The Leste

A visual and written exchange on the sustainable developments in technology, fashion, agriculture and media impacting emerging markets.

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Business

Injaro Agricultural Capital Holdings LTD managed by Injaro Investment Advisors LTD. 

Founder                                                                                                            

Jerry Parkes

Business Structure                                                                                        

Ghana Corporation Limited by Shares.

Impact Increasing access to financing for SME’s in West African countries in competitive and sustainable industries.  

How It Works                                                                                                   

Injaro first considers "which sectors to invest in to make the largest impact possible." To do this, they consider sectors in which West Africa has a "competitive edge.” For example, shea butter or palm oil. Next, Injaro considers whether they can "add value" to the sector such as new packaging or improved formulation, which were part of value addition for their investment in Sekaf, creators of TAMA® all natural black soap.

Injaro then considers the "impact" of their investment. In the case of Sekaf, they considered the benefit to women or women-only businesses. Local women who create the shea butter have gone on to form savings cooperatives where they save the profit for expenses like education and healthcare. In addition to creating a sense of community and well being, cooperatives give the women direct access to their profits without the agency of men.

Inspiration                                                                                                          

The derivation of "Injaro" means "Mountain of Greatness" in Swahili. Parkes observed the lack of access to financing for SME's (small to medium enterprises) in West Africa. In a space where West Africa is largely seen as "unfamiliar" and their SME's are considered too risky to invest, Parkes created Injaro to identify and fund sectors where Africa has a "competitive edge." Injaro was ultimately created as both a solution and to fulfill a lifelong dream of Parkes to give back to West Africa after business school.

Aspiration                                                                                                        

Injaro is currently working to reach a sixth country in West Africa and have a measurable impact of “1.2 million people by the end of the fund in 2023,″ says Parkes. He adds that the fund has impacted an estimated 200,000 West Africans to date. Parkes would eventually like to launch another fund that focuses not just on agriculture but additional sectors where West Africa is competitive. Overall, Parkes believes that impact investments are the way "investments should be done" particularly in Africa.

Sources: Jerry Parkes, Managing Principal of Injaro Investments. Visit Injaro to learn more about their investment approach and portfolio companies like Sekaf.  Follow Injaro on LinkedIn

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Piece & Co.

Had the pleasure of meeting with Piece & Co. founder Kathleen Wright for The Leste. Her Chicago-based, social enterprise is creating sustainable employment in developing economies by bringing artisan textiles and products to a global market in collaboration with brands like Madewell and Rachel Roy. Check out the "Mind-blowing Fact" below!

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“Inspired by The Leste, Alyse supports Sseko."

“Inspired by The Leste, Alyse supports Sseko #sseko #ssekostyle #fashion #leather #streetstyle”

jonyez’s photo on Instagram

Inspired by The Leste feature, she purchased this leather hobo, handcrafted in Ethiopia from @ssekodesigns Sseko uses fashion to empower and educate women. 

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Business

Interwoven

Founder

Kera Thompson

Business Structure

"Interwoven is an LLC."

Impact

"Bringing awareness and an appreciation for handmade textiles, while empowering the artisans who make them." 

How It Works

"Traveling to the source, finding inspiration and meeting the people behind the craft and then working closely with artisans and suppliers to find great items for the shop. My latest trip was to Northern Morocco, where we visited a small local auction and bought directly from the weavers who bring their goods each week, and then established a connection to continue to purchase. I then deal with all the aspects of running the shop from the styling of each piece, online & inventory management, social media/marketing, in order to bring the product to the customer."

Inspiration

"My background is interior design, and I wanted to create something that would keep me involved and relevant in the field, but still allowed me to be active and present with my children. I have always had a love for global handicrafts, but my love for artisanal textiles bloomed when I moved and started traveling overseas. Interwoven is a way to bring my experiences and treasures to my customers and clients."

Aspiration 

"As the business grows, I’d like to increase my outreach with the artisans that I’m working with to ensure that their way and quality of life is preserved by sharing their work, continually traveling and finding new and exciting pieces to feature."

Sources: Kera Thompson Owner + Curator of Interwoven, hellointerwoven.com

Visit Interwoven to find curated artisanal goods for your home!

Follow Interwoven on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest

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  Business

Able Made

Business structure

Able Made is an LLC for-profit.

Impact 

"Able Made has a global impact reach and focuses on empowering projects that build community and sustainable change through education and job training."

