Programs: SESA
Announced:
December 12, 2012
Category:
Providing Small & Growing Businesses with Access to Financing & Business Services
Fund Amount: $217,688
Above, a jatropha plant.
- The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund granted $217,688 to Grameen Creative Lab to lend to SESA, a social enterprise turning jatropha plant into resources that will help replace expensive imports.
The edible jatropha plant produces fruits containing oil that can be turned into products such as fuel. After area farmers cultivate the jatropha fruit, SESA then turns it into three products at its processing facility: biofuel oil, protein meal, and cooking briquettes.
With this funding, SESA is launching production at its facility. Social business incubator Grameen Creative Lab is managing the loan and providing SESA with business development services.
Why We Invested in SESA
Clinton Bush Haiti Fund's grant to Grameen Creative Lab to lend to SESA reflects our commitment to building up small businesses, in this case by promoting an economically and ecologially sustainable solution to expensive imports.
Transforming Lives and Livelihoods
- Helping a Haitian for-profit start-up create 16 jobs and increase revenues for 200 smallholder farmers.
- Using locally grown jatropha to produce oil and animal feed.
- Provide a direct substitute for imported diesel fuel and soy meal.
About Grameen Creative Lab
Grameen Creative Lab (GCL) was founded in 2009 as a Joint Venture between the Yunus Centre in Bangladesh and Circ Responsibility, a consulting company in Germany. Their shared vision has been to fight poverty by accelerating social business. Established in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake, Grameen Creative Lab Haiti is focusing specifically on incubating social enterprises in the education and vocational training, environment and agriculture, and nutrition sectors. GCL provides the businesses it supports with advisory services related to financial management, operations, value chain management, legal issues, environmental and social impact, and monitoring and evaluation. In partnership with the Yunus and You Haiti Social Business Fund, it also provides debt financing.
About SESA
SESA is a for-profit social enterprise that supports the wide-scale cultivation of edible jatropha trees, processes their fruit into biofuel oil, protein meal, and briquettes, and sells these products to the commercial sector of Haiti. It is a private sector spin-off of CHIBAS, a Haitian agricultural research institute. SESA is currently managed by Dr. Gael Pressoir, the founder and director, and a Haitian-born plant biologist, geneticist, and breeder.
