Entrepreneur Shares Inspiration For Launch Of Oliberté

Guest post from Elinor Fish of Oliberté.

In recent years, the “buy-one, give one” model of business has gained substantial traction among young entrepreneurs looking for a business model that makes a cool, high-demand product while contributing to the global good.

Canadian Tal Dehtiar was one such entrepreneur, that is, until he discovered the truth about who truly benefits such a business model.

With ink still wet on his MBA diploma, the ambitious 24-year-old set out into the world to apply his skills ambition to the international business community. However, before long, he discovered that most of the opportunities he was offered benefited big corporations and did little to effect social change in the developing nations in which they operated.

He saw how the $1 trillion that developed countries have given African countries since 1960 have proven ineffective, as were many of the international aid strategies supposed to help emerging economies. In fact, many African nations are worse off now then they were 50 years ago.

Drawing from his experience in international business garnered as founder of MBA Without Borders, an international charity that matches business professionals with volunteer opportunities at small businesses in developing countries, Tal founded Oliberté in 2009 using a business model centered around a new kind of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Rather than social responsibility being a business “add-on” for the sake of feel-good marketing, Oliberté has “baked in” its formula for effective social change that address the root cause of poverty.

“Oliberté isn’t about charity, but rather about creating stable jobs,” he says. “The last thing I want is for someone to buy our shoes out of pity. Rather, they should buy them because they’re stylish and well-made. “By prioritizing job creation and integrating local cultures and skillsets into our manufacturing process, we’ve developed a unique product: handcrafted leather footwear made using traditional African methods.”

Earlier this year, Oliberté partnered with Fair Trade USA, a nonprofit organization that has been working to bring better working conditions to the fashion industry, to evaluate it’s year-old manufacturing facility in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which employs 70 men and women.

The audit examined 255 different standards, including employee access to good wages, maternity leave policies, safe working conditions, strict anti-child-labor regulations, equal-opportunity employment, the right to form a workers’ union, weekly doctor visits, employee handbooks, equipment safety checks and environmental stewardship. After the process was complete, Oliberté was deemed maker of the world’s first Fair Trade CertifiedTM footwear.

“We are using business and fashion to empower people in Ethiopia and across Africa and demonstrate the potential of the materials, craftsmanship and knowledge already in place,” says Tal. “Instead of continuing to inundate Africa with aid that hasn’t improving the standard of living, we are showing that Africa is ripe for economic investment.”

Tal’s expects the fast-growing footwear brand to support growth of an industry that could create upwards of a million new jobs across Sub-Saharan Africa by 2025.

Learn more about Oliberté’s mission, values and its products at www.oliberte.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/oliberte and on Twitter @oliberte.

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