Across the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa, the majority of Guinea Bissau’s population lives on less than 50 cents a day.
Mike Blondino, founder and chief executive officer of Vancouver-based Lead International, first visited the country in 1994 as pastor of The Lighthouse Church of Vancouver. He saw a nation of “very gentle and very sweet” people in a tropical climate.
But it’s a place where one in 10 infants dies at birth and six in 10 adults are illiterate.
“Government management has kept the country down so people can’t expand into business,” Blondino said.
He saw how dire the situation was when he learned that his group couldn’t hold meetings outdoors due to the fatal risk of dehydration.
“I was so touched by the poverty, I couldn’t sleep,” said Blondino, who owns Camas-based architectural design firm Blondino Design.
One year after his first visit to Guinea Bissau, Blondino incorporated Lead International as a nonprofit organization. The 501(c)3 helps Guineans work toward self-sufficiency through business education and development.
“I knew since nobody else was doing this, I was responsible,” Blondino said.
Lead supporters initially visited the country with donations of food and medicine. But those gifts only went so far.
Judi Richardson, a pharmacist for The Vancouver Clinic, visited Guinea Bissau during Lead’s early years. She toured hospitals that had two women and two infants to a bed and a national drug depository with fewer supplies than The Vancouver Clinic’s pharmacy.
“(Guinea Bissau) had donor countries for a while, but the donations never got to the right places,” Richardson said. “(The donations) got to the black market and the people never got it and donors quit giving.”
“We realized that giving wouldn’t do it,” Blondino said. “We had to invest our knowledge and time and teach them to help themselves.”
He saw not just a need for sustainable revenue, but for a cultural understanding of business. The country’s patriarchal system tends to hold back or even punish people with an entrepreneurial mindset, he said.
“Independent thinking and creative thinking are not rewarded,” Blondino said. “We had to create a safe environment for people to experiment with these ideas.”
That meant finding a way for entrepreneurship to fit into Guinean culture.
“To compete in the global economy they have to run at the speed of the marketplace,
Blondino said. “They have to choose to change their mindset themselves.”
Focus on cashews
In 2000, Lead’s focus shifted to development of cashew processing plants after Blondino learned that cashews make up the bulk of the country’s economy, but are managed by a privileged few. They can be used to make bread, cake, pizza and about 30 other products.
Mario Martinez, Lead’s executive vice president of operations, made his first trip to Guinea Bissau to begin implementing the cashew project in 2003. He is Lead’s only full-time employee and a former staffer of the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
In 2005, Lead opened the Djonde cashew processing trade school in Bissau, the nation’s capitol. Blondino and Martinez worked with cashew processors in the city to provide mentorship and renovations at an existing processing plant. In return, the facility was used as a school during the day while processing happened at night. That school’s first class graduated in 2006. The school now has capacity for 100 students a year.
In 2007, a second school opened outside Bissau with capacity for 400 students.
Lead now works with 16 small cashew companies, in Guinea Bissau. Only three existed before Lead began its work. The rest were developed by Lead’s Guinean leaders, who also teach Lead classes.
“These (businesses) were started by the indigenous people,” Blondino said. “They have ultimate say over what we do in the field and we raise the money and market the goods. It’s a symbiosis.”
Greatest impact
In one year, Lead’s cashew processors can generate $700,000 in revenue. They can gross $1.6 million in two years and $2.3 million in three, Blondino said. That money goes a long way in a country with a per capita annual income of less than $500.
“These people are making vastly more than the standard income level,” Blondino said of the cashew processors, who earn about $1,500 a year.
That money changes hands up to seven times in the cities, towns and villages of Guinea Bissau before it goes to the bank.
Rob Pool, co-owner of Arcadia Investment Advisers in Vancouver, joined Lead’s board of directors this year and said his 2001 visit to Guinea Bissau gave him a new perspective on his work.
“If you’re living on a poverty-level income in the United States, you’re still considered very wealthy by world standards,” Pool said. “I work with people who are trying to accumulate as much as they can to retire comfortably. … In Guinea Bissau it’s all about making it through the day. But because of that mindset they seem pretty content and happy.”
He tries to reconcile those contrasting realities by giving to global poverty causes and remaining active with Lead.
“To increase the revenue of my firm allows me to be a distributor, in some sense, to other places around the world,” Pool said.
Lead’s 2008 budget is $600,000, including $400,000 in donations and $200,000 in cash reserves. The majority the funding comes from individuals in the Northwest and particularly from the Vancouver business community, Blondino said.
“Business people are the greatest untapped resource for philanthropy,” he said, “not just because they have money, but because they have business know-how.”
An example of that, Carol Murray, a Realtor at Coldwell Banker Barbara Sue Seal Properties in Vancouver, has volunteered with Lead since 2001. She took on coordination of its banquets in 2003, and established Lead’s first auction in 2006.
She recruits her colleagues as advocates, volunteers and financial supporters of the nonprofit. Murray hasn’t traveled to Guinea Bissau for health reasons, but said the country’s needs run through her head continually.
“I really believe the majority of people have almost a basic need to do something good for somebody,” Murray said. “(With) the agricultural potential with the cashews, there’s a real fix there.”
How to start a Lead International cashew business in Guinea Bissau
Process: Three to five years
Start-up costs: $2,500
Typical annual income: $1,500
• Successfully complete trade school, business classes and mentorship
• Develop a business plan
• Select a business location
• Gather your non-cash assets
• Collaborate with Lead to buy equipment
• Prove your ability to run a single-operator business
• Learn to hire and manage employees
• Continue business development
Lead’s Guinean students developed a no-cash model for the program to protect it from corruption. Lead gives students non-financial resources, such as cashews or processing equipment, but never cash. Each business owner receives cash when their product sells.
Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com.
“COME, YOU GIVE SHOTS.”
When Judi Richardson volunteered for a medical mission trip to Guinea Bissau with Vancouver-based Lead International, she had an unusual piece of luggage: a sealed freezer box of rabies vaccines.
Lead’s founder, Mike Blondino, arrived in the West African country a week before Richardson and learned that one of the nonprofit’s partners – Guinean medical doctor Brandau Gomes Co – was preparing to die with his wife and children.
Five members of the family were bitten by a rabid dog and without access to treatment, the family quickly accepted that they had one month to live.
Blondino helped Brandau reconnect with a friend from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Within days, the hospital donated rabies vaccines worth at least $5,000.
Then Blondino called Richardson, a pharmacist for The Vancouver Clinic, to deliver the medicine.
She changed planes three times with the box before boarding a plane into Guinea Bissau. The craft was so small that she had to choose between her luggage and the medicine.
“I had to let my bag go,” Richardson said.
She arrived in Guinea Bissau at about 2 a.m., and was awakened by Gomes Co a few hours later.
“First thing, 7 a.m. the doctor wakes me up and says, ‘Come you give shots,’” Richardson recalled.
Each of the family members lived.
That trip 10 years ago marked Richardson’s initial involvement with Lead, an organization that she still supports financially and as an advocate.
The trip painted for Richardson a vivid picture of challenges medical professionals face in Third World countries. Guinean doctors earn $30 to $60 a month, she said.
She and Gomes Co led workshops for Guinean doctors, talked in schools about AIDS and helped a clinic stock its vitamin supply.
The experience was overwhelming enough that Richardson came home and visited her own doctor.
“I thought there was something wrong with me,” she said. “He said there was nothing wrong with me, but that sometimes all you can do is give a cup of cold water. And that’s what I did. I gave the tiny bit that I could.”
—Charity Thompson
