Making Social Entrepreneurship Matter

Daniel Lubetzky's "not-only-for-profit" business has created profitable joint ventures with Palestinians and Israelis. His model deserves attention

By Stacy Perman

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Tapenades and spreads under the labels Moshe & Ali's and Meditalia are sold in stores across the U.S., including Whole Foods. STACY PERMAN

Bali Spice is a line of Asian sauces manufactured by women's cooperatives made up of Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. STACY PERMAN

Kind Fruit & Nut Bars is a fast-growing for-profit venture that channels 5% of its profits into the PeaceWorks Foundation. STACY PERMAN

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PeaceWorks founder David Lubetzky. STACY PERMAN

I recently came across an article in The Jerusalem Post about social entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky. The Mexican-born son of a Holocaust survivor, Lubetzky founded PeaceWorks, a successful global business that promotes peace through commercial ventures among Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Turks, Indonesians, and Sri Lankans. The far-flung success of PeaceWorks helped Lubetzky to found OneVoice, a global movement (with some 640,000 participants at last count) that seeks a comprehensive two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians via a negotiated peace process.

Social entrepreneurship (BusinessWeek, 12/14/07) has become a hot topic in recent years, attracting people filled with the loftiest of intentions who want to do good by doing good. But it's the tricky feat of running a sustainable operation that is the more elusive goal. So when I learned that Lubetzky had created a viable business model (in operation since 1994) that brings Arabs and Israelis together while plowing profits into peacemaking efforts, I rang up PeaceWorks' New York office and was invited down for a visit.

Lubetzky is an energetic and pragmatic entrepreneur. The walls of PeaceWorks' open office space are filled with the sayings of notable thinkers ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to Henry David Thoreau. Lubetzky pioneered his "not-only-for-profit" business theory while on a fellowship in Israel to write about legislative means to foster joint ventures between Arabs and Israelis. It was a topic Lubetzky, who holds a law degree from Stanford, was already passionate about. In college, his senior thesis was a 268-page treatise on economic cooperation as a means for fostering peaceful relations.

Coexistence Test Case

While in Israel, Lubetzky discovered a tasty sundried tomato spread but found out the company behind it was going out of business. "The owner was getting their glass jars from Portugal and their tomatoes from Italy," he told me. Fairly quickly he realized he had found a test case for his fledgling theory: what if the company sourced the jars in Egypt, while getting their raw products from Turkey and Palestine? Today, tapenades and spreads under the labels Moshe & Ali's and Meditalia (both joint ventures established by PeaceWorks between Israelis and Palestinians) are sold in stores across the U.S., including Whole Foods (WFMI). More recently, PeaceWorks introduced Bali Spice, a line of Asian sauces manufactured by women's cooperatives made up of Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

"We are using market forces to achieve the goal of peace and coexistence," says Lubetzky. Having foes unite in business, he explains, works on three levels: First, it helps break down stereotypes; second, it creates an incentive to continue to work together; third, in doing so, it helps puts an end to regional violence and fundamentalism that feeds off despair.

Same End Goal

Getting entrenched enemies to set aside their animosities and misunderstandings and set up shop together has not always been an easy sell, he acknowledges. But over the past 15 years, Lubetzky's unconventional vision has brought together a diverse group of individuals who find they are all interested in the same end goal.

About five years ago, a mutual friend introduced Lubetzky to Samer Hamadeh, a Palestinian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Vault.com, a comprehensive job and career site. Initially, Hamadeh resisted getting involved. "I'm not a political person," he told me. "I grew up in Fresno, Calif., I went to Stanford, my parents left Palestine when they were kids and never looked back.