By Lara Morgan, CEO Pacific Direct
LYFE is an extraordinary project. It’s an opportunity for us, as successful entrepreneurs, to impact poverty for the long term in a way no one else can.
LYFE doesn’t mean giving up your life; it means sharing your knowledge through site visits (this site and the occasional trip) and a hands-on relationship with a smallholder organisation that’s already generating export sales from some of the most incredible places on earth - doing pretty well actually. By sharing your talent you can add confidence and ideas to existing enterprises, all of which are capable of creating jobs in their communities and diversifying into new areas, impacting poverty for hundreds of thousands of people, for miles and miles around.
Through the LYFE ventures, we’re pairing up entrepreneurial talent with smallholder businesses in developing countries to help them raise their game and take advantage of local and international opportunities. And there are no end of takers - we have entrepreneurial businesses from Rwanda to the West Bank, from Nicaragua to Malawi in the pipeline.
These businesses are built on fair trade and premium products like coffee, tea, nuts, oils and olives - some have already started to look at tourism and local brand opportunities. With conviction, a little mentoring and some mutually beneficial partnership support from our own businesses we can inspire a new level of confidence and capability.
In the UK, Fair Trade has demonstrated what happens when you mix smallholder self-determination and consumer power, but it’s our belief that we can go beyond this to generate businesses that will not only impact poverty but the knock-ons like climate change and the world our kids and grand children will have to live in tomorrow.
What started with Lorna back in ’89 now falls to us and it would be stupendous if you’d join us in taking the challenge to deliver the Millennium Development Goals at a local level. Share your knowledge, involve your team, but most importantly engage in an awesome experience, made possible by the integrity of the Lorna Young Foundation, which is backed by key fair trading organisations North and South, and do the job that neither politicians nor celebrities seem able to do. There are so many ways you can get involved - and once you’ve finished reading this, you’ll never forget them.
It you’d like to discuss LYFE with me, or any other member of the team, fill in a contact note and we’ll get back to you.
Join us - bonkers not to really. Lara.
