New emperor, old clothes? International funding – who’s setting the agenda?
Interview - Alex Pryor
1 September 2008
Alliance magazine
Guayaki is an Argentine and US company that exports yerba mate, a kind of tea, to the US but its real aims are ‘social transformation and the environmental restoration of the rainforest’. Though it operates in classic non-profit territory, it’s a business, if an unusual one - one indicator Guayaki uses to measure its performance is the number of species of birds found in its growing areas. As Alex Pryor, its co-founder, explained to Alliance, his decision to use commercial means to achieve social and environmental ends stemmed partly from his qualms about the pure profit motive of business and his fear that foundation money sometimes comes from questionable sources.
