognition as a winner in the 2005 New Ventures Mexico Investor Forum and ensures that as it sells its first trees on the open market next year, Proteak will continue to thrive.

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"Do it the right way (no short-cuts); Be innovative; Execute with discipline." - Vikram Akula, founder of SKS Microfinance

SKS Microfinance empowers the poor to become economically self-reliant by providing financial services in a sustainable manner. Vikram Akula, the 37-year-old founder of SKS Microfinance, who was featured in Time’s list of 100 ‘People Who Shape Our World’, believes corporatising the NGO sector is a must for meaningful poverty alleviation programmes. “A for-profit business model is the fastest way to put more money into more poor hands,” he says.

Launched in 1998, SKS Microfinance is one of the fastest growing microfinance organizations in the world, having provided over $ 92 million (Rs 425 crores) and has maintained loans outstanding of $38 million(170 crores) in loans to nearly 320,000 women clients in poor regions of India. Borrowers take loans for a range of income-generating activities, including livestock, agriculture, trade (such as vegetable vending), and production (from basket weaving to pottery). SKS also offers interest-free loans for emergencies as well as life insurance to borrowers. Its affiliate, SKS Education, provides education services to poor children, including running a government-funded school for girls who have dropped out of school.

SKS currently has 138 microfinance branches in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh. This year, SKS aims to reach 700,000 clients by March 2007. In the last year alone, SKS Microfinance has achieved nearly 161 % growth, with 98% on-time repayment rate.

For this American-educated Fulbright scholar, a for-profit business model is not about maximising profits. It’s about maximising resources. “It allows you to tap private funds, unlike NGOs, where you survive on grants. You are accountable to your shareholders and, thus, cannot develop bad habits. You become more client responsive and allow them to guide your business,” says Akula, echoing the thoughts expressed by Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, the only other Indian on the Time’s powerlist.

Set up in 1998 with a sum of Rs 20 lakh that Akula managed to raise from 360 individual donors, most of them friends and family in the US where he was brought up, today SKS has a capital base of Rs 13.9 crore.

It has private equity participation from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Vinod Khosla, Ravi Reddy and Sandeep Tungare. Sidbi, a public financial institution, holds 7% for a crore invested. However, its client community remains its largest shareholders.

Apart from having a fully-automated, proprietory management information system (MIS), it has pioneered the use of smart-card technology at the village-level. The MFI is currently working with VISA International on a pilot project to develop and deploy wireless POS devices that would automate field operations and reduce transaction costs.

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Several years ago in Los Mochis, Mexico, an early morning fire in an agrochemical warehouse released massive amounts of toxic fumes into the environment, causing serious health problems for the local population. This was the first in a series of ecological disasters that convinced Jorge Berni, a longtime resident of the agriculture-dependent community, that farmers needed a safer solution for crop control than the heavily toxic pesticides upon which they had relied.

Berni combined his training in chemical engineering with his twenty years of experience as an organic farmer to produce Bug Balancer, a chemical solution that serves to repel harmful pests that destroy farmers’ crops while attracting beneficial insects that are the natural predators of those pests. Local farmers quickly became interested in this solution when they began noticing that while their crops were being ravaged by insects, Jorge’s remained relatively unaffected. Word quickly spread of the benefits of this new, safe formula, and Jorge created Berni Labs in 1994 to increase distribution of the increasingly popular product.

Bug Balancer is an ideal solution for Mexico’s numerous small farmers. The formula is cost effective, as its price is ten times lower than some of the leading pesticides and it eliminates the need for expensive spraying equipment, reducing the cost of application by 20 percent. Bug Balancer is also safe for the environment and for the health of agricultural workers who have been forced to utilize traditional pesticides for a lack of competition. The natural formula includes a number of herbal extracts such as garlic, and it can even be applied with workers still in the field.

Today, Berni Labs has continued to achieve new levels of success as it taps into a growing demand for organic crop cultivation in Mexico. The company’s small team of 14 had its most lucrative year in 2005, generating nearly $1 million in sales by working with 17 distributors across the country. Berni Labs has also begun to expand its operations internationally, winning an enterprise competition with Mexico’s Ministry of Economics to receive government support for research and expansion into the Canadian market.

As Berni Labs continues to establish Bug Balancer as a safe and affordable alternative to pesticides, the company has begun research and field testing on other products to be released in coming years. This includes a formula for shrimp farmers to increase their yields that is based on Bug Balancer technology as well as a project to meet the needs of small ranchers that will inexpensively produce large amounts of livestock feed in a heavily condensed space.

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Rwanda, a tiny East African country recently rent by a famously savage civil war, has found hope in that most colonial of crops: coffee. By riding booming demand in the developed world for specialty brews — and, to a certain extent, by turning its own challenges to its advantage — Rwanda has made premium coffee-growing a national priority. That has not only brought in a trickle of money to a country with little else to trade, but provided a stage on which one-time blood enemies can reconcile their terrible history.

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Mr. Yan Jingyu, owner of Jiangyou Xun Pai Organic Agriculture Co., had a dream of making organic agriculture a common practice in his native Sichuan province is one that he has been cultivating since he began harvesting the first Damascus rose in 1969. Since then, Yan has not only worked to convert degraded soil into productive land, he has become an entrepreneurial trendsetter by bringing organic practices to the farmers of rural China. As Xun Pai begins to work with international buyers, the company’s quality standards and scalable methods are likely to spread throughout the regional agricultural sector.

Yan’s rose fields are maintained by a cost-effective biological process. Rather than using powerful pesticides, for example, he distributes natural predators throughout his crops to protect them from destructive insects. This is not only much less expensive than the conventional method, it is highly innovative in an industry where some crops such as rice may be treated with up to 15 different pesticides. The founder of Xun Pai has a clear passion for his work and remarkable mentoring abilities that are evident in his efforts to duplicate this process among other practitioners. Aside from having written a textbook that is still part of the curriculum in many agricultural programs, he trains 20,000 farmers occupying 1,000 hectares of land in organic practices. The popularity of Yan’s mentoring is evident, proving that his methods are not only sustainable, but scalable as well.

Xun Pai is also proof of the crucial role Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) play in forming supply chains with larger firms. Two major Chinese buyers, Tetea and Ostore, are going to purchase Xun Pai roses in bulk as ingredients for organic cakes, teas and facial powders. Now international firms as well are beginning to recognize Xun Pai for its quality product and superior market positioning, being one of only two organic rose producers in the country. Yan is negotiating an investment from Granit after having met representatives of the Swiss company at an Investor Forum hosted by New Ventures, a program of the World Resources Institute. Granit is planning to use the roses as a key ingredient in a line of essential oils, and its investment will help Xun Pai expand to keep up with international demand, particularly as it prepares to become a supplier for German companies. As its sales continue to grow, Xun Pai serves as a strong example of the value sustainable SMEs can have as essential actors in forming linkages within an economy and as catalysts for positive change in local businesses.

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Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO) is supporting the development of high-quality pharmaceutical manufacturing in Tanzania by providing a US$2.5 million long-term financing to Zenufa, a company that is setting-up one of the first Tanzanian pharmaceutical plant complying with the WHO Current Good Manufacturing Standards.

This investment will allow to renovate unoccupied former premises, to equip the plant and bring the site to CGMP-standards (Current Good Manufacturing Practice). The Sponsors are experienced in manufacturing and distributing pharmaceutical products in Africa and will provide half of the financing needed for the project. The plant will manufacture generic drugs including antibiotics, anti-malaria- and anti-parasite drugs, drugs against pain and fever, etc.

Although the economic growth in Tanzania is very encouraging, aid epidemics are a constant threat to the country. Thanks to the government and international donors support access to health care has been improved. Zenufa has a long-range plan to produce more innovative drugs, not yet manufactured in Tanzania, such as ARV drugs for aids patients. Zenufa will sell most of its products in Tanzania but will also target other neighbourhood countries.

The creation of this pharmaceutical plant in Tanzania will improve the access to essential drugs, will help reduce prices and will offer opportunities to launch more sophisticated drugs. Moreover Zenufa will create about 150 new jobs, most of them for women. Zenufa also pays much attention to environmental aspects and the project has been designed to mitigate major environmental impacts. Zenufa will also have an important development impact by professionalizing the supply chain, stimulating the demand and raising the quality standards.

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The Full Belly Project, spearheaded by Jock Brondis, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer and light and sounds engineer, is a non-profit organization that designs and delivers simple agricultural machines to people in developing countries around the world. This project teaches people how to build hand-operated machines with common materials.

The peanut industry is not only huge in the Philippines but the reach goes as far as the different corners of the hemisphere, to almost 100 countries, feeding 500 million people and making it a great source of protein. It is also a cash crop which provides livelihood for poor people of developing countries.

But for such a big industry, the agricultural technology of peanuts is still trailing behind. People are still shelling peanuts by hand, painfully one by one. In Africa, most of those who do the work are women. (To save on fuel, peanuts are left dried under the sun which makes their shell hard to open.)

Jock Brandis, on his way to visit a friend in Mali, saw the heart of the problem and decided to use his technical skills to provide an agricultural solution. Thus the Universal Nut Sheller was born.

Invented by Brandis, the nut sheller can work 40 times faster than by hand. This coincided with the establishment of The Full Belly project spearheaded by Brondis which aims to “to relieve hunger through appropriate agricultural technology.” The goal of the organization is to distribute these machines around the world and make peanut a number one source of protein of third world countries. Brandis, out of his generous heart, didn´t patent his invention because he believes that it is “a gift to those in need.”

Not only can peanut provide livelihood but it contains highly nutritious properties which could solve worldwide hunger and eventually poverty-this time on a full stomach.

The machine is made of concrete and simple metal parts which only cost 50 dollars to make. It can shell “50 kilograms of peanuts per hour, and one machine can serve the needs of a village of 2,000. Its life expectancy is 25 years.” The Full Belly Project is now working in Uganda, Senegal, Zambia and Ghana. Filipino MIT graduate and Centromigrante head Illac Diaz has also collaborated with Full Belly Project with the help of a local cement company to teach locals how to build the machines.

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Ventures in Development is a social enterprise that seeks to elevate the lives of the poor through growing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Venture in Development is currently trying to incubate two ventures, Mei Xiang Cheese Factory and The Shokay Company. The concept is to capitalize on Western China's abundant resource - 13 million yaks.

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Aires de Campo taps into an emerging base of "conscious consumers" by selling locally produced organic food products at a competitive price.

When Pablo Muñozledo decided to build an organic store in 2001, there was no major market for such products. Unlike in the United States, where companies like Whole Foods were growing rapidly by appealing to eco-friendly consumers, these services were not in high demand in Mexico. It is in this environment that a pioneering entrepreneur created a company that sought to support local organic farmers by delivering their high quality products to the urban residents of Mexico City.

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