Danone.communities

Danone.communities was a new step of the concept « Danone for all ». Danone.communities was born from Frank Riboud, the chairman and managing director of Danone, and Muhammad Yunus meeting in 2005.

Muhammad Yunus is the president of Grameen Bank, the first Microfinance organization. He awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 « for his effort to create economic and social development ». Muhammad Yunus has developed the « social business » concept in his book « Creating a world without Poverty – Social Business and the Future of Capitalism ». A social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to reach a social objective.

Frank Riboud and Muhammad Yunus share the same ideas about the most underprivileged development. So they decided to create the company « Grameen Danone foods » in 2006.

The project aim is to reduce poverty with a new business type which brings every day a healthy food to the poorest. The foor major purposes are :

Offer a high added-value product as far as nutrition is concerned,
Create new jobs,
Protect environment,
To be economically viable.

The first project of Grameen Danone foods was to create a yoghourt factory in Bangladesh whose mission was to help local development. And the first factory opened up in 2007 in Bangladesh. Yoghourts producted by the factory are strengthened in nutriments such as zinc, iron, vitamin A. Then, yoghourts are sold cheaply to be opened to all (accessible à tous). The aim of this cheap price is to cure Bangladesh children nutritional deficiencies.

To be more effective, in 2007 Danone Group created Danone.communities fund, a financial aid to support social businesses and to develop more projects. Danone.communities is managed by Credit Agricole. The company invested 20 millions of euros in this fund. At the beginning of the year 2009, Danone.communities fund reached 66 millions of euros.

For the time being, Danone.communities carried out three investments in