Livelihoods: what is it?

Livelihoods is a unique investment fund whose objective is to restore carbon credits with high societal value to its partners investors. Livelihoods raises funds from its investors and reinvests them into large-scale projects to generate long-term viability. The Fund seeks to find the best balance between the financial value of these credits and the value created for local communities.

The mechanism can be summed up as follows: through the carbon economy, the fund contributes to ecosystem restoration and development of the local economy and thus to the fight against poverty in countries where it invests. Hundreds of thousands of families can contribute to the restoration of their ecosystem while improving their food income.

Livelihoods par Livelihoods

Who are the initiators and partners of Livelihoods?

Emmanuel Faber is Vice President of Danone and a member of the Board of danone.communities. Totally involved in the promotion of social business to other large companies, he delivers in his latest book "Chemins de traverse" a few keys,  anecdotes and questions notably about its commitment to Prof. Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize 2006, the same year that the project was launched Grameen Danone Foods Ltd.

Franch press have shared some words about this book. Here are some extracts.

As part of the annual profit-sharing campaign, danone.communities visited several French Danone centers to present its mutual fund and social businesses, partly supported thanks to the employee savings.

Late May 2011, the total assets were of 68.4 million euros, nearly half of which coming from Danone and its employees.

Between March and April, part of the danone.communities team went to meet employees at the Carasso Center (R&D in Palaiseau), St Ouen and Danone Place in Paris.

danone.communities is a many-sided adventure . The life of our projects feeds on co-construction on the field with social entrepreneurs, NGOs, microfinance institutions, universities ... Meanwhile, our investment fund, through the SICAV danone.communities, driven by IDEAM teams, allows every French to participate in this adventure, giving another meaning to their savings.

Within the French subsidiaries of Danone Group, our colleagues (Danoners) may decide to invest part of their profit sharings in the SICAV.

In March and April, with Leila, we went to meet them to answer their questions, share news about our projects, share learnings for Danone from these experiences, discuss how to rally to help these social enterprises to develop.