It’s November – the perfect time to start jotting down your appointments and events on a new 2010 calendar. Here to help is the third annual edition of the Whole Planet Foundation calendar featuring beautiful photographs of inspiring entrepreneurs from Peru, Bolivia, India, Haiti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Guatemala, Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, the United States and East Timor.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill calendar! This one not only helps you keep track of your busy life but also helps you save on your favorite products with over $30 in coupons and ALL PROCEEDS from the sale of these calendars benefit Whole Planet Foundation microcredit clients. All that for $2. Seriously, $2.

Last year, our shoppers purchased $72,000 in calendars and empowered 1,775 poor women and their family members with microloans to create or expand a home-based business and create prosperity. These women live in communities where the products you purchase at Whole Foods Market are sourced. We’re hoping to raise a bit more this year so we can empower 2,000 more women with an opportunity to change their own lives and lift themselves out of poverty.

And if that wasn’t incentive enough, our vendor partners came through with some great coupons to sweeten the deal. $3 off from New Chapter, $3 off Seventh Generation, $2 off GoodBelly, $1 off Ben & Jerry’s, $1 off Nature’s Path, $1 off Muir Glen, $1 off Whole Trade Guarantee Vegan Sugar, just to name a few. You can see the whole coupon list for more incentive.

Pick up your copy (or two or three!) of the Whole Planet Foundation 2010 Calendar in your local U.S. Whole Foods Market store now through January. Thanks for your help in making this a great season of giving… in more ways than one.

Our Team Members put lots of energy into sharing information about Whole Planet Foundation with our customers. As an incentive and reward for all of their hard work, several Team Members were treated to a trip to Guatemala where they met local participants and experienced the power of microcredit firsthand. (Trips paid for by Whole Foods Market – not on the dime of the Foundation!).

Here’s a video that takes us along on a bit of their journey.

Whole Planet Foundation is funding microcredit in 15 communities around the globe that supply products to Whole Foods Market, including Bolivia, Costa Rica, East Timor, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Nicaragua, Thailand, Peru and the United States. Over $6 million in Whole Planet Foundation microloans has been disbursed through implementing partners to more than 50,000 poor women, with a repayment rate of 97%, enabling them to create or expand small home-based businesses and lift themselves out of poverty.

Stay tuned for information on our 2010 Prosperity Campaign – beginning in February.

Join Whole Planet Foundation in Peña Blanca, an impoverished, rural community in the Lake Atitlán region of Guatemala where Whole Foods Market sources coffee. To empower this community to lift itself out of poverty, Whole Planet Foundation and Grameen Trust initiated a microlending project here in 2006, and the next year Whole Foods Market Team Members began providing community service like teaching literacy skills and providing meals for the children of this Mayan community.

We hope you will get involved and support this indigenous community too:
Fund Pena Blanca school meals
Fund the Pena Blanca elementary school
Fund materials for carbon-efficient stoves for villagers

We, The Green Children, are very happy to announce the release of our single and music video Hear Me Now to help support the work of Whole Planet Foundation and raise awareness about the power of microcredit to help people lift themselves out of poverty.

After our first trip to Bangladesh, we were so inspired by Grameen Bank, its leader Prof. Muhammad Yunus and the power of small loans that we knew we had to write a song! After the song was written, we knew that a video had to be made and this was the result. It was made in Bangladesh to celebrate the incredible women who are clients of Grameen Bank (known as “the bank for the poor”).

Check out our video below and visit us at http://www.thegreenchildren.org.

Hear Me Now is also available on iTunes, and we are donating 50% of our proceeds to help fund a Whole Planet Foundation and Grameen Trust microlending project in Kerala, India, aiming to extend access to microcredit to over 22,000 impoverished people.

Help us spread a positive message: the poor don’t always need a hand out, but with a hand up, great things can happen!

Thank you so much,

Milla Sunde & Tom Bevan (The Green Children)

The Green Children, Milla and Tom, in Guatemala with Whole Planet Foundation President Philip Sansone

Over 12,000 team members have given

$745,000 through their paychecks to empower

19,000 impoverished people with access to microcredit

to change their lives.

