CASE is excited to announce the 2014 winner of the CASE Award for Enterprising Social Innovation (ESI), Living Goods!
Living Goods is a fantastic social venture that empowers the poor through networks of ‘Avon-like’ micro-entrepreneurs who go door-to-door teaching families how to improve their health and wealth while selling a broad assortment of affordable, life-changing products (e.g., soaps, fortified foods, cook stoves, solar lamps, etc). These networks of franchised micro-entrepreneurs leverage Living Goods’ brand, buying power and marketing tools, combining the best practices from the worlds of micro-enterprise, franchising and public health to improve the lives of the world’s poor.
CASE is inspired by Living Goods’ tireless efforts to promote sustainable, locally-driven economic growth and access to pro-poor products in East Africa via a model that creates livelihoods and improves health. Living Goods has shown a commitment to monitoring their impact while continuing to innovate and scale that growth, making Living Goods an ideal candidate for the CASE ESI Award.
Living Goods Founder and CEO Chuck Slaughter will deliver the CASE ESI lecture on Friday, April 4th as the keynote of the Duke Symposium on Scaling Innovations in Global Health.
Before founding Living Goods, Chuck Slaughter founded TravelSmith, the #1 brand in travel wear with over two million customers, and then served as an advisor with Golden Gate Capital, co-investing in 10+ catalog and retail businesses including Spiegel, Norm Thompson, Appleseeds, J Jill, Express, and Eddie Bauer. Chuck has also been named as a Draper Richards fellow and the Schwab Foundation’s 2013 Social Entrepreneur of the Year.
The CASE Award for Enterprising Social Innovation (ESI) recognizes outstanding individuals, organizations, or companies whose innovations blend methods from the worlds of business and social change to create sustainable social value that has the potential for large-scale impact. Previous recipients have included E+Co (with E+Co Founder Philip LaRocco delivering the award lecture at Fuqua), VisionSpring (Jordan Kassalow, Founder & CEO), Benetech (Jim Fruchterman, Founder & President), KickStart (Martin Fisher, Co-founder & CEO), and Riders for Health (Andrea and Barry Coleman, Co-founders).