Food aid procured by the World Food Program in Tanzania has injected millions of dollars into the country's economy. Photo: WFP/Tom Haskell (Flickr)

The benefits of food aid go beyond feeding the hungry.

As humanitarian agencies like the UN World Food Program (WFP) rush to respond to famine and crisis in Africa, it's easy to forget where emergency food aid comes from. But according to an article this week on the blog allAfrica, local food aid purchases in Africa have played a major role in bolstering regional economies. For example, between October 2011 and March 2012, the WFP purchased nearly 100,000 metric tons of Tanzanian maize, and has injected an estimated $13 million into the country's transport industry in last six months alone.

"Over 300 lock trucks leave [the capital] each month," explained WFP's country director in Tanzania, Richard Ragan. "Through the port, WFP operates the movement of 140,000 metric tons of food per year for delivery to East and Central African countries. This means that we are the biggest commercial partner the port has."

In a previous blog post, we explained how the U.S. is the only country that continues to send domestically procured food aid, essentially preventing local markets from benefiting from large-scale food purchases.

Given evidence that food aid helps spur regional development, and eventually the need for less foreign assistance, it's time the U.S. rethinks its food procurement aid policies.

Peanuts like these go into a nutritional peanut paste that is helping to save kids in Haiti. Photo: nojhan

This story was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

A special kind of peanut butter has been bringing malnourished children back to life for years. Pharmaceutical company Abbott Labs is hoping it will help revive the Haitian economy, too.

International healthcare organization Partners in Health (PiH) has distributed Nourimanba, a ready-to-use nutritional paste, to combat malnutrition in Haiti since 2007, when another NGO, Meds & Food for Kids, helped them to get off the ground. Demand has only increased following the 2010 earthquake there, according to The New York Times.

As many as 300,000 children suffer from malnutrition in Haiti, says UNICEF. For these kids, Nourimanba is a lifesaver. Made from peanuts, milk powder, vegetable oil, sugar, and a scientifically-formulated mix of vitamins, it’s like a souped-up version of common child favorite peanut butter. This helps to explain why it’s been successful: it actually tastes good. There are other advantages, too: the main ingredients are all found in Haiti, where peanuts are grown as a crop, so it can be produced cheaply and locally. It’s also easy enough to use that parents can give it to their own children at home, rather than taking them to a hospital.

Nourimanba production in Haiti was feeding malnourished children before Abbott arrived on the scene, but somewhat small-scale and slow-moving. Abbott Labs took a look at what PiH was doing and saw an opportunity to turbocharge it. Abbott is donating 6.5 million dollars to help PiH and local Haitians scale up and improve their production of Nourimanba. This means building a new, three-million-dollar plant in Corporant, Haiti, that is projected to quintuple production. The old plant could produce about 70 tons of Nourimanba to feed 10,000 children a year; the new one should be pushing out 350 tons and will reach 50,000 kids, writes The New York Times.

Abbott isn’t just boosting quantity - they’re also using their expertise to help PiH improve the quality of Nourimanba. The new factory will mechanize the removal of bad peanuts, and safety and sanitation standards will be much higher, according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Abbott also wants to tweak the formula to find a local replacement for milk powder, which currently must be imported.

“Local" is a key part of Abbott and PiH’s mission. They don’t just want to make Nourimanba better - they want to make it a sustainable business. Local products and employment should help ensure that Nourimanba benefits Haitians of all ages for years to come. There’s room for expansion, too: Abbott says the factory could make extra money in the future by producing normal peanut butter for consumer purchase.

The collaboration between Abbott and PiH is unique in the world of corporate-nonprofit partnerships. “This is a departure," PiH’s associate coordinator for nutrition in Haiti, Joan VanWassenhove, told the Times. "It’s not Abbott coming in and saying we have an idea we can do. It’s more like saying we want to take your vision and make it the best possible.”

The corporate-nonprofit partnership pays off for both parties. “This is an investment rather than charity,” Kathy Pickus, vice president of global citizenship and policy for Abbott, told the Stanford Social Innovation Review. “We wanted to work in the country to spark the economy.”

Gap opens in Shanghai. Photo by kreep (flickr)

What would happen if you took off every article of clothing not made in America? asks ABC at New York’s Grand Central Station (video).
_____

Gap is betting big on China, announcing plans to triple its retail stores there by the end of 2012, reports the Associated Press. But in doing so, the chain will directly compete with its own Chinese suppliers, which for years have been sharpening their teeth making cheap knockoffs of the popular clothing.

