SOURCE: Whole Foods Market Foundations
DESCRIPTION:
Naked Juice, a Tropicana Brands Group product, is a supporter of Whole Planet Foundation since 2007, and it is renewing its $50,000 per year commitment to the Foundation’s Supplier Alliance for Microcredit. This year, Naked Juice is funding essential microbusinesses to alleviate global poverty through the Foundation's microlending programs. Naked Juice, which can be found in select stores and online on Whole Foods Market on Amazon, is committed to giving opportunities through microcredit to the world’s impoverished entrepreneurs for the chance to create or expand a business, often home-based, to generate income for themselves and their families. Microcredit loans are small loans typically under $200, with no formal contract and no formal collateral, that are provided for the entrepreneur to change their own lives through their own hard work. To date, Naked Juice has donated $950,000, which has funded 32,700 microloans creating 180,100 opportunities.
Naked Juice celebrates the goodness inside each of its bottles; each smoothie provides delicious fruits and veggies without artificial flavors or added sugars – just how Mother Nature intended. Naked Juice brings the Goodness Outside through its sustainable packaging, ingredient sourcing and community support, like its long-term backing of women entrepreneurs around the globe through Whole Planet Foundation.
Members of the Tropicana Brands Group team have met microcredit clients whose loans were funded by Whole Planet Foundation in the United States (Harlem and Miami), Nepal, and most recently South Africa. To date, PepsiCo. had donated $2.2 million total to fund over 30,700 microloans and create over 170,900 opportunities. Read more here and watch the video featuring Michelle Long and Katie Kowalski's experience in South Africa.
“Naked Juice is proud to continue our support of Whole Planet Foundation under Tropicana Brands Group. As a brand, we strive to provide goodness inside our products and goodness to the outside world. Since 2011 this partnership with Whole Planet Foundation has been one way we have been able to do just that. We are thrilled to continue helping Whole Planet Foundation bring more good into the world through their support of microfinance loans and poverty alleviation”, says Anup Shah, Chief Marketing Officer, Tropicana Brands Group.
Given the average first microcredit loan size of $179 across Whole Planet Foundation-funded projects, Naked Juice’s support this year will fund 280 microloans. These microloans are disbursed by Whole Planet Foundation's network of microfinance partners in Africa, Asia and the Americas, including the United States, to those that are most in need of access to capital to start or develop a small business. On average, microloan recipients support four other family members, so this meaningful support will have a ripple effect in local and global communities.
To learn more about Whole Planet Foundation’s work to alleviate global poverty, visit wholeplanetfoundation.org. Many thanks to the Naked Juice team for making such a difference around the world, one bottle at a time!
KEYWORDS: Whole Foods Market Foundations, whole planet foundation, NASDAQ: WFM
