Global humanitarian organization Catholic Relief Services announced on Monday it will invest in Lafaza, a U.S.-based agriculture company that sells vanilla sourced directly from smallholder farmers in Madagascar.
The $500,000 investment marks the first impact investment for CRS — part of the Roman Catholic community in the U.S. — after several years of exploring the issue. It’s the latest signal in a trend Devex identified earlier this year of international nongovernmental organizations making or considering impact investments, those made with the intention of generating measurable social and environmental impact along with a financial return. It also comes on the heals a high-level conference on the subject hosted by the Catholic Church at the Vatican in June.*
The deal was years in the works, beginning as an informal partnership in 2013, then evolving to a CRS grant about a year later to support capacity building among the farmers Lafaza was buying vanilla from. Now, the investment will take that work to the next stage by helping Lafaza expand the number of farmers it buys from and extend its reach as an international supplier, according to Lafaza CEO Nathaniel Delafield.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
