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The Wildlife Works business model is unique, and most people have a few questions about our approach to funding and directing our conservation activities. Here are the answers to some of our most frequently asked questions (FAQs):
Q. How does Consumer Powered Conservationsm work?
A. Consumer Powered Conservation gives you, the consumer, the power to protect wildlife and their dwindling habitats by choosing to buy high-quality products from Wildlife Works.
As a direct result of your purchases, we are able to:
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fund, own and operate wilderness sanctuaries in wildlife-rich areas of the developing world.
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put large tracts of private land under conservation protection in partnership with local landowners and communities.
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develop a sustainable economic base for wildlife survival by creating jobs and building schools in the communities that share their resources with wildlife.
Our holistic approach has won the support of celebrities, media and the conservation community, and is empowering more and more consumers every day to play a pivotal role in our conservation success.
Q. Why are you a for-profit business and not a non-profit charity?
A. As a for-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of wildlife and wilderness habitats, Wildlife Works stands out from non-profit organizations as well as the for-profit companies that donate profits to conservation efforts.
In short, we are a business with a philanthropic mission - an unusual if not unique hybrid. So, why did we create this hybrid?
- Most charities are performing activities that are, by nature, uneconomic (such as buying land for nature preserves, studying the behavior of chimpanzees, providing rural education in the developing world, and healthcare for those that can't afford it) and therefore must be sustained every year by philanthropic donations.
We believe, however, that the solution to the wildlife conservation challenge in the developing world involves the creation of wildlife-friendly jobs, and that the best organizational model to tackle that problem is a for-profit business model. For the positive effects of conservation to be sustainable, the business model and jobs also must be sustainable.
- Furthermore, as our business grows and increases its positive impact on wildlife and communities, it also becomes more valuable, offering a financial reward to those philanthropic investors who provided initial seed funding, allowing them to multiply their positive influence through other projects, both for-profit and non-profit.
This is an important component of our venture, because through our success, we demonstrate that philanthropic investment dollars can be used to solve environmental/societal problems, providing a new and much larger source of future funding for ventures like ours.
- Finally, we have worked very hard to establish credibility and partnerships with the major wildlife non-profit organizations of the world, who are now very supportive of the work we are doing, and who endorse us to their membership in one way or another. They do this freely because they do not perceive us to be a competitor for charitable donor dollars. These partnerships are very important to us in the marketing of our products to wildlife-friendly consumers.
This also should be noted: although we are a for-profit business, we would not exist if our founder, investors and employees were not dedicated to finding solutions to the problems of wildlife conservation in the developing world.
Q. Why own and operate your own wildlife sanctuaries? Why not partner with existing wildlife charities or national park systems?
A. Our model is dependent on convincing the communities that live with wildlife that it is in their best interests to protect wildlife - that is, by protecting wildlife they can benefit from it economically.
We also want to measure the security of wildlife in the habitat adjacent to our activities, to make sure that our work with the community leads to a decrease in poaching, clear cutting and other harmful activities. We are not allowed into national parks to count and remove snares any more than the poachers are allowed in to set them, so we felt we needed to have our own private sanctuary on which to measure the impact of our activities.
Therefore, we opted for maximizing our influence on the land via lease/ownership. In the future, it's possible that we may find locations where a charity-owned sanctuary or existing government park is suitable. However, in order for our concept to be fully realized, we must be able to locate a business facility adjacent to the sanctuary, to create real economic development in the local community. This may not be possible adjacent to a national park or sanctuary owned by a charity.
Q. Why sell to the U.S. marketplace?
A. The United States is the largest consumer marketplace in the world, and at present it ranks fifth in exports from Kenya. It has a large population of eco-conscious consumers, and many channels targeted specifically at that segment. We know the U.S. consumer marketplace very well due to extensive market research, much of it done by our founder and president Mike Korchinsky.
Moreover, the current U.S. political climate supports a "trade not aid" policy, which means the government is looking at ways to encourage trade with African nations to reduce the burden on U.S. taxpayers caused by the aid packages we have traditionally given to Africa.
We're often asked why we don't sell our products into African markets. This is because the local markets in Africa do not have the consumer spending power to justify the facility investments that will enable them to produce high-quality products.
This is a classic case of catch-22 in economic development. A developing economy cannot afford to invest in the plants and equipment that are necessary to be competitive in a world market. The payback from their local market is not there, yet at the same time they are being urged for political reasons to open their markets to foreign goods. These better quality goods then dominate their market and further depress the local manufacturing sector.
To avoid this development trap, those countries need to find an export market for their products. This market must be large and lucrative enough to justify the investment in modern facilities and equipment. Once they have upgraded their facilities (and the employment created by manufacturing for export begins to raise the standard of living in the local community), they can then begin to sell the higher quality goods in their domestic market and effectively compete with imported goods.
Q. Why aren't all of your products made in Africa today?
A. We built our EcoFactory in rural Kenya from the ground up and trained local women who had no prior sewing experience to sew. This was a slow process, and it made sense for us to know what styles we could sell before teaching them what to sew. So we established production in the United States first, and began selling to determine demand. That lead us to train our team in Kenya to make our Baby Tees first, and they are making a good percentage of that style for us today.
As a sustainable business, we need to be able to respond to demands in the consumer market rapidly, and we cannot quickly increase our Kenyan workforce to meet an increase in demand due to the long training process. In addition, we cannot retrain our Kenyan workforce quickly to make a new style. So we will always need to have production in the United States and elsewhere to supplement our own capacity.
As time goes by, we are committed to moving as much production as possible (and feasible for the health of our business) to our Kenyan EcoFactory or other Wildlife Works' facilities. And, rest assured, when we do work with another manufacturer we carefully scrutinize their fair trade and labor practices before committing business to them.
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