Patrick Struebi
Patrick is a serial social entrepreneur, business professor, thought leader, humanitarian, and founder and Executive Chairman of the Fairtrasa Group, a pioneering social enterprise that lifts marginalized small-scale farmers out of poverty. Fairtrasa is one of the largest organic and fairtrade exporters from Latin America with a vertically integrated business structure.
For his work with Fairtrasa, Patrick has been selected as an Ashoka Fellow, an Endeavor high-impact Entrepreneur, a Yale World Fellow, and a Gabelli Fellow. Moreover, he has been named four times Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the (1) Schwab Foundation, (2) the abc* Foundation, (3) Univision, and (4) UBS Visionaris.
Furthermore, Patrick teaches social innovation and systems change at Fordham University in New York. In 2014, the World Economic Forum named Patrick a New Champion, and he is also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. He writes a column at HuffPost and gives talks around the world on social innovation and related issues.
- Visit their website
- Fairtrasa
- Contact via
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- Model
- For-profit Social Enterprise
- Sectors
- Agriculture, Food and Beverage; Information Technology; Sustainable Development
- Headquarters
- Switzerland
- Areas of Impact
- Europe, Latin America, South Asia, Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Mexico, India, Nepal, Netherlands, Peru
Fairtrasa
Fairtrasa is a social enterprise that lifts small-scale farmers out of poverty by selling healthy, organic and fair trade produce to international markets at fair prices.
Fairtrasa's innovation is its pioneering three-tier farmer development model where marginalized, evolving and developed farmers all receive tailored training. They learn organic farming techniques, how to increase yields, and how to improve fruit quality to meet international standards. Fairtrasa provides access to capital investments to buy fertilizer and farm equipment and offers logistical support from harvest to packing and shipping. In addition, Fairtrasa helps farmers obtain export certifications and sell their goods through Fairtrasa's global sales network.
Fairtrasa has scaled its development model across Latin America to reach over 40,000 farmers and their families. Fairtrasa is today implementing a suite of technologies (agtech/fintech) to systemically grow its unique development model to reach 1 million farmers in the next 5 years.
awardees
Our awardees
Margarita Barney
Bernard Njonga
