Mary Fanaro of OmniPeace Believes Using Her Business to End Poverty in Africa Is Highly Profitable

Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Sheryl Crow recently teamed up with OmniPeace founder Mary Fanaro for the launch of “Stamp Out Violence Against Women and Girls of the Congo” t-shirt campaign.

Mary Fanaro, former event producer turned humanitarian entrepreneur, founded OmniPeace, a Los Angeles based fashion brand that donates 25% of all its profits to efforts committed to promoting peace, education, human rights and ending extreme poverty in Africa by 2025.

Jennifer Aniston, Sheryl Crow, Mary Fanaro & Courtney Cox team up for “Stemp Out Violence Against Women and Girls of the Congo” T-shirt Campaign

In principle, Fanaro’s concept is an emerging and potentially very important for of capitalism — one that integrates “giving back” as a core value from day one. OmniPeace is not a not-for-profit foundation. Its business premise is that consumers — especially Smart Sensuality women — prefer to spend their disposable income on great-looking products that do good in the world.

Fanaro conceived the idea on July 4, 2005, while watching Live Eight, a string of benefit concerts created to highlight the urgent need to address global poverty and relieve African debt. Inspired, Fanaro decided to create OmniPeace to address vital humanitarian needs through the distribution and sale of branded consumer products.

OmniPeace t-dressThe dedicated and determined Fanaro consulted with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and his organization, Millennium Promise, a non-profit seeking to end extreme poverty by 2025, birthing OmniPeace as a result. OmniPeace teams up with Dr. Sachs, using his expertise to spend/invest funds raised.

Life never goes as expected. Mary Fanaro discovered that she had ovarian cancer and has been fighting malignancy on multiple fronts in her own body and in Africa. Today, Mary Fanaro’s ovarian cancer is in remission.

OmniPeace was so successful in its first year that it raised over $300,000 for Millennium Promise and buildOn. Recently OmniPeace, in conjunction with LA celebrity boutique Kitson, joined forces with buildOn to build the first school in forty years in Longhor, Senegal, which opened in January 2009.

The current OmniPeace strategy involves shining the foundation’s limelight on a single global issue each year. The 2009 focus is violence against women living in the Congo.

Anne of Carversville is enthusiastic about this new form of capitalism, one that harnesses the power of entrepreneurial American knowhow and moxy with a lot of heart and understanding that we are all joined globally at the hip, in tomorrow’s survival.

Hang Tag for OmniPeace Congo T-Shirt LineWe now hear the phrase “too big to fail” — speaking of why we bailed out the banks in America. The very term “too big to fail” is borderline anti-American. It’s the American way to let bad things fail, so that new ideas and businesses can takes their place. Failure is part of American business life.

Believers in this new capitalism, argue that we cannot write off entire continents and their peoples, just as we cannot write off the 28% of rural Americans living in poverty.

Mary Fanaro and other “new capitalists” are Smart Sensuality women (and men) willing to take less money for themselves, preferring to get a different kind of return on their investment. The joy and satisfaction of changing lives is far more important than another pair of stilletos.

This is Warren Buffett and Bill Gates ’ business thinking’, and you will be hearing much more of it in the coming years. Anne

Reading about Women in the Congo:

The Invisible War NYTimes

Rape Victims’ Words Help Jolt Congo into Change NYTimes

Women Left for Dead — and the Man’s Who’s Saving Them Glamour