Options and Choices

Options and Choices is a foundation whose remit is to help people through fair and sustainable commerce. We have seen for ourselves, in developing nations in Asia, that people in rural communities want a better life and are happy to work hard to achieve this. We have also seen that they need help to crystallise these efforts into a coherent and structured, but highly entrepreneurial and commercial, environment with long-term prospects – we know this as hope.

Clearly the extraction of value from the rainforests, and the provision of capital to help these people better themselves, is a fundamental step towards making the programme work: it is, in essence, a countrywide CSR (Corporate Socially Responsible) programme. But we believe that the provision of value crops, the technology transfer that goes with this, plus a sustainable market to support the long term revenues, are all critical for the commercial success of these programmes.

Energy crops - Jatropha as well as others - and lumber crops are both
selling into markets with growing domestic and global demand, which
will form the basis of new economies. The commercial longevity of the
projects is therefore predictable with some confidence.

Jatropha Crop used for Bio Diesel

The Options & Choices Foundation in each country is designed not only to manage the money properly, but also to bring the crops, the technology, the commercial expertise and the route to global markets to people who would usually be completely unaware of their existence.

Amazonian School Children

Options and Choices is new; it is about creating options for people by bringing value crops and expertise to them; it is about helping them to make the best they can of these opportunities while developing more themselves through encouraging entrepreneurial spirit thus allowing everyone to make choices in life that many of us take for granted - like schooling, staying together and of course eating! This is not charity, it is about business, about communities, about financial and lifestyle choices which leads to deforestation being stopped, more trees planted, better farming methods and more money into rural economies resulting in less negative migration, better communities and of course, reduced reliance on fossil fuels.