Country: Madagascar
Closing date: 10 Sep 2016
Conservation International (CI) is a non-governmental organization created in 1987 with the mission of conserving biodiversity while ensuring that local communities directly benefit from the protection of their natural habitat. Verde Ventures (VV) is an investment program managed by CI. VV utilizes credit funds and business development services for investment in Small and Mid-sized Companies (SME) that participate in the conservation of biodiversity in order to provide sustainable economic solutions that benefit local biodiversity for future generations in priority areas classified by CI. In partnership with Agence Française de Développement (AFD) VV is expanding its activities to priority areas in Africa in order to reproduce its model in other critical habitats for biodiversity.
Through its twelve years of experience, Verde Ventures has demonstrated that the effectiveness of loans to enterprises contributing to the protection of biodiversity and human wellbeing is greatly increased if it is paired with business development aid as well as with monitoring and evaluation efforts of the investments’ impact. VV is therefore working with Fonds Français pour l'Environnement Mondial (FFEM) to support technical assistance and follow-up activities of companies financed by VV in order to ensure the environmental and social success of its projects, and to demonstrate the link between companies’ development, biodiversity conservation and healthy sustainable societies.
In Madagascar, VV has invested funds with two businesses in vanilla and cacao value chain respectively. Our cacao partner sources cacao from 3 small-holder producer organizations (approx. 70 members) in Ambanja district. We aim to support this partner to undertake a biodiversity assessment on the relationship between cacao production in Madagascar and the biodiversity, by examining lemurs as the indicator species.
How to apply:
The deadline for the submission of applications is 10th September 2016. Applications should be sent to Amos Thiongo (athiongo@conservation.org) in English language. Applications should contain technical and financial proposals in US Dollars only.