Environmental & Social Justice Partners

In honor of Blog Action Day, I thought it appropriate to announce Environmental & Social Justice Partners to my limited audience. We are targeting a niche that falls between microcredit and legacy banking infrastructure in the developing world. All of you startup types will immediately recognize that if debt is not usually the best financing method for high tech startups in U.S. hubs led by experienced teams, it is probably an even worse method for innovative small businesses in the developing world that contribute to environmental sustainability and social justice - that's why ESJ is relatively uncommonly designed around the concept of micro-equity, not micro debt.

We are very keenly looking for deal flow - so please chime in. One hypothetical investment could be a farmer in Oaxaca who makes tortillas from heirloom varieties of maize that could air-freighted to high-end grocery stores in the U.S. and sold at a premium. Another example could be a cooperative of women in Balochistan whose carpet production could be marketed with a heavy emphasis on the women themselves in the West - bear in mind that it might be hard to sell me on these specific ideas :)