Today I joined Sekar and his students on a field trip out to Teddy Exports, an operation set up by an Irish woman named Amanda Murphy in the 1990s that weds globalized business with community development.
At Teddy Exports, workers make a variety of products - from wooden massage rollers to shoulder bags to Christmas potpurri sacks - which are purchased by a number of major global retailers, its primary customer being The Body Shop.
At Teddy Exports, 55% of the workers are women and a number come from disadvantaged backgrounds (HIV positive, physically/mentally challenged, etc.). Men and women receive equal wages (that by local standards are very good), full medical coverage and inclusion in a pension fund. But that's not all.
The profits are used to fund a variety of services for the workers and the surrrounding community - a primary school and junior high for local children (including those with special needs) with free transportation, uniforms, books and food; a clinic providing medical services for free to employees and for only the most minimum of charges for others in the community; veterinary services; a special night school for children who work during the day in a nearby candle factory; and a variety of assorted other services.
In addition to all of the above, a portion of the profits is used to fund a concerted anti-HIV campaign directed towards sex workers in the area and their primary customers, lorry (truck) drivers who pass through onto other parts of India (thus supposedly making them the primary vector by which the disease is spreading through the subcontinent).
Sekar and his wife, Vidya, both seemed to be particularly impressed by the safety standards maintained for the workers when we visited the nearby woodshop factory (which, incidentally, had been turned over to senior employees who are its major shareholders) - workers were provided with protective visors, earplugs and masks.
I was impressed by the way in which Teddy Exports is doing so much for the community in which it is based while at the same time managing to turn robust profits. Seeing Teddy Exports strengthened my conviction that I've really got to learn more about business, management and finance if I want to do some good for the world beyond mere lip service.
There were some concerns expressed however. What happens when The Body Shop is gone? What happens when the demand for the products that Teddy Exports makes dries up abroad? None of the products that are made at Teddy are made for local consumption (indeed, just one of the wooden massage rollers produced at Teddy Exports retails in the UK for something that probably equivalent to a week's worth of wages for the worker who helped to make it).
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