Swedish entrepreneur gives £2.7 million to London charity
Howard Lake | 3 June 2007 | News
Swedish entrepreneur and philanthropist Jonas af Jochnick, co-founder of cosmetic company Oriflame, has given £2.7m to the London-based micro-business charity Hand in Hand which is working in Tamil Nadu, India.
Hand in Hand (HiH), founded three years ago, aims to help poor illiterate women in India start their own income-generating businesses. It has been sustained largely with the funding and expertise of Swedish businessman Percy Barnevik, formerly head of ABB and AstraZeneca.
The £2.7 million gift follows a recent visit to Tamil Nadu by Jonas af Jochnick to view the HiH projects.
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Dr Kalpana Sankar, Chief Executive of HiH, said: “this donation will make it possible for us to teach 50,000 more women to read, to train 100,000 women to start micro enterprises and establish 600 medium sized businesses to build and run schools for children released from factories, maintain 500 health camps serving 100,000 people and set up 5 new waste disposal units simultaneously.”
HiH reports that it has helped women start 58,000 small businesses, with an average of 4,000 starting every month. It has taken 6,500 children out of bonded work contracts and placed them in its 22 transit and residential schools where, “learning by HiH new teaching methods, they can quickly bridge the education gap and return to the state school system”.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.