Benita Singh

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2004

Benita Singh

Mercado Global

http://www.mercadoglobal.org

New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Community Improvement & Economic Development

The Bold Idea:

Linking the world’s most rural and economically-disadvantaged cooperatives to the U.S. market through a model that provides both fair wages and investments in community’s long-term development.

Together with partner NGOs, Mercado Global works with women’s cooperatives across the world and helps them to create beautiful handmade products. Through an online store and a Fair Trade Sourcing Program, it then finds the markets for their products. All of Mercado's sales provide women with fair wages and investments in their children’s education.

Based in New Haven, Conneticut and conceived of by two graduating Yale University students, Mercado Global partners with local NGOs to provide technical assistance to community-based cooperatives to produce traditional products that meet US market demands (which are sold at four times the local rate).

Biography:

Benita Singh became the President and Co-Founder of Mercado (“market”) Global in 2004 while a college senior, and is currently a marketing and branding consultant for fair-trade organizations and companies. She was most recently the Vice President of Marketing for the League of Artisans program, an initiative of the American India Foundation. She has received numerous awards, including the YouthActionNet award (2005) from the International Youth Foundation, the “Leadership in Innovative Ideas” from the Social Enterprise Alliance (2005), and was profiled on the cover of Newsweek in 2006 as one of the 15 people “who make America great. Benita is on the board of the International Youth Foundation.