Imagine a store filled with healthy, natural products. All the products are produced by companies owned by indigenous people using raw materials grown in the region using agricultural methods that enrich the land rather than depleting it. The workers and growers are working themselves out of poverty by selling the products directly to consumers and avoiding wholesalers. The workers share company ownership with community foundations that use the profits to fund projects such as health clinics, water purification plants and school programs. Every product in the store is tied to a particular company and you can easily see how they produce it and what they are doing with your money. That is the store that Maya Global 2012 is building.
MAYA GLOBAL 2012 is just the start. Eventually the founders want to have similar efforts up and running in every poverty stricken region of the globe. All the products will be sold in the same online store. It will be called the New Leaf World Marketplace. New Leaf will have a small ownership stake in every company that sells products in the store to assure that best practices are followed and every company lives up to the New Leaf Standards of Operations.
NEW LEAF WORLD MARKETS is a 2040 Outlook Company. It has social goals that are an integral part of its business plan and are equally important as its financial goals. The company will not consider itself successful unless those social goals are met. This is unusual today, but it will be the norm by 2040. All the companies selling products in the Marketplace will also be 2040 Outlook Companies.
MAYA GLOBAL 2012 is focused on an ancient people that have fallen from a high perch to the depths of poverty. Once inhabitants of the richest lands in Central America they are now scratching a living on barren, eroded hillsides or living in squalor in cities with no potable water. Many have tried to help. None have had much success. Maya Global believe the way to resurrection is a return to their agrarian roots combined with modern processing facilities so they can utilize technology to sell their wares over the Internet. Successful, locally owned businesses can do so much more for the Mayan economy than well-meaning donations. The businesses can provide living wages, offer full careers, purchase all the product growers can produce, introduce beneficial growing methods and keep the money in the region so it can be respent there. Unfortunately, the Mayans are not alone. Many other peoples share their plight. The innovative Maya Global model will help them too, under the New Leaf banner.
NEW LEAF’S key ingredient is offering debt free funding to the indigenous companies. They need the funds to upgrade their facilities and increase the acreage in use. They can’t afford to borrow the money. The debt would crush them. New Leaf will fund the companies through its non-profit New Leaf Seed Foundation. The funds will come from thousands of small donations from individuals and larger ones from corporate sponsors that support New Leaf’s goals and objectives.
THE NEW LEAF MARKETPLACE will be at the center of all this activity. Shoppers will come to reorder products and learn of new ones. Supporters will come to check progress of companies and find out about new initiatives. Companies will post items of interest about their products, workers, growers and community projects. Corporate sponsors will inform visitors of their interest in New Leaf initiatives and introduce their own ideas. It will be a meeting place that mimics the ancient markets where people mingled with merchants to exchange goods and news, while utilizing technology to instantly connect people from all over the globe.
NOW is the time that it all starts. We need to establish that there are lots of people interested in helping the projects and buying the products they grow and produce. Please become a founding member by joining the Maya Global TREE OF LIFE.
