Brazil
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Managing Organization:
Banco do Nordeste
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Activity Description:
An estimated 15.7 million people in Brazil work in the informal economy as microentrepreneurs, outnumbering formal sector entrepreneurs by more than three to one. Of these informal microentrepreneurs 93% run profitable businesses. However, 84% of these microentrepreneurs did not have access to credit.
In November 1996 at a meeting in Fortaleza, the World Bank and Banco do Nordeste, a development bank formed to support growth in northeastern Brazil, decided to initiate a collaborative process to jointly implement a local development program based on the idea of micro-credit. Motivated by the fact that small informal companies – family owned and small properties - were not being served by the Bank's financing activities due to the restrictive regulation of Brazil's Banking Systems, Banco do Nordeste and the World Bank decided to develop and launch a pilot low-income bank, targeting micro-entrepreneurs from informal sectors.
When asked why Banco do Nordeste decided to launch a microcredit institution, executive director, Stelio Gama Lyra Junior responds simply “we are a development bank; it was a logical step”.3 The fast growth and success of the CrediAmigo program suggest that he might
be right. After only three years in operation, CrediAmigo had already become Latin America’s second largest microcredit institution both in terms of number of loans and the amounts invested.
With the experience gained trough its pilot program, CrediAmigo officially launched its microcredit program and has continued to grow steadily. In fact, it has achieved 40% growth each year since 1998. As of May 2003, CrediAmigo has 123,203 active clients with an active portfolio of R$72 (US$ 24.69) 9 million and an average loan size of R$ 581.35 (US$ 199.33). CrediAmigo offers loans at 3.5% monthly rate (approximately 51% per year). As an incentive for customers to pay on time, CrediAmigo reimburses its customers 15% of their interest payment when their loan is paid in-full and on-time.10 The maximum loan size allowed is R$4,000 (US$ 1,371.51). In the future, CrediAmigo plans to continue to expand its services throughout the northeast of Brazil, as well as offer greater product/service selection such as savings accounts and insurance products.
Click here to read the full report on CrediAmigo.
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Managing Organization:
AmazonLife
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Activity Description:
 AmazonLife harnesses the power of business to produce Haute Couture products that support local communities and conserve the environment. In the early 1990s, João Augusto Fortes and Beatriz Saldanha, cofounders of Brazil’s first eco-product store EcoMercado, found value in a natural rubber material extracted from the Amazon region of Acre. Rubber production worldwide was shifting from natural latex to oil-based chemicals and from small scale rubber tapping to large plantations. This forced many rubber tappers to shift to commodities markets such as timber and cattle, causing vast degradation of the forests. |
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Managing Organization:
Fabio Rosa
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Activity Description:
 Approximately 25 million people in Brazil do not have access to electricity. Fabio Rosa, a local social entrepreneur, is aiming to fill this need through low-cost rural electrification models to improve the quality of life for the rural poor and to slow urban migration. |
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Managing Organization:
Committee for Democracy in Information Technology
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Activity Description:
The Committee for Democracy in Information Technology is a non-profit organization based in Rio de Janeiro. In the past eleven years it has created 951 computer education schools in low income neighborhoods in Brazil and eight other countries. The schools, which charge students $5 to $10 a month, aim to enfranchise those who would be otherwise unable to have access to computers. Students who cannot afford tuition can still attend classes but are encouraged to help out around the centers.
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Managing Organization:
Banco Bradesco
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Activity Description:
Banco Postal, an off-shoot of Brazil's largest private sector bank, has made banking available to wide swaths of the Brazilian underclass which have traditionally been overlooked by financial institutions. Banco Postal is able to cut costs and increase accessibility by providing its banking services at 5460 post offices around the country. In 2002, before Banco Postal was launched, as many as 1750 Brazilian municipalities lacked banking services. Now, Banco Postal has brought banking to 1675 of these municipalities. According the New York Times, "Banco Postal has more than three million account holders, and a third of them have taken out loans. Though most of the clients of these banks are unskilled workers with little job stability, their default rate -- 9 percent at Banco Postal, for example -- is not much higher than the market average."
