Whole Foods Market Helps Fight Poverty

SAN DIEGO—If you're about to head to the store to stock up on groceries, you might want to wait until Tuesday. That's because on Tuesday, October 25, Whole Foods Market will donate five percent of its company sales from all 177 of its stores to creating entrepreneurial opportunities for the poor through their newly established Whole Planet Foundation.

"Community involvement has been part of Whole Foods Market's mission since our first store opened 25 years ago," said John Mackey, chairman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Whole Foods Market. "As we've done business around the world, we have increasingly felt the responsibility to help those communities where we're trading."

Proceeds collected on Tuesday will fund micro-loans to poor women to help them start their own businesses. The idea is that money repaid on the loans can then be loaned out again to others, creating a self-sustaining cycle that will eventually lift the community out of poverty.

The Whole Planet Foundation is partnering with the Grameen Bank through the Grameen Trust, a non-profit organization based in Bangladesh that has more than 20 years of success administering micro-loans around the world. Grameen's loan recovery rate has been 99 percent, and more than 50 percent of the families of Grameen borrowers have crossed the poverty line.

"Women will be the primary recipients of these micro-loans because they are the most economically and socially marginalized; yet, they have the greatest impact on their communities when given access to credit with which they can start small businesses," said Margaret Wittenberg, vice-president of communications and quality standards and foundation board member. "Giving women these small loans empowers them to use their creativity to change their own lives."

The Whole Planet Foundation will be led by Philip Sansone, who has more than 30 years' experience in managing business and community development teams in various parts of the world, including Latin America, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia. Sansone has worked with rural cooperatives, agribusiness and community development in developing countries.

"Whole Planet Foundation micro-loans will offer a direct way for these women to pull themselves and their families out of poverty, and I feel honored to be working to make a real difference in their lives," said Sansone. "This program is going to start one person at a time, and it's going to spread from there until thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people will be helped through these micro-loans."

On its global Five Percent Day on October 25th, Whole Foods Market hopes to raise more than $500,000 in initial funding for collateral-free micro-loans that will be given to poor women in Costa Rica, where the company purchases bananas and pineapples, and Guatemala, where the company buys coffee.