Here’s what some of those team members had to say about why they donate.

“I’ve been blessed with so much that I feel a responsibility to share what I have with others. Giving to the Whole Planet Foundation is a way for me to do that. Even a small amount of money can make a big difference in someone’s life.”
Kim Head, Austin, Texas

“Why would you not want to be part of Whole Planet Foundation?”
Doug Straub, Colfax, Colorado

“We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.”
Morghan Dill, Colfax, Colorado

“I could either buy sushi or directly change someone’s life…I’m changing someone’s life.”

Shannon, Portland, Maine

“It feels so great to work for a company that genuinely supports our communities on both a local and global level. The Whole Planet Foundation truly embodies Whole Foods Market’s core values; I am so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”
Kristen Kaza, Evanston, Illinois

“What little sacrifice I’m making by donating – maybe a cup of coffee – is helping to change a person’s whole life. It’s worth giving up that cup of coffee.”

Carl, Portland, Maine

“It feels great knowing I am helping someone with a hand-up, as opposed to merely a hand-out.”

Traci Rong, Walnut Creek, California

“It seems like such a small thing…how can you not donate to something so wonderful?”

Michelle Peluso, Paradise Valley, Arizona

Thanks, thanks and thanks again. Team members at Whole Foods Market are so open-hearted. Not a team member? Don’t worry! You can donate through our website.

I love my job at Whole Planet Foundation. Every day is an opportunity to help empower the poor through microcredit in communities around the globe where Whole Foods Market sources product. Whole Planet Foundation funds microlending projects in communities where Whole Foods Market sources coffee from communities in East Timor, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya and Nicaragua; bananas from communities in Costa Rica and Honduras; tea from India and Nepal; rice from Thailand; and produce and dairy from the New York City area. Microcredit is small loans – around $200 – provided to impoverished individuals who use the funds to start their own home-based businesses to lift themselves out of poverty, like these women.

There are more than 1 billion people living on less than $1 a day (in US currency). Today through March 31st at all U.S. Whole Foods Market locations, you can empower the poor. Make a donation of $1 at the registers and help raise $1 million for microcredit. Last year, thanks to shopper generosity, we were able to expand into Africa to fund microcredit loans for the very poor in Ethiopia and Kenya. This year we are expanding to a community in Peru where Whole Foods Market sources onions, with additional potential projects in communities in Mexico, Haiti, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia and Paraguay. You can give with confidence as Whole Foods Market covers 100% of Whole Planet Foundation operating costs. Please join us in empowering the poor through microcredit, and donate $1 at a store or online as part of this annual campaign to raise $1 million for the very poor in our communities around the globe. Visit www.wholeplanetfoundation.org to learn more. Thank you.

As the Director of Partnership Development and Internal Programs for Whole Planet Foundation, Joy Peterson helps develop strategic partnerships and works with Whole Foods Market Team Members who are excited to experience the Foundation and become involved in our Team Member Volunteer Program. Joy loves communicating about microlending, service and Whole Foods Market Core Values.

Whole Foods Market Tanasbourne store is # 1 in Team Member Giving participation at 76%

That’s an amazing outpouring of care and concern and it doesn’t stop there. Since there is 97-99% repayment of the microloans, the money raised revolves, giving more and more people access to capital so that they can fund small businesses that lift them out of poverty and they pay the loan back, which gives even more people the opportunity to do the same.

Our participation throughout Whole Foods Market is up to over 17%. By the end of January we will have given over $500,000. That is over half a million dollars that our team members have given to empower people less fortunate than ourselves. Next year, even if no one else decides to join in this awesome effort, we will add another half million dollars. We are so lucky to get to work with each other in a company full of giving, compassionate people.

Ventura, community leader who has worked with Whole Foods Market team member volunteers to build stoves in the homes of indigenous people.

In 2002 I was without a job when Whole Foods Market took a chance on me. I will never forget the store leaders giving me the opportunity to show what great work I could do when given the chance. Microlending through Whole Planet Foundation is how we fund opportunity for hard working creative people around the world and give them a chance like I was given. I cannot think of a better way to share our gifts than through the power of microlending.