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Managing Organization:
Magazine Luiza
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Activity Description:
Magazine Luiza, which recently became Brazil's third largest retailer, has built its business around the wants and needs of the BOP. By selling in installments and providing affordable credit, Magazine Luiza has, according to the New York Times, "managed to bolster the spending power of the poor in Latin America's biggest consumer market." Magazine Luiza also requires customers to return to the store to make their monthly payments, a strategy which encourages customer loyalty and continued spending.
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Managing Organization:
PATH
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Activity Description:
Micronutrient deficiencies threaten the health, development, and productivity of millions of people worldwide. One approach to alleviating malnutrition is fortifying food with micronutrients. On a large scale, food fortification can be cost-effective and sustainable, and it allows people to get more nutritional value from the food they already eat.
To bring fortification to vulnerable rice-consuming communities, PATH developed a manufactured “Ultra Rice"--which can be mixed with rice and mimics the look, feel, and taste of rice--to provide nutrients the local diet may lack. In Colombia, two versions have been developed. One carries vitamin A; the other carries thiamin, folic acid, and zinc. An iron-bearing formula is expected to hit the commercial market later this year.
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Managing Organization:
Frutas Baixo Acre
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Activity Description:
Frutas Baixo Acre is Brazilian company specializing in organic acaí “palmberry” fruit pulp and other rainforest food products, including organic oils. The company, which will complete construction of its first production facility in November of 2006 in south-western Amazonas, will have an installed annual production capacity of 457 metric tons of frozen pasteurized acai fruit pulp at the start of 2007, with the capacity to easily scale up annual production to 1,920 tons within the initial facilities.
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Managing Organization:
Asiatotal
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Activity Description:
iT is a portable computer developed by Asiatotal for poor people to have greater access to knowledge, education, and social and economic opportunities. The computer connects to the internet and also comes with a printer, USB card reader, and other peripherals.
These computers will be distributed free of charge, owing to the fourteen hotkeys (e.g. "health," "money") on the keyboard that take users to sponsor sites.
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Managing Organization:
Stanford University
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Activity Description:
'Voices in Your Hand' is an humanitarian project to create a simple, voice-email handset and cheap audio services to help urban shantytowns and isolated rural areas in the developing world, overcoming illiteracy or minority languages.
This Stanford Reuters Digital Vision project aims to develop a cheap handset that would extend the reach of public tele-centers and bring the benefits of a simple, cheap information and communication channel to the rural and urban poor in the developing world.
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Managing Organization:
Sambazon
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Activity Description:
Sambazon (Sustainable Management of the Brazilian Amazon) purchases fair-trade Açaí Palmberry fruits from family cooperatives in the Amazon Rainforest, as a sustainable economic alternative for local communities who would otherwise depend on destructive logging practices.
In partnership with a Brazilian NGO FASE-PA (Federation of Social- Educational Assistance) which ensures compliance with USDA Orangic Certification guidelines and logistical support for delivery of the harvests, Sambazon manages processing of the Açaí fruit into a range of products sold in the United States, including pulps, beverages, ice creams and supplements.
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Managing Organization:
Sociedade do Sol
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Activity Description:
Sociedade do Sol provides rural communities in Brazil with decentralized solar power.
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Managing Organization:
EC2 Eletromecânica
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Activity Description:
EC2 has developed a mini-hydroelectric generator for use in rural villages.
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Managing Organization:
ABN AMRO
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Activity Description:
ABN AMRO has two microfinance programs: one in Brazil, and a second in India. In Brazil, AMN AMRO has partnered with Acción to provide loans directly to microentrepreneurs. ABN AMRO also provides its clients with business mentoring. In India, ABN AMRO acts as a wholesale facility, because it has no extensive branch network in that region. It uses five microfinance institutions (MFIs) as intermediaries to whom it lends.
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Managing Organization:
Instituto Eco-Engenho
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Activity Description:
The Instituto Eco-Engenho examines the feasibility of business models and markets for renewable energy in rural villages of Brazil. It also assists in the implementation and the organization of rural renewable energy systems.
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