Walter Coddington
Options for Life Designing Products for Development
Focusing on the economic empowerment of no-to-low income women in developing countries, Walter Coddington created the Options for Life / Ecolign green product line with two objectives: make non-toxic cleaning products affordable to people making $2 or less per day line and create thousands of local manufacturing and distribution job opportunities.
ChildFund Senegal introduced Options for Life to hundreds of young adults in need of income-generating opportunities.
Two people were critical to the launch of Options Senegal: Senegalese English teacher Bineta Mbodj and English, French and Wolof- speaking Jaryd Kase. Love you guys!
In Thies, the staff of the ChildFund-supported Kajoor-Jankeen Federation was enormously helpful in transporting, feeding and providing basic "life skills" training to our first round of women and young adult trainees.
In the first two months of the Options Senegal pilot business program, 320 women and young adults were trained in the art of blending, bottling and selling non-toxic Options for Life Ecolign cleaning products.
OFL conducted consumer surveys and market tests in order to adapt US Options for Life Ecolign cleaning products to the Senegalese market.
The best selling product so far is the Ecolign Floor Cleaner Concentrate. In extremely dry and dusty Senegal, householders often clean their tile or cement floors three or more times per day.
Ecolign Vehicle Windshield Cleaner is targeted to the large number of taxi, van and bus drivers.
You may be thinking to yourself, "there can't be a great a need for cleaning products in the rural regions of Senegal" and you're right! Ecolign Entrepreneurs in the rural regions bottle and sell beverages like all natural, locally sourced Options for Life Ne'.
Monsieur Sergine Saliou Valentin Faye runs Senegal Ecolign Services, the master distributor [to Ecolign Entrepreneurs] of the raw ingredients used to make Ecolign cleaning products.
Reusing local 1.5 litre and 10 litre water bottles keeps the cost of Ecolign products very low and greatly reduces the amount of plastic in the country's environment.
... door to door.
... in the marketplace.