Joe Browne, Sales Team Leader, talks about Seventh Generation’s poverty alleviation work with Whole Foods Market:

We were thrilled when Whole Foods Market (WFM) invited us to collaborate with them as a founding member of the Whole Planet Foundation’s Supplier Alliance for Microcredit, a unique partnership of natural product companies dedicated to alleviating poverty in the developing countries where WFM sources its products. The Foundation aims to improve the lives of 25,000 impoverished people by giving microloans of around $200 — usually to women. It may not sound like much, but in many desperately poor areas, it’s enough to start a small business and lift a family out of poverty. Check out the You Tube video on the program’s work at go/wholeplanetvideo.

This was a great opportunity to support WFM’s vision and we embraced the program. It’s one thing to have your own higher purpose — something beyond profit. We’ve been in that place a long time. It’s another to be able to join together with a group of like-minded businesses and make a long-lasting difference in this sustainable way.

The most exciting part of this interaction with Whole Foods is how it’s opened up new areas of interaction across the company. I’ve been surprised at the number of times people have mentioned unprompted how much they appreciate Seventh Generation’s support. It goes beyond our three-year financial donation; people really value our commitment.

It has led to a greater level of support for our GIVE outreach initiative. As they did their own trainings, Whole Planet Foundation staff provided opportunities for their alliance partners to have a venue to share their message with an audience we would never have had access to. We were able to conduct 20 in-store GIVE trainings and reach over 1,000 WFM team members. Alliance members have also worked hard to merge their outreach on the program with links back and forth between their websites and Whole Planet’s.

Last year was a tough year on a lot of levels. But I feel very fortunate. Working with the Whole Planet Foundation is one of many projects I’m involved with that do good work for people around the world. It’s unusual to be able to live my values in a sales job. Seventh Generation has given me some great opportunities. Sometimes sales people are seen as very tactical. The reality is that those of us in the organic food area have been changing the way people think about growing and buying and eating food. We’ve been doing nothing less than changing the world.

Please consider giving to the Whole Planet Foundation at go/wholeplanet. Whole Food Market covers all of the foundation’s operating costs so 100% of your donation will go to the micro-lending program.