Recently I met women who are clients of Banrural Grameen Guatemala, one of the microfinance institutions funded by Whole Planet Foundation. Guatemala, where we source coffee, is a beautiful country with huge volcanoes, majestic Lake Atitlán and a vibrant indigenous Mayan culture that lights up the countryside. Yet so much of the population survives in living conditions that are hard to imagine. Open hearth fires for cooking, dirt floors, mud brick walls, little or no furniture, no running water and scarcity of the most basic of necessities are conditions people live with every day. The microcredit clients that I met work so very hard to get even the most basic of needs met. They are delightful and creative and joyous in ways that are so inspiring. The more that I saw of their ingenuity the more I realized how little I actually do with the opportunities given me. It takes so little to have a significant positive impact on the lives of these people who are so much less fortunate.

Not long ago a friend of mine gave me the book Three Cups of Tea and I was greatly impressed by the work that Greg Mortenson has done to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Similarly, in Guatemala I met Ventura who has worked tirelessly (along with Whole Foods Market team members) to build stoves in the homes of indigenous people, stoves that pipe the smoke that had been getting in the eyes and lungs of the families in Pena Blanca out of their homes, giving them cleaner air to breathe and less respiratory distress and eye irritation.

Family for whom the stove was built.

I believe in the difference that each and every one of us can make and I believe that we can work together to make the world a better place. Thank you Whole Foods Market team members for making a difference locally and globally and thank you Whole Foods Market for giving us all the opportunity.

Genie came to Whole Foods Market in Austin in 2002 as a bagger and has worked a myriad of positions from cashier to Store Trainer and most recently was Associate Store Team Leader in San Antonio. Having been a photographer, a personal assistant and the general manager of a small café, she brings a variety of talents to her new job as Internal Programs Ambassador. Genie has moved every two or three years for most of her life. She loves travel and takes every opportunity to be exposed to new cultures. Some of her favorite places are Bogota, Oahu, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Paris and EARTH University in Costa Rica. She speaks French and basic Spanish. Sharing the mission of Whole Planet Foundation with our team members is a dream job for her.

I was so excited when Whole Planet Foundation asked me to edit videos that were shot in Nicaragua and Honduras. I spent two years in Nicaragua as a Peace Corps volunteer, so as I watched the raw footage, I immediately thought of people and places that will always be near and dear to me. I could tell so many stories about people I met and places I’ve seen, but the tone of those stories would not be one of sadness or hardship. The stories, much like those of the Whole Planet Foundation borrowers, would be about people who are gregarious, generous and proud. The stories that we are sharing with you are stories that are all too common in Central America. It’s a wonder that many of these countries still exist given that they have faced so much adversity in the recent past, between civil wars and natural disasters. Maybe even more incredible is the resiliency of the people and their determination to achieve a better future through hard work and perseverance.

Marc is a multimedia consultant for the Whole Planet Foundation and Whole Foods Market. He started working with Whole Foods, in both still photography and video, while finishing his MA in photojournalism at The University of Texas. When he was in school, Marc worked as a photojournalist for publications in Santiago, Chile and South Florida. A native of Denver, Colorado, he spent two years in Nicaragua as a Peace Corps volunteer. He lived in the town of Río Blanco and worked in the Cerro Musún Nature Reserve. And, in what seems to be another lifetime, Marc worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as a project/marketing manager in the web development and video game industries. He earned his BS in business administration at Marquette University. When he’s not working, Marc likes to run and otherwise be outside.

Tom Bevan is a part of The Green Children music group and foundation.  The Green Children plan to support Whole Planet Foundation’s project with Grameen Trust in India with funds raised from their upcoming CD.

As a young boy I’d often watch the early evening news whilst waiting for my favorite television show to start. I remember being shocked and confused by some of the harrowing images of human poverty I saw around the world.

To this day I’ve never coped well with seeing these types of images. I believe in focusing on positive solutions and that’s why I’m such an avid supporter of microcredit.

