Enterprise Brief: The Sustainable Mushroom Farming Initiative
Published: 05 September 2014
Oyster mushrooms are often illegally harvested in Kanungu’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, threatening the local gorilla colony as people disturb their habitat. The enterprise provides an alternative commercial source of mushrooms, creating a new local industry and conserving the gorilla’s native habitat. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Elegance Company Ltd.
Published: 05 September 2014
Together with local farmers, Elegance Company Ltd. has developed a zero-waste and closed-loop agricultural system that increases agricultural yields substantially. A demonstration farm in the area serves to showcase the system and to provide consultancy to farmers interested in adopting it. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Precious Life Foundation’s Outgrower Project
Published: 05 September 2014
Vulnerable women living at Precious Life Foundation’s farm centre are taught bio-intensive agricultural techniques like sack potato production in order to become self-sufficient. The women then provide training, support, and resources to their community to increase yields and thereby food security. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: JITA Social Business Bangladesh Ltd.
Published: 31 August 2014
JITA generates income opportunities for poor women through an innovative and commercially viable rural distribution network while providing product access for communities. Initially run as a financially sustainable CARE Bangladesh project, JITA now is a reincorporated social enterprise empowering around 8,000 women. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Diseclar
Published: 31 August 2014
Diseclar has developed a method to create furniture made from recycled plastic and agro-industrial waste including sugar cane pulp, coffee and rice chaff. Customers benefit from long-lasting products, while the local community benefits from job creation and positive environmental impacts. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Fundación Huellas Verdes
Published: 31 August 2014
Fundación Huellas Verdes offers enterprises and institutions a means to offset their carbon emissions by planting vetiver, a grass storing carbon in its roots. When introduced to areas with slopes at risk of landslides, vetiver protects neighbouring communities by preventing erosion. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Proplanet
Published: 31 August 2014
Proplanet transforms materials that are hard-to-recycle, such as long-life Tetra Pak and plastified paper, into paper fibre, sustainable construction materials, and urban furniture, thereby reducing pressure on landfills. Through biodegradable food packaging with FSC certification, it helps to substitute plastics. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Asrat and Helawi Engineering Partnership
Published: 31 August 2014
The enterprise manufactures clean cookstoves for homes, businesses and institutions such as prisons and universities. The products – which reduce indoor air pollution and fuel costs – are sold mainly by a network of independent urban retailers. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Frontier Markets
Published: 31 August 2014
Frontier Markets (FM) is a sales and service distribution company that provides access to affordable clean energy products. By creating service and repair centres, focusing on education and following an end-to-end supply chain, FM improves energy access in rural India for low-income families. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Last Forest Enterprises
Published: 31 August 2014
Last Forest provides a marketing platform for 68 kinds of organic and forest-based products and spreads the message of fair trade principles, sustainable harvesting, biodiversity and value-added indigenous products. Incubated by the Keystone Foundation, the enterprise also provides business development services. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Switch ON- ONergy
Published: 31 August 2014
The enterprise overcomes the obstacle of last-mile distribution of solar energy products by providing solar energy solutions to rural communities using a full-service distribution infrastructure. Through partner collaboration, the enterprise trains rural entrepreneurs, funds innovative development projects and provides after-sales services to customers. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Electricity4all
Published: 31 August 2014
Electricity4All provides solar battery kits that can power households and small-to-medium businesses, independent from the grid, by using renewable solar energy. By implementing a network of solar energy kiosks, Electricity4All improves access to affordable and sustainable electricity in rural communities Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Energy Unlimited
Published: 31 August 2014
Powered By Nature (PbN) provides affordable clean energy devices for households by importing and locally sourcing products, training entrepreneurs and sub-distributors in marketing them, and retailing through its own stores. Through its activities, the enterprise reduces energy poverty in Malawi. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Honey Products Industries
Published: 31 August 2014
Honey Products Industries creates an agribusiness value chain out of high-quality honey. The honey is sourced from independent smallholder beekeepers, packaged and processed in factory hubs and distributed across the country via a franchise model. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Kumudzi Kuwale
Published: 31 August 2014
Kumudzi Kuwale Ltd. supplies sustainable energy independent from the national power grid. Rural communities thus gain access to energy through solar devices and systems installed by the enterprise, by renting battery packs or by purchasing solar products and efficient cookstoves. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Recycling for Environmental Recovery
Published: 31 August 2014
The enterprise will establish a plastics recycling plant to produce secondary raw materials for the plastics industry in Morocco and abroad. It seeks to improve health and safety for waste workers, particularly those involved in waste collection. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Baobab Products Mozambique
Published: 31 August 2014
Baobab Products Mozambique (BPM) creates a local value chain around Baobob fruits, buying pulp and seeds from women harvesters, before processing it into nutrient-rich powder and oils. The products are sold nationally and internationally. Read more
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Early stage impact investing: a call for action
Published: 18 August 2014 Anais Mangin
The exponential growth of small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) in Africa, Asia and Latin America has contributed significantly to the burgeoning green economy. Read more
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Enterprise Brief: Mozambikes
Published: 06 July 2014
Mozambikes assembles and sells quality bikes at affordable prices. It customises bikes with logos and colours and encourages companies and non-profit organisations to buy advertising space or branded bikes outright and distribute them to rural areas. Read more
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SEED participates in the UNEA Side Event: “UNEP, the Sustainable Development Goals and Business”
Published: 26 June 2014
SEED takes part in the UNEA Side Event: “UNEP, the Sustainable Development Goals and Business”, which is organised by the Business Green Economies Dialogue Project in partnership with The International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and The International Council of Chemicals Associations (ICCA). Read more
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Making growth sustainable: co-creating solutions through social and green entrepreneurship
Published: 10 June 2014 Jona Liebl
Africa has some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, but many people remain excluded from the benefit of this growth with almost half of the population in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than USD1.25 per day. Read more
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SEED celebrates the success of former SEED Award winner on International Day for Biological Diversity
Published: 21 May 2014
This year the IBD has the overarching theme Island Biodiversity, paying tribute to the fact that islands and their surrounding near-shore marine areas constitute unique ecosystems. Read more
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SEED participates in the Joint United Nations General Assembly and ECOSOC Thematic Debate/Forum on Partnerships
Published: 09 April 2014
SEED was invited to partake in the joint thematic debate/forum on partnerships, held on 09 and 10 April 2014 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Read more
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SEED participates in the Inaugural PAGE Global Conference to look at the Progress and Prospects for the Green Economy after Rio+20
Published: 04 March 2014
SEED will participate in the third Thematic Breakout Session ‘Social inclusion and poverty reduction’. Read more
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SEED Awards 2014 - A Call for Applications
Published: 11 February 2014
Start-up social and environmental entrepreneurs who have developed innovative products or services and are working with local communities can win a tailor-made business support package through the 2014 SEED Awards, which open for nominations today. Read more
