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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Population Services International (PSI) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that harnesses the vitality of the private sector to address the health problems of low-income and vulnerable populations in more than 60 developing countries. PSI achieves its mission principally through social marketing of family planning and health products and services, and behavior change communications.

Activity Description: With three quarters of its national population living in rural areas, access to primary healthcare is one of the most pressing issues facing India’s businesses and policymakers. Further complicating this picture is the fact that the government has so far had difficulty making a sufficient financial commitment to fund free, needs-based health services. Although currently on the rise, this spending only accounts for less than one percent of the gross domestic product. Private healthcare groups have also been unable to fill this gap in a country where nearly a third of the populaiton lives in poverty. The entrepreneurs behind Gram Mooligai found a unique opportunity within this seemingly insurmountable challenge to deliver much needed health services to India’s rural poor while tapping into new markets underserved by public and private actors alike.

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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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With years of guiding experience, Eduardo Nycander and Kurt Holle created Rainforest Expeditions (RFE) in 1992. Located in the southeast of Peru in Madre de Dios, RFE educates tourists about conservation and sustainable development while providing job opportunities to the local community. The company runs four complementary ecolodges: the 18 room Tambopata Research Center (1992), the 30 room Posada Amazonas (1998), the 24 room Refugio Amazonas (2005) and the recently opened 18 room Konchukos Tambo, near Huascaran National Park north of Lima.

Among these lodges, Posada Amazonas is renowned for its unique partnership with the community of Infierno. RFE offers financing and experience, while the community provides labor and local knowledge of the natural environment. And while profits are split between the company and the community, ownership belongs to the latter.

The community-owned lodge is delivering great outcomes. Not only is it generating profit for RFE, but it is also placing the company in the limelight for potential clients and investors, creating a buzz around the fact that it fully engages a local community. For the Infierno community, it provides full ownership and a participatory process that allows it to pursue long term visions for sustainable development both within the community itself and the wider Amazonian region. In addition to its annual income of over US $250,000 and more than 30 permanent full time positions, Posada Amazonas has also led to the creation of four other small businesses in the community.

With over 50 employees, the recent addition of Refugio Amazonas, and the development of new products ranging from shorter 2-3 day general tours to an array of specialized tours (e.g. birding tours, academic tours), the company continues to attract new investments with plans to expand to other communities in the Andean region. RFE demonstrates how well-managed ecotourism can achieve environmental protection, social benefits, and economic growth.

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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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Capetonian Roy Dibley runs his 1980s diesel Mercedes on used vegetable oil, collecting it from restaurants in and around Cape Town. Sometimes he pays for it (R1.50 a litre, which is its price as an additive to animal feed). Sometimes he gets it for nothing.

Dibley reckons it costs him about 50c a litre to filter it before he can put it in his tank - which explains the sticker on the rear of his Merc which announcess that he is running his car on fuel that costs R2 a litre, and that anyone interested in doing the same should ring his cellphone number.

Dibley is a qualified mechanical engineer who designs, builds and sells conversion kits for diesel engines to run on vegetable oil (after filtering) - used, or neat, straight out of the bottle.

The kits, which have been extensively tested in South Africa, are now available from Dibley, and he hopes they will prove a boon to farmers large and small, to operators of hotel courtesy buses and, as he puts it, small operators like plumbers and electricians.

One of his first kits, which he fitted to an electrician's 280KB diesel bakkie, is performing well. The success of these prototypes led to the formation of a business partnership between Dibley, Stuart Freedman (based in Britain) and Valentine Lefrère, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Dibley's vision of the product's potential is broader than the luxury market of campers, converted buses or diesel Winnebagos, if there are such things.

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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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