I believe that small things change the world and there is no better example than microcredit to support this.

The pioneer of microcredit is Professor Muhammad Yunus, his idea was simple, give the poor a chance and they can help themselves. In 1976, he lent $27 to 42 poor Bangladeshi villagers. He later established the Grameen Bank, which now serves over 7 million women, all of whom have used their loans to develop income-generating businesses.

Known as ‘the bank for the poor’, Grameen gives people the opportunity to use their ability and secure their own future.

One of the biggest moments in my life came when I met my song-writing partner Milla. We worked on a project whilst studying at a music school in Liverpool and have never looked back. It quickly became clear that we had a shared passion for world issues and a determination to make a difference in any way we could. We were overjoyed to discover microcredit as a shining example of real positive development and embraced it immediately.

One of the primary reasons for our enthusiasm was the resulting empowerment the loans had on women. After reading and watching all the material we could find, we felt compelled to travel to Bangladesh and see the process first hand.

It is hard to describe the profound affect our first trip made. We were overwhelmed with the pride displayed by the women borrowers. Poverty was finally off their back and they had made it so. It wasn’t long before we returned to Bangladesh with a song inspired by the women we met. We traveled to the villages to shoot a music video in 100-degree heat, an amazing and challenging experience! The video will be released on Universal Records in 2009.

Since then we have been doing our best to spread the positive message of microcredit through our medium of music. We have been very fortunate to travel to Africa, China and India to see the success microcredit is having around the world.

At the end of 2007 we were honored to visit the projects of Whole Planet Foundation in Costa Rica and Guatemala. The video above tells the story of this incredible trip, please share this video and help bring some positive news to others.

I truly believe in the power of small things. We live in a world often judged by size and scale, but change starts with a small ripple of which we are all capable of creating!

Please check out our website if you are interested in learning more about our foundation work.  Help us spread the word – Become a Green Child Today!

Tom Bevan
Tom Bevan is one half of the musical group The Green Children. Tom and Milla Sunde established The Green Children Foundation to support microcredit, education and healthcare. The Green Children are donating proceeds from fundraising sales and activities to further the positive contribution microcredit is making to poor people around the world.

Maria Juracán is waiting for me outside her home. She waves as Manuel Mandoza and I walk down the steep dirt path to Peña Blanca, a farming community isolated by the mountainous topography of the Western Guatemalan Highlands. My legs are stiff and I’m walking clumsily; I’ve just ridden a motorcycle for the first time. And what a first! The road up from Panajachel to Peña Blanca is windy, narrow, and chaotic (buses tend to honk at blind corners rather than decrease in speed). I took to clenching my legs to the bike with all the strength I could muster. I smile and wave back, trying to contain my excitement; today brings another first: my first interview with a Grameen Guatemala borrower.

On special assignment from my college, I’ve come to Guatemala on a mission: to hear the stories of Grameen Guatemala borrowers. In 2006, Whole Planet Foundation helped launch Grameen Guatemala, a microfinance organization that provides business loans to poor working women. Now, two years later, the organization has 9 branches and over 9,000 borrowers. These numbers are very impressive, but only say so much. What is the experience of Grameen Guatemala borrower? What impact has the organization had on borrowers’ lives? I’ve come to Guatemala to find out answers to these questions and Maria Juracán, who waits for me below, will be the first to share her story.

At the bottom of the path, I reach out and grab hold of Maria’s extended hand. She wears a purple and yellow woven huipil (traditional Guatemalan shirt) and her cheeks are crinkled to make room for her beaming smile. We exchange greetings in Spanish tinged with foreign accents. Maria’s first language, like most of the Peña Blanca community, is Kakchiquel, one of 22 distinct indigenous languages spoken in the mountains surrounding the lake. I speak Spanish but not Kakchiquel, so Manuel, a Grameen Guatemala Field Assistant fluent in both languages, has agreed to be my interpreter.

