Mr. Farouk Jiwa

Mr. Farouk Jiwa is the Co-founder and Director of Honey Care Africa, an innovative and Fair Trade Kenyan company promoting sustainable community-based beekeeping in East Africa. By radically reconfiguring the dynamics between the private sector, the development sector and rural communities and developing a unique model of public-private partnership, Honey Care has successfully demonstrated that the private sector can be an effective driver for sustainable rural development in the South. Today, Honey Care employs 28 full-time staff and 11 seasonal employees. In the four years since its inception, Honey Care has also helped establish over 18,000 hives across rural Kenya that provide a source of supplementary income to 2,750 small-scale subsistence farmers, many of whom live below the poverty line. It is also the largest producer of high quality honey in the region.

Honey Care's partners include the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, Africa Now, European Union, Aga Khan Foundation, DFID, Action Aid, DANIDA, German Agro-Action and UNDP among others. In June 2004, Honey Care replicated its successful model of community-based beekeeping to neighboring Tanzania and established Honey Care Africa Tanzania in partnership with a local company with support from the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation and the Swiss Government.

Farouk has also worked as a consultant for a number of international institutions in community-based development, agri-ecological initiatives and training for entrepreneurship in Macedonia, Serbia-Montenegro, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

Farouk holds a Bsc. (Honors) degree in Environmental Biology from Queen's University, a Master's degree in Environmental Studies from York University, as well as a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business and the Environment from the Schulich School of Business, all in Canada.

In 2002, Farouk received the prestigious Equator Initiative Prize at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in recognition of his contribution to poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation. He also received the Ismaili Youth Award for Excellence for Entrepreneurship from His Highness Prince Amyn Aga Khan, as well as the International Development Marketplace Innovation Award from the World Bank and the George Soros Open Societies' Institute.

In May 2004, he received the World Business Award from the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum and UNDP in recognition of his contribution towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals of the UN. In September 2004, the Schwab Foundation selected Farouk one of the World's Most Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs.

He is currently a Scholar in Residence at McGill University in Montreal with the Sauvé Foundation.