How It Works

"Able Made fuels hope and opportunity around the globe through the sales of exclusive designer goods that give back. Each uniquely created Able Made product funds crisis support, work training, environmental protection or an education project united by the same goal: to empower people and purchasers. With every purchase, you make an impact. We collaborate with brands and designers to create unique and exclusive products that will raise funds for a cause we are passionate about. We create channels of capital through the sales of the products and help build greater awareness for impact projects through the promotion of the product. Our community [of customers and supporters] can also help inform what we do, from helping choose the causes we support, to final designs of our products." 

“In addition to how the product supports, how our products are made is very important -- from who makes the items, to material selection, to transportation of the items. Our products are traceable and socially responsible, and include tote bags made in New York City’s Garment District and jewelry that is repurposed from recycled metals and made by hand in Berkeley, CA and New York City."  

Recent Able Made events include a giveaway with The Today Show's Fashion Coorespondant Jeannie Mai, trunk shows with designers including CFDA Incubator designer WHIT, and the Amp It Up event hosted at Red Rooster with chef and restauranteur, Marcus Samuelsson.

Inspiration

Suzanne decided to create a foundation in her late husbands’ s honor. She collaborated with designers to create items sold by the foundation including an athletic line and poster calendar to honor her husband’s love of soccer and impact on inner city youth in Boston. Based on the line’s success and Suzanne’s own design background, she was inspired to expand and launch her own vision of impact through design with Able Made. She worked with IDEO on Able Made's launch and the brand’s first collection. Collaborations with fellow designers quickly followed. 

Aspirations

“We are developing Able Made to be a world leader in creating exclusive products made for good, and that empower the communities we support, our purchasers, and our design community. When customers see our Able Made logo on a product, they will know there has been a very high level of care put into the piece, from how it is made, to who it supports.”

Sources: Suzanne McKenzie, Founder + CEO of Able Made, as featured in WWD, Glamour Magazine, Project Runway/Lifetime & Refinery29. 

Photographs by Winnie Au

Visit Able Made on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr.

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Business

Nabbesh

Founder

Loulou Khazen Baz Impact

“Creating flexible employment opportunities for Emirati women.”

How it Works

Using technology and a virtual marketplace to make work opportunities for Middle Eastern and North African women more accessible.

Inspiration

The "40% unemployment rate" among young Emirati women and the lack of flexible work opportunities as a contributing factor inspired the creation of Nabbesh.  

Sources: Changemakers and Crunchbase.

Visit Nabbesh on Changemakers "Work That Works For Women"

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Maiyet | International Artisan to Paris Runway

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Sseko Way The story behind Sseko Designs

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Business

Sseko Designs

Founder

Liz Forkin Bohannon

Business Structure

Sseko Designs LLC incorporated in Oregon.

Impact

Employing Ugandan women and also young women who want to save for higher education. Sseko also employs former sex trade victims.

How It Works

"Liz designs and sell decorative sandals hand-crafted by women in Uganda. The Uganda workforce is a mix of young women funding their higher education and permanent ‘veteran’ workers who handle training and operations."

"Sseko promises its university hopefuls a stipend matching up to 100% of the funds they save during their employment: 50% of their salary is automatically banked to this effect. A policy designed to avoid family and social pressure to invest the money in something else.’ So far all the girls have gone to university, with the first students graduating this year. Sseko also employs vulnerable women who have been victims of the sex trade."

Inspiration

Liz traveled to Uganda and witnessed first-hand the lack of access to resources for women and girls. She thought of ways to generate income and a friend suggested creating sandals.  

Aspiration

"We’re working tirelessly to grow the Sseko brand so that we can continue to grow our production, employment capacity and impact in Uganda. Eventually we’d like to take our model into a new country with a new product line. Our hope is that someday Sseko will be one of the largest employers of women in the region. In addition to supporting individual women through employment, education and social impact programming, we’re dreaming about building a scalable platform that has the voice and authority to change workplace culture for women in the region and across the globe."

Sources: Darling Magazine, Cartier Women's Initiative 

Visit Sseko

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Business

Wecyclers

Founder

Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola

Business Structure

Domestic General Corporation incorporated in Delaware. 

Impact

Wecyclers encourages recycling in exchange for redeemable points in informal settlements in Nigeria. Redeemable points can go towards items like food and household goods. 

