Grace Nshemeire and William Foote

I believe Grace served as the "youth" on the panel and unfortunately her presentation did not serve as a tour de force for the youth voice around the world. Grace spent most of her time on the panel attempting to explain that farmers sell their goods at markets and that this is how they make their money... It has been a while since my econ 101 class but one thing I do remember is that in our modern economy you do indeed have to "sell" a "good or service" to someone in order to earn money as a laborer.

Grace was, despite her presentation, right on par when it came understanding the jist of the problem of development from my perspective. Small to medium scale agricultural operations whose value adding mechanisms exist within self contained community supported, and perhaps community owned, cooperatives are key to keeping money in the community. As it is, outsiders with capital come into a community and exploit their labor and land, after which they process the food and add value to these raw resources and sell them into wealthy global markets. If the communities were to add value themselves it would obviously eliminate the middle man and allow them to keep a bigger chunk of their labor. How can this happen? William Foote nailed it in the Thursday afternoon session.

Mr. Foote spoke of his company Ecologic Finance which provides SMEs (small to medium enterprises) with mid-range capital. We're not talking about a few hundred bucks to start a small baking operation in a rural village (though that can have a huge impact also), but rather dropping 25k to 500k buckaroos for a collective in West Africa to purchase a grain processing plant or the like. Fantastic work! This leveraging of capital is so necessary and finally it seems that there is a market for development! Foote says people are all of a sudden interested in paying more for socially conscious products and because of this there are new systems for trader/broker/importers who interact directly with suppliers and are able to guarantee a profit margin and because of THIS rural SMEs are able to export highly labor intensive crops and handicrafts at a profit! It works. Mr. Foote has gathered 15mill from foundations and corporations involved in socially responsible investing (think Starbucks, green mountain coffee, skoal foundation etc.) and distributed it in the form of 250 loans in 19 countries to 100 SMEs impacting 100k people and all at a 99% repayment rate.

Seriously, the transformative power of operations like these can not be overestimated. Leveraging capital to support development is clutch but, it seems only in the hands of good people... I have lots of difficulty trusting the World Bank to do such socially savvy projects.