Gap is not the only global brand to jump on what they hope will emerge as the next massive consumer class. Apple, Nike, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Walmart have all positioned themselves to profit from China's nouveau riche. Despite these expectations, the New York Times reports that China’s consumer spending has actually plummeted in the last decade as a portion of the overall economy, to about 35 percent of gross domestic product, from about 45 percent - the lowest percentage for any big economy anywhere in the world.

The remarkable growth the nation has seen has not translated into fruits for middle class families, but rather state-run banks, government-backed corporations and the affluent few with connections, says Carl E. Walter, a former JP Morgan executive who is co-author of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.” Worse yet, low-wage workers who make the clothing sold in stores like Gap simply can’t afford the finished goods. Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal visited a new Gap store in Shanghai recently; the most striking thing he found about the store was how empty it was. Sales of global “brands” come mainly in the form of the counterfeits and knockoffs sold at busy outdoor markets.

The New York Times suggests the “state capitalism” that’s fueled much of China’s growth must be dismantled before ordinary Chinese citizens will start feeling flush enough to buy Gap’s ‘nostalgic’ 1969 jeans - even the made-for-China version. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao asserts that the government is ready to make some of those changes. Until then, hedge your bets.

A SELCO technician installing solar panels. Photo courtesy SELCO

This article was reposted on The Christian Science Monitor's Change Agent section.

Harish Hande is democratizing electricity. In India, nearly half of all households lack power. Hande has made it his life’s work to change that, and he’s doing it with affordable, sustainable technology.

Hande is the managing director of SELCO, a social enterprise in Bangalore, India, that develops sustainable technology to improve the lives of India’s underprivileged masses. In the past ten years, Hande says, SELCO has increased Indian fuel efficiency, enhanced the financial power of India’s rural banks, and improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of low-income Indians.

Dr. Harish Hande.

In a September talk at MercyCorps in Portland, Ore., sponsored by the Lemelson Foundation, Hande told SELCO’s story to an enthusiastic audience. It was a glimpse into the potential of sustainable technology and the difficulties of motivating charitable service in a profit-oriented culture.

SELCO works to customize products for underprivileged consumers, using sustainable values to cut costs and improve lives. In India, “sustainability is not getting subsidized," Hande explained. "Sustainability is subsidizing other industries.” SELCO ‘subsidizes’ the work of India’s poor, he said, by providing sustainable technology that boosts productivity and income for poor workers.

For example: Most street vendors in India use kerosene lights, which leave a substantial carbon footprint. Perhaps more importantly, kerosene costs about 15 rupees per day. So SELCO offers these street vendors solar lighting for about 10 rupees a day: a 33% personal savings. Those savings can make all the difference for many of SELCO’s clients.

SELCO’s recent success belies the difficulty it had in getting off the ground. According to Hande, his venture is quite unique, making it difficult to gain traction in Indian culture.

First, how do you convince entrepreneurs that values are more important than sales?

Most salespeople “sell up,” meaning they sell to clients who are of a higher socioeconomic standing than they are. But SELCO's sales team “sells down” to people with little expendable income, and Hande feels it's ethically unacceptable--contrary to SELCO's business, in fact--to sell clients products they don't need. This complicates SELCO's worker training, and in a caste system like India’s, these relationships are all the more difficult.

Another challenge for Hande: recruiting young employees. How do you convince economically minded parents that joining a not-so-lucrative industry is a solid decision? As Hande explains, his “biggest question is, 'How do we convince our parents?’” India’s economy is growing fast, developing a success-oriented culture that prioritizes profitable career choices over service-minded work.

And once you’ve convinced the parents, how do you get urban youth to think and care about the rural poor? Satisfying these conditions is key for recruiting what Hande calls "holistically oriented" salespeople who care about what they do and whom they do it for.

Yet despite these difficulties, SELCO is bringing sustainable technology to India’s underprivileged classes, improving their lives and helping the environment with more than 115,000 new solar energy systems in the last 15 years. Overcoming the cultural barriers, Hande has found a ready supply of holistically minded entrepreneurs. SELCO’s base has grown quickly in recent years, and the resumes keep coming in.

Rags2Riches is helping Filipino women take back control of their livelihoods. Photo:fveronesi1 (flickr)

High-fashion designs are turning impoverished Filipino mothers into living-wage artisans.

The average daily wage for a nurse working in the Philippines is $7, but for women in Reese Fernandez-Ruiz’s Rags2Riches program, formerly impoverished mothers can make up to $12 a day, according to Fast Company. Rags2Riches solicits well-known Philippine designers and pairs them with local craftswomen. Working with the designers, the women produce their products with recycled materials in exchange for a premium wage. Fernandez-Ruiz, president and founding partner of Rags2Riches, was herself a poor working mother in one of the Philippines' worst dump sites (home to over 12,000 families) when she created the organization.