How It Works

"Wecyclers is reducing unmanaged urban waste in low-income neighborhoods in emerging markets and providing a reliable supply of materials to local recycling industries. [They] operate a fleet of bicycle powered mobile collection centers (know as “wecycles”) to collect sorted recyclables from densely populated neighborhoods and sell them to recyclers. " Using an SMS-based platform, Wecyclers incentives low-income households to recycle by rewarding redeemable points in exchange for recyclable material... The rewards have been funded by corporate sponsorship deals with big brands such as Coca Cola and GlaxoSmithKline." 

Inspiration

"I took a course, Development Ventures, while at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This class opened my eyes to the plight of over two billion people that are living beyond the poverty line. Billions of people are living on less than a dollar per day. So, it awoke that sense of responsibility that I needed to do something, I came up with this idea, which I shared with my co-founder, Allen and some other people. We came to Lagos, made some tests to ascertain the wastes in Lagos and see if there are recycling companies that use such wastes for raw materials." 

Aspiration

"We have plans to go beyond Lagos. By 2014, we should be in Ogun State and then just like that we will continue to grow."

Advice to Entrepreneurs

"If you find a need, figure out how you will meet that need. When you have done that, have a minimum solution which doesn’t take too much experiment and see if your idea makes sense."

Sources: Spur Magazine, Cartier Women's Initiative, VC4Africa

Visit Wecyclers

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Business

Lauren Pierce Atelier

Founder

 Lauren Bush Lauren

Business Structure

 Domestic LLC (Lauren Pierce LLC) incorporated in New York.

Impact

10% profit to women's organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries where fabric is sourced. 

How It Works

Women from the Democratic Republic of Congo create fabric, send it to Lauren through Women for Women International. 10% of the sale goes back to a cause that supports women in the country from which the material was sourced. 

Inspiration

"It's part of our generation's ethos to want to pursue our passions, pursue business, pursue entrepreneurship, but also do it with the world in mind." 

Sources: FastCoExist, Women for Women International, Ahalife, Kristin Pasternak blog, and Afrolistasandthecity blog. 

Visit Lauren Pierce Atelier

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Business

Samasource

Founder

Leila Janah

Business Structure

501c3 not for profit social enterprise incorporated in California as Samasource, Inc.

Impact 

"Women and youth in Kenya, Uganda, India, Pakistan and Haiti."

How It Works

Samasource creates local industry by connecting remote workers to the digital economy. “On average, Samasource workers more than double their incomes after only a few months on the job, and 92 percent stay out of poverty after leaving the nonprofit.”

Inspiration

“The more time I spent in developing countries, and the more time I spent talking to poor people, I realized what they want more than anything is a good job.”

"We spend billions on international aid annually, but we don’t find ways to connect people to dignified work. I realized that if we don’t think about ways to harness private capital to solve problems, we’re leaving large amounts of money on the table and doing ourselves a disservice."

Sources: Entrepreneur Magazine, TechCrunch, CrunchBase.

Visit Samasource

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Business

lemlem

Founder

Liya Kebede

Business Structure

Domestic Business Corporation (Lalibelo, LTD) incorporated in New York.

Impact

Ethiopian Artisans

How It Works

Liya collaborates with a team of designers based in New York to design a line for the season then her team sends Ethiopian artisans the design for them to hand weave. They go back and forth with long distance phone calls, emails and pictures until the team is satisfied with the designed fabric. The fabric, which is produced on a small scale, is shipped from Addis Abba, Ethiopia to the LemLem studio in NYC where the items are distributed to Barney’s, Saks Fifth, Bloomingdales, J.Crew, Net-a-Porter.com and numerous boutique shops in the US, London, Paris and Bahrain. 

Inspiration

"It’s one thing to donate money. It’s a whole other thing to give an opportunity for someone to make his own money and then for them to create a whole life for themselves." 

"There are weavers who make incredible work but don't really have space to sell their clothes anymore. "Everybody's wearing jeans — all this machine-made stuff." 

Aspiration 

"I want to show [lemlem] and be able to go to Calvin Klein and whoever and say trust and have confidence that you can go and actually make your stuff [in Ethiopia] and give more employment. Because that's how you can impact in a bigger way, I think that is the only way you can impact in a bigger way than what I am doing with lemlem."

Sources: Refinery 29 and Fast Company

Visit lemlem