KerstinHumberg is Business Consultant with a leading international management consultancy for several years. During her academic career in geography, Kerstin has conducted researches about the impact of social business in the fight against poverty. For three years, she traveled on the field, in Bangladesh, many times, to study Grameen joint ventures, including Grameen Danone Foods Ltd. The result of her work has been published in a book, « Poverty Reduction trhough Social Business ? ».

We are lucky because she allowed us to publish two chapters :

• Chapter 2 : « Mapping the field : social business and relevant contexts »
• And Chapter 7 (a GDFL case) : « Grameen Danone Foods Ltd. : Fortified Yoghurt for the Poor ».

Finally, for those who wish to go further, devour the bibliography of this academic research that lays the groundwork for a debate about the impact of social business. Happy reading!

Since 2008, danone.communities organizes every year a major conference in Paris, called the General Community Meeting, with Professor Yunus and many pioneers from the social business area. The aim is to promote social business, to share the avdancements on projects initiated by danone.communities and connect thousands of fans and experts. This evening has gained momentum progressively : 800 participants in 2008 at the Bibliothèque Nationale, 1200 people in 2009 at the Casino deParis, 1500 people in 2010 and 2000 people in 2011 at the Carrousel du Louvre...

Report of the speech made by Emmanuel Marchant, Deputy General Manager of danone.communities, at Ecole de Paris in May 2011.

"In late 2005,Franck Riboud, CEO of Danone, and Muhammad Yunus, president of the Grameen Bank and Peace Nobel Prize 2006, discovered that their ideas come together on the development of poor and decided to form a joint venture, the Grameen Danone Food.
From 2007, a plant produces yogurt fortified with micronutrients in Bangladesh. The same year, Danone and Credit Agricole decided to create an original financial tool: the Fund danone.communities. It aims at supportting the construction of other plants in Bangladesh, to launch other projects in the same spirit in the world, to develop partnerships with local actors or NGOs, and to gather in a community who want to contribute the development of social business, either as actors or as investors of a new genre. Thus was set in motion a dynamic that reinvents the dual economic and social project of Danone and has implications for the management of the company itself."

To read more (in french only) :

Since its creation in 2007, danone.communities expands the areas where its projects introduce new ways to innovate through the creation or the support of social businesses. These areas are children nutrition (Grameen Danone Foods Ltd.., Laiterie du Berger), access to safe drinking water (1001 Fontaines, Naandi Community Water Services) and the processing of farm products (ISOMIR)

In these projects, it is not the all-round development of products that counts but the improvement of local people via a proposed service or product adapted to their needs and created from their local constraints.

When the idea of creating a product of "social business" comes, many criteria must be taken into account to achieve the result that suits the community needs and constraints. According to François Colomban, director for Danone Food Design and R & D director for danone.communities, there are six key dimensions to consider:

Yesterday, danone.communitities attended the 6th meeting of a series of seminars conducted by the Center for Strategic Analysis. This cycle has the theme "Social cohesion through its instruments.  We were interested by this session because it offered to discuss "Social entrepreneurship in the service of social innovation".

At the outset, the introduction traced the path of social enterprise across the Anglophone and Francophone lands.

If it is considered that social entrepreneurship in France is more a « state of mind” than a real model, commentators stressed the common definition of one who "made​​" : a social entrepreneur is "someone who seeks an innovative solution to an unmet social need" (Vincent Chriqui, Managing Director of the Center for Strategic Analysis).