3rd Creek Foundation Blog

About a year ago Esther Tino started a tailoring business with two of her neighbors. After six months, they had sold almost 50 dresses to their fellow residents of Aduka village in Eastern Uganda. A year later, Esther had saved nearly 100 dollars in her savings group, she’d purchased chickens and goats and a real bed with a brand-new mattress.

"In this blog, we would like to share our experience with debt investments in Vietnam. To make a debt impact investment in Vietnam, there are two major processes: ..."

The eight entrepreneurs in in Upaya’s Cohort1 are growing small businesses from India’s informal sector, such as food delivery, jobs placement, shoe cleaning, and waste management. Each business has been successful operating in a local environment, and is preparing to scale across a wider geographic footprint and market size in India.  ...

Practicing gratitude benefits both the individual and the community. Taking time to extend gratitude has a remarkable impact on our emotional well being. In this blog entry, the 3CF board shares one thing each of us is thankful for.

Isibella Wangari Gituru has been a clothes designer and seamstress in Nairobi, Kenya for the past 30 years. Within a year of graduating from university...

The Global Social Benefit Institute at Santa Clara University's Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship is significant because it convenes impact oriented entrepreneurs and investors in one room to help entrepreneurs overcome some of these challenges, thereby strengthening both the businesses and their collective impact.

3CF partners with Village Enterprise in the Kitale area of western Kenya to help rural women living below the poverty line start small businesses that graduate them and their households out of extreme poverty.   Neighborhood women with similar business interests join into groups of 3 entrepreneurs to establish each new business. ...

John Locke, one of the enlightenment philosophers, posited in the 17th century that the fruits of an individual’s labor entitled that person to own and accumulate property, a God-given right. A person’s property, broadly interpreted to include everything from the material goods to personal aspirations, ...

"...we refer to economic independence as the ability of an individual to access and mobilize enough economic resources (land, labor, and capital) to meet his or her basic needs and those of his or her dependents. But what we strive for through our mission is to support individuals to access economic mobility."

I have been blogging over the past few years about my involvement with our local community to improve our children’s dental health and hygiene. Today I am pleased to share that...

3CF recently welcomed Danielle Decatur to the board. Danielle has spent 10 years in consulting, providing Change Management and Lean Six Sigma expertise across many industries while employed by Microsoft and IBM. She also worked in Environmental Sustainability for AREVA while obtaining her MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management…

On my recent trip to India, I had the privilege of visiting Maitri, a social enterprise based in Guwahati, Assam District. Maitri’s vision is an inclusive society where every human being...

Kolkata, West Bengal 11 FEBRUARY 2016 -- Upaya is proud to announce today that it has come together with 3rd Creek Foundation (3CF) to provide a follow-on investment into Maitri Livelihood Services Private Limited (Maitri), a caregivers training and placement company that recruits, trains, and secures employment for women from vulnerable backgrounds in the East and Northeast communities of India…

I am excited to announce 3rd Creek Foundation’s (3CF) newest impact investment partnership with Essmart, a company that delivers life-improving goods to the rural poor. This is the second investment that we have made as part of our impact investing pilot program.

Tuesday, December 1st was a big day for the teams at Hoste Hainse and 3rd Creek Foundation (3CF). We were out the door of our Kathmandu residences by 4:30am and on our way to two remote villages in the north of Sindupalchowk District. 

Board Member Sara Cannon visited Vietnam in September, 2015, with 3CF partner: Thriive, an organization that builds prosperity and pays it forward in vulnerable global communities. Thriive is a unique charity that supports small business development through providing loans to small businesses, who then pay “forward” the full value of the loan to marginalized groups in their communities through donations of business goods, services, or job training. In her recap from the experience, Sara reflects on the adjustment from service mindset, to business mindset, to a mindset that blends the two.  

This fall, 3rd Creek Foundation (3CF) member Sara Cannon and I traveled to Vietnam to visit program sites of 3CF and our partner Thriive.  On September 25, we visited Nam Thang Long (NTL) in the rural outskirts of Hanoi.