This article was orginally published on down To Earth's blog.

Many of the projects supported by danone.communities and the Ecosystem Fund develop a micro-distribution approach. What exactly does it bring to social businesses, and how does it nourish business innovation in both the developed and developing markets?

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SUMMARY

Micro-distribution is a great opportunity for social businesses, since it both helps underprivileged populations on the path to employment and empowerment, and provides healthy food to a greater number of people. But it also has many challenges to face to reach a larger scale and become truly profitable and replicable. Which leaves a lot of room for innovation and creativity.

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Maria Nowak is very inspiring French woman. At danone.communities, we are lucky because she is a member of our board. Moreover, her association ADIE (Association pour le Droit à l’Initiative Economique) is a partner of the project Isomir. The blog DownToEarth met her.

Maria Nowak is the major advocate for the development of micro-credit in France and at European level, with her association Adie. She is an economist who believes that the future of our economy lies with entrepreneurial freedom, which she struggles to make accessible to all.

The Managing Director of danone.communities, Danone’s incubator of social businesses all over the world, explains to down to Earth how the fund works.

E. Marchant during the experts meeting at GCM Tour 2012 in Paris, May the 15th.

As the danone.communities fund continues its Global Communities Meeting Tour, we at down to Earth thought it would be interesting to let you know more about how the fund’s projects are selected, and what type of governance applies to them. But first, a few words on danone.communities: it is an incubator of social businesses. Through a mutual fund, it finances and brings technical assistance to projects that help fight poverty and malnutrition, all over the world. The fund has existed for almost five years and is now supporting 10 projects in France, India, Bangladesh, Senegal and Cambodia. We asked Emmanuel Marchant, its Managing Director, a few questions on how the whole mechanics work.

How does danone.communities select the projects that it supports?

Last Tuesday, it's on the hills of the Haute-Savoie that danone.communities that carried its little sticks Moss Tekki (from the project Lemateki) for a taste sampling to other employees of Danone.

Several times a year, Danone holds a Campus, a corporate university that brings together about 300 people of all nationalities. So we jumped at the chance to meet them and tell them about danone.communities and our GCM Tour 2012. Special thanks to all the Campus Team for gaving us this opportunity and for helping us to make it real.
 

So it's on my little tasting booth that I could answer all the questions from my international colleagues! Opinions were divided on the flavors of Moss Tekki (I proposed the flavors vanilla, bissap and peanut) because the ingredients are local (Senegal) and the texture matches the food tastes of young children between 5 and 8 years, but most Danoners embarked on this tasting playing the game until the end because it is the flavor "bissap" that was chosen most often.

One of the next Danone Campus will be held in Prague in June and will bring together as many Danoners. The subject will focus on social business and we will have another opportunity to share the energy of our movement with others!

Below are some pictures of the stand (morning and afternoon)

Created with flickr slideshow.

Marine Dambrine is student at EDHEC LIlle Business School and member of the Develop'Edhec student association. She was at Nice last week, and attended the G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit. She is our special reporter.

The G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit, taking place from October 31^st to November 2^nd on the Edhec campus in Nice brought most than 400 young entrepreneurs from the 20 member states, with the objective to promote sustainable economic growth. The third day, we had the great opportunity to meet the Professor Muhammad Yunus. For this social-entrepreneurship session, the keynote was: “Microcredit and social business, reinventing capitalism?”. There was no sit left in the lecture theatre and even some entrepreneurs sat on the stairs to listen to the Peace Nobel Prize. It was so impressive to see Muhammad Yunus and see how energetic and optimistic he was. During this meeting, he gave us the strength to set up our social business and maybe change the world.

10 hours. It takes more than 10 hours to link Paris to Dhaka, Bangladesh. I’ve been organizing this trip for several weeks, to be ready to get to know this little bit of Asia, stuck somewhere in the northeast of India. I spent the flight to imagine many things and to make assumptions: Is poverty so much visible ? How are the streets of Dhaka? How is organized a village? And Bogra? And the plant of Grameen Danone Foods Ltd. ?

I went through the Dubai airport on the run, accompanied by Arielle Genton, HR Director of danone.communities and Hervé Plessix, from Danone R&D. No time to settle, we already take off.

Then, Dhaka. The air is heavy. We jump in the car of Atul, our driver. During two hours in that car, I discover that the buses are the kings of the road, they are called "killer buses" and that the use of a klaxon is a noisy reflex adopted here by everyone.

The road from Dhaka to Bogra (northwest), where stands the plant of Grameen Danone Foods Ltds. is known to be very dangerous in the eyes of a Westerner. I catch at the passenger seat, we come through and avoid other vehicles. I share with the driver my impression of being in a video game. Sure, this road has its logic code, different from ours. The game lasted 5 hours…

Landscapes are different, and beautiful, in a way: rice fields, dust, bricks plants in the middle of nowhere, crowded cities that are difficult to cross, because of the people rubbing everywhere along the road. When we slow down on the outskirts of these cities, I meet the eyes of some Bangladeshi, which tell the surprise of seeing me. They do not know mine ...

The two days we spend (Vitek, the winner of our internal game on Facebook and me) in Bogra are perhaps the strongest of my trip. I am very certain. Luc, who works at Grameen Danone Foods Ltd for more than 1 year now, drives us at the factory. I walk around outside, saying that "That's it, I am here". We meet Tanvir, territory sales manager at Grameen Danone Foods Ltd and we set off with him to Rangpur, a town into the northwest of Bogra, to attend what is called a mini-event, in a school.

This mini-event was designed by the teams, to launch the new pouch of GDFL and to educate children about basic hygiene (washing hands before and after using the toilet, for example). After more than 3 hours by car, we arrive in the school yard, in front of 100 pairs of eyes of children, so wide open that ... I do not know what, but this attention given to us is extra -ordinary.

Aymeric and Osanne, Danone interns and volunteers to the organization of the GCM 2011, share with us a few personal insights into this evening.

Aymeric first offers us some pictures of his first danone.communities event. Welcome!

A lot of emotion and joy during the GCM.
Especially when Franck Riboud explained how Pr. Yunus ended up going to the Ministry of Finance on a scooter.

As part of the annual profit-sharing campaign, danone.communities visited several French Danone centers to present its mutual fund and social businesses, partly supported thanks to the employee savings.

Late May 2011, the total assets were of 68.4 million euros, nearly half of which coming from Danone and its employees.

Between March and April, part of the danone.communities team went to meet employees at the Carasso Center (R&D in Palaiseau), St Ouen and Danone Place in Paris.

"Architects of Change" or how to be the voice for small causes to serve a large one.

Last week we met Muriel, founder LatoSensu: a production company committed to promote sustainable development. The program: the very rich documentary series Architects Of Change, which promotes local economic development initiatives throughout the world. At a rate of 3 meetings with independent entrepreneurs per episode, Architects Of Change addresses 10 issues of the current debate on sustainable development and solidarity: for instance, let’s quote Philanthropy and capitalism, the impossible marriage?, Innovation is imitation, or Eco-housing, designed to last.

Since the beginning of the adventure danone.communities, we met many experts in development topics such as access to water, malnutrition and the fight against poverty. For the community to benefit from those meetings with these exchanges and debates that they generate, danone.communities starts a cycle of workshops to gather regularly those people. Danone.communities workshops offer a forum for dialogue on innovative solutions to development issues and malnutrition among the poorest, in all countries. Each workshop is structured around one or more expert testimonies, followed by a discussion. These meetings are transcribed in the a report sent to participants and posted on our site.