Maria leads me along the patio of her home to a back room and gestures for me to enter. I duck into the doorway. As my eyes adjust to the low light, I begin to make out figures in the shadows and realize, to my astonishment, that the room is filled with women. They wear identical purple and yellow huipiles (colors I later learn represent the Peña Blanca community, much as a flag represents a country), long braids hang down their backs, and many rock babies in their arms. Murmurs and giggles flutter about the room at my arrival; they have waited here to meet me.

Manuel, who had been outside speaking on his cell phone, enters the room to tell me that he must go; he has urgent work to attend to and will come back to pick me up in an hour. Feeling a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of conducting my first interview with no one to mediate the Spanish/Kakchiquel language barrier, I calm myself, walk the room shaking hands, take a seat across from Maria and begin asking questions. At times we struggle to communicate and the room erupts in laughter but, in the end, we understand each other.

I learn that, in Maria’s youth, Peña Blanca had no school. That she grew up in the home, weaving and cooking, and never learned to read or write. That she picked up Spanish from her brothers who ventured more frequently into neighboring communities and towns. With few skills, she was poorly prepared to cope with the reality of modern Guatemala.

And yet, she persevered. Against the odds, Maria started a local store in Peña Blanca. Community-members came to rely on her for sugar, rice, oil and other products bought from the nearest town. Business was good until, in 2005, Hurricane Stan hit Lake Atitlan. Flash floods and mudslides ruined crops, destroyed homes and left thousands dead. For Maria, the hurricane meant the flooding of her store and the end of her family’s primary source of income. She desperately sought a loan to replace her damaged products, but no conventional bank would provide credit to an illiterate, non-Spanish-speaking client. Then, in 2006, Grameen Guatemala came to Peña Blanca offering loans to poor women.

Now, three years and four loan cycles later, a crack in the store’s wall is the only evidence of Stan’s destruction. The shelves are brimming with goods, Maria’s monthly income has not only recovered but doubled, and she now weaves huipiles for sale as an added source of income. Elected president of her borrower group, she is responsible for bi-monthly meetings of 15 women (i.e. the women who came to meet me!).

I snap some photographs of Maria and her three children in front of her store. As I look through the lens at this proud mother, I think of my own. A world apart, I know Maria and my mother share the same hopes; they both want food on the table and safe, healthy and happy children. They share the same hopes and yet, one was born into a world with many opportunities and resources and the other was not.

I am struck by the influence Whole Planet Foundation and Grameen Guatemala has on this family. Rather than handouts, Grameen Guatemala provides Maria a tool with which to grow her business, serve her customers and provide for her children. Meanwhile, at the local school (only fully completed in 2000), Whole Foods Market Team Members, as part of the Team Member Volunteer Program, teach Maria’s children, helping to provide them with the education Maria was denied. With credit and education, Maria and her children have the resources to transform their own lives.

Later that evening, I met a young man named David Cruz. Nineteen-years-old, like me, he sells thread-wrapped pens on the street to tourists so he can pay his way through his own education. He speaks five languages but can’t afford the tuition to attend the bi-lingual school. He told me he’s planning on heading to the U.S. soon to work construction and make some money. I let this sink in; construction-work in the U.S. is the ultimate ambition for a talented and highly motivated boy in Guatemala.

I think about my own dreams and try to imagine what it would be like for me if they couldn’t be realized in my home country. I think about the cement wall that some believe is the solution to curbing Latin American immigration to the U.S and feel it wouldn’t do any good. We need to build bridges, not walls. Bridges to span the gaps in opportunity. Education bridges. Economic bridges. Community bridges. Bridges leading to the fulfillment of dreams. These bridges need not cross borders; they span cultures, communities, families, hearts and minds.

Whole Planet Foundation is helping the Lake Atitlan community build bridges so David doesn’t have to cross borders to find work. As I walked away from Maria’s home, I felt I was crossing the bridge she had built for her family with hammers and nails from Grameen Guatemala.

Alex Crane supported the Whole Planet Foundation by compiling borrower profiles and contributing to the Foundation’s blog. He believes passionately in microcredit’s ability to transform lives, has a great love for Latin America and is fluent in Spanish. A native of San Francisco, Alex is a student at Bard College in New York.