Donate

You are here

Grameen Danone

Reporting from Hong Kong

June 14, 2012

Shannon Maynard is Director of Bankers without Borders®, Grameen Foundation’s skilled-volunteer initiative. Maynard has more than 15 years of experience in nonprofit management and volunteer mobilization. Before joining Grameen Foundation, she served as Executive Director of the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, and managed strategic initiatives for the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency. This post is the first in a four-part series.

The summer after I joined Grameen Foundation to run Bankers without Borders (BwB), I had the pleasure to travel to Shanghai, China, where we had amassed a significant pool of advocates for our work – the “Shanghai Volunteers.” I met with these inaugural members of our BwB community (organized by uber-volunteer Susan Place Everhart) and joined Jennifer Meehan, our Regional CEO for Asia, in meetings with potential corporate partners for Grameen Foundation’s work in the region.  After spending time in Shanghai, I then traveled to Bangalore, India, where BwB was undertaking one of its first corporate collaborations and field-based projects in Asia, with Grameen Koota and a team of volunteers from Accenture, Dow Chemical and Citi.

It’s now three years later, and I am headed to Hong Kong – Grameen Foundation’s regional headquarters for Asia – to spend time with Sharada Ramanathan, the extraordinary woman behind BwB’s presence today in Asia. Working with Grameen Foundation’s regional staff, we’ll brainstorm how to continue to deeply integrate volunteers into the way Grameen Foundation does business – from helping us fundraise and addressing our own capacity gaps, to creating standard roles for volunteers in delivering our programs and services in Asia. We’ll also look at how we continue to share the skills and expertise of volunteers in our database – more than 20% of whom are based in Asia – with other social enterprises that have a market-based approach to improving the lives of the poor.

[caption id="attachment_2153" align="aligncenter" width="300"]BwB Regional Program Officer for Asia, Sharada Ramanathan, and Director Shannon Maynard are spending a week meeting with volunteers and supporters in Hong Kong. BwB Regional Program Officer for Asia, Sharada Ramanathan (left), and Director Shannon Maynard are spending a week meeting with volunteers and supporters in Hong Kong.[/caption]

As I prepare for this trip, I think it’s worth reflecting on some of BwB’s successes, failures and insights from our three-year history in Asia.

Tags:

Developing a Social Business Strategy

June 04, 2008

The following is a summary of a report to the Board of Directors of Grameen Foundation regarding social business viability by Khalid Shams, Former Deputy Managing Director, Grameen Bank.

Grameen’s Social Business Initiatives

Grameen Bank has been experimenting with new social business ventures since the early ‘90s. It has effectively used the microfinance platform for launching several social enterprises. Some of these were ‘for-profit’, while others were ‘not-for-profit’ entities, but each had a distinct corporate mandate for social development. Grameen Bank itself would be an example of such a social business enterprise, which provided microfinance related services to the designated rural poor and the bank is also owned solely by the borrowers themselves. Some of the social enterprises were created in direct response to the demand of GB borrowers i.e. the Sixteen Decisions of the bank, as well as the rural poor, for essential services needed for development of health, education, nutrition, and alleviation of poverty.

Some of the enterprises were concerned with extension of new technologies that could directly raise the income and productivity of the poor trapped in such traditional sectors like agriculture, fisheries, rural industry. New ventures were also launched for development of information and communication based technologies.

More recently, Professor Yunus has taken the initiative of setting up “social businesses” that aim to provide nutrition and health services to a targeted client. In these new ventures, after the initial capital costs have been fully recouped, the investors agreed to take only nominal dividends, plowing back all profits for further expansion of the social business. Grameen-Danone Foods Ltd, and the newly formed Grameen Eye Hospitals are the latest examples of more rigorously designed social business models.

Tags:

Inventing another pathway to a world without poverty (Pt 2 of 2)

April 14, 2008

Gordon Starr, Starr ConsultingTransforming the world of global business enterprise

Danone and Grameen are, in fact, changing the game of business. They have created a profit-making enterprise where societal contribution is more important than maximizing profit (a “social business”), and opened the door for other new inventions that move us towards a world without poverty.

What could happen in the world of profit-making business if societal contribution became at least the equal of mazimizing profit in boardrooms throughout the world?

Tags:

Inventing another pathway to a world without poverty (Pt 1 of 2)

April 07, 2008

Gordon StarrWhat if the enormous power and potential of global business enterprise could become a force for social and environmental transformation just as it has been for the expansion of global commerce?

Grameen Danone – the world’s first “social business” as conceived and presented by Dr. Yunus in his new book – is a brilliant invention. What Grameen and Danone have done with great courage and insight is open the door to a new future – and to a new whole landscape of possibility for creating a world without poverty. And perhaps much more.

Given this first landmark step, what else might now be possible?

For instance, what could happen in the world of profit-making business if “global viability” became the equal of “maximizing profit” in the boardroom?

Tags:

Help us create a world without poverty

January 09, 2008

When he asked for a meeting with Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, Franck Riboud, CEO of Group Danone, a global corporate giant (whose American brand name is Dannon), didn't realize that his concept of doing business was about to change forever. A few hours and a hand shake transformed the hard driving, profit-motivated executive, into an unwavering advocate of 'social businesses'. Barely a year later, Riboud joined Professor Yunus in Bangladesh to launch Grameen Danone, with the mission of producing and selling specially-fortified yogurt to improve the health of poor Bangladeshi children.

Tags: