CEI
SBEs:
Options for Life Small Business
Enterprise Development
Focusing on the economic empowerment of no-to-low income women in developing countries, CEI created the Options for Life small business model and ecolign green cleaning product line.
The programs had four objectives:
1. Create local product manufacturing and distribution small business ownership and job opportunities.
2. Pre-approve local business start-up and development micro-loans.
3. Minimize product packaging, use, and disposal impact on the environment.
4. Make products affordable to people making $2 or less per day.
Partnering with Childfund International (for local program participant recruitment and program coordination), the program rolled out in Senegal, Africa.
In Thies, the staff of the ChildFund-supported Kajoor-Jankeen Federation was enormously helpful in transporting, feeding and providing basic "life skills" training to our first round of women and young adult trainees.
In the first two months of the Options Senegal pilot business program, 320 women and young adults were trained in the art of blending, bottling and selling non-toxic Options for Life Ecolign cleaning products.
OFL conducted consumer surveys and market tests in order to adapt US Options for Life Ecolign cleaning products to the Senegalese market.
The best selling product so far is the Ecolign Floor Cleaner Concentrate. In extremely dry and dusty Senegal, householders often clean their tile or cement floors three or more times per day.
Monsieur Sergine Saliou Valentin Faye runs Senegal Ecolign Services, the master distributor [to Ecolign Entrepreneurs] of the raw ingredients used to make Ecolign cleaning products.
Reusing local 1.5 litre and 10 litre water bottles keeps the cost of Ecolign products very low and greatly reduces the amount of plastic in the country's environment.
... door to door.
... in the marketplace.