Aware that many women were selling foot rugs made from recycled fabric scraps (sourced from the local dump), and were often the victims of shady middlemen who provided and controlled the materials, Fernandez-Ruiz saw the opportunity for the women to take control. In an effort to gain momentum, she asked prominent Filipino designer Rajo Laurel to participate — to her surprise, he agreed. With such a prominent name attached to the project, more designers soon signed on.

Working with some of the Philippines' top designers has helped women boost their daily earnings from 20 cents to $12, said Fast Company. In addition, many are able to work from home, letting them care for their children while continuing to earn money. The organization also incorporates a "quality of life program," in which a portion of each worker's income is deposited into a bank account for future savings.

In its fourth year of operation, Rags2Riches has helped improve the lives and working conditions of over 450 women. It has improved the environmental conditions in the community with it's up-cycle, eco-ethical business model and has provided an invaluable opportunity to hundreds of women and their families.

To hear more about this inspiring business model, check out the video below:

New organization Solar Sister is empowering women in rural Africa to star their own solar lamp businesses. Photo: IvanClow (flickr)

A new organization seeks to light up the night in rural Africa by putting a twist on an all-American idea: the Avon lady.

Night in rural Africa is a night much darker than that to which the developed world is accustomed, as many communities lack electricity. In rural Uganda, the number is as high as 95 percent, as Katherine Lucey told Dowser.org. Without electric light, people must rely upon kerosene lamps, which are expensive and belch toxic fumes.

These create a bevy of problems, especially for women. Girls are often expected to help with chores when they return home from school and don’t have time to do homework until after dark. Either they sit inhaling fumes and burning up cash with the family’s kerosene lamp, or in many cases, they simply don’t study at all. Solar lamps solve this problem by extending the work day.

For years, Africans have had a big problem with solar power: it breaks. In an interview with Dowser.org, Solar Sister founder, Katherine Lucey, said that in her previous work with a nonprofit, the solar systems they installed in rural areas had a 50 percent rate of failure after just one year. Traditional solar power can be a hard sell for poor communities — it saves money in the long run, but it's pricey at first, and many solar panels often fall apart over time due to improper maintenance. The new lamps that Solar Sister uses are small, portable, and don’t require technological know-how to use — you simply place the lamp outside during the day, it absorbs the sun’s rays, and when night falls you turn it on.

Solar Sister uses a microconsignment model, meaning that its entrepreneurs don’t pay for their lamps until they actually sell them. If they can’t sell the lamps or decide they don’t want to, they can return them to the organization without loosing any money. It’s a low-risk endeavor that has so far empowered 107 women in Uganda, Ghana, and Sudan. Normally, these women wouldn’t have had enough money to create a business.

The lamps range from $15 to $50 at first, a large investment for most families. But, an average family spends about $2 a week on kerosene, so a family could save up to $85 a year just by buying a lamp, says TriplePundit. Solar Sister estimates that its entrepreneurs can actually double their households’ incomes while decreasing their household expenses by 30 percent. Some of the lamps can even act as cell-phone chargers. Not only can women with these lamps charge their own family’s phones; they often bring in extra money by charging neighbors’ phones. Otherwise, they’re left to travel to nearby cities whenever a phone goes dead.

The women who participate in Solar Sister can seem pretty ecstatic about their new businesses, as you can see in this clip below of Viola, one of the women selling solar lamps in eastern Uganda.

Solar Sister currently operates in Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan, and hopes to shine a light on other parts of Africa soon.

View of Istanbul from Bogazici Universitesi. Photo: Cemnaz (flickr)

I'll be waking up at 3:30 tomorrow morning to begin my journey from Portland, Oregon, to Istanbul, Turkey, where I'll be based for the next several months while I embark on a trip of a lifetime.

My move to Istanbul is for a short-term study abroad program at Bosphorus University's school of International Relations and Political Science. Though I have traveled to Istanbul before, living there will be a completely new experience. I'm excited to live in the city that boasts being in both Europe and Asia.

I'll be taking advantage of Istanbul's central location and taking several side trips as part of an independent study on post-Soviet economies. My itinerary is pretty diverse -- everywhere from Estonia to Georgia is on the list.

My trips to these places will have an academic focus at the core, but I plan to interviewing people I meet along the way to get the local take on the state of affairs -- which is the part I'm most excited to bring to the blog.

Right now I'm preparing for the 20-hour fight, so I'm jamming my favorite books and snacks into the little space I have left in my carry on... That and a pocket Turkish dictionary, since at the moment my Turkish language skills are still very basic. Now it's back to packing and preparing for the early morning wake-up...

Evallah, or goodbye for now!