Every year around this time, we launch our annual Prosperity Campaign, a fundraising drive in Whole Foods Market stores, facilities and communities that generates around 80% of our revenue for that year. This year, we aim to raise $7 million through donations made in Whole Foods Market stores companywide! As our current average loan size that we support through our microfinance partners is $175, this will create 40,000 new loans that will help 250,000 people.
The eighth annual Prosperity Campaign will run from February 20 through March 31, and here’s how you can get involved:
- Donate through the registers at any Whole Foods Market store
- Donate online at wholeplanetfoundation.org, where you can choose where your money goes: to India, to the USA or to all of our projects around the globe
- Check out your local Whole Foods Market store’s events calendar, where there will be chances to visit the store and your local community to support the Campaign
- You can even create your own online fundraising page, where you can invite your friends, family and network to give a hand up
- Learn more about Whole Planet Foundation’s top supplier group, the Supplier Alliance for Microcredit. Collectively, they have committed $800,000 to fund poverty alleviation projects this year.
Microcredit is a vehicle to help invest in a future without poverty by providing access to small loans for impoverished entrepreneurs living in communities where Whole Foods Market sources products. Each dollar that we raise to support microlending programs around the globe will be repaid and re-loaned again and again, creating additional prosperity for future generations, like Anoma and her family.
Anoma, pictured here, is a microcredit client of Whole Planet Foundation’s partner BRAC Sri Lanka, where Whole Foods Market sources tea. The loan enables Anoma to support her bakery business and sell dishes like Egg Hopper, a daily hot-selling item and a recipe learned from her mother as a young girl.
Anoma is currently in the process of receiving her second cycle loan from BRAC Sri Lanka, and she used a portion of her first loan size of 20,000 LKR ($152 USD) to purchase a gas stove which replaced the kerosene stove she was previously using. This cut down the costs of gas used and is a much more efficient way to cook she says. She plans to purchase a grinder with the second loan amount of 30,000 LKR ($228 USD), to be used to grind the rice into flour, as she currently she has to pay for this service. She has been doing this daily business for five years now, but recently has been able to expand and improve the quality due to the microcredit loans.
This year, Whole Planet Foundation and our partners Intrepid Travel will send one lucky winner and his or her companion to Mexico for a six-day trip in May to meet microcredit clients of our partner Pro Mujer, learn about Whole Foods Market produce sourcing and do tourist activities. To be eligible to win and for a full list of rules, visit Whole Planet Foundation’s Facebook page from February 20 through March 10 and submit an essay (25-500 words) describing how you are helping to invest in a future without poverty.