 host Phyllis Blyse, and I'm also the CEO of Peace Through Commerce. Our guest today is calling in from Motsambique. He is Don Larson, the founder of the Sunshine Nut Company, which is also operated in Motsambique. We are discussing how he has learned to co-create peace in Africa with his unique whole systems, consciousness-raising business model called the Sunshine Approach. Aloha Don. Hello, how are you? Okay, that's Motsambique. Do we say Motsambique? Is that the name of the language? Motsambique, yeah. Motsambique. And in the West, it's more Mozambique, so it would be a C here. Mozambique. Okay, well, it's lovely to have you. It's midnight your time, I think. Yeah, it's great to be here regardless of the time. Yes, thank you so much. You're exactly 12 hours on the other side of the world from Honolulu time. That's correct. So interesting to get perspective there, and I'm going to do a little bit of an intro for you because you have an amazing personal story on top of the business story, and I want to give the audience, the viewers, a sense of both. So I'm going to say a few things about that. I'm going to say that you, Don, in 2011, here you are in Pennsylvania, a high-level executive with Hershey Foods. You've given them almost on and off 25 years of your life. You have a young family, and you pull up stakes and move to Mozambique to do an entirely new startup. And then within seven years, you are named under a number of trackers. One is the real leaders magazine. You were named one of the 100 top visionary leaders in the world, two years in a row. And I think we have a slide for that. Yes, Forbes has done a profile on you and your work, and you were invited to the Aspen Institute's meeting to look at the Mandela piece model. So there is a lot going on there. And you're going to have a lot of time to talk to us about it. You've done a short video to give us context where we could taste and feel and see and hear what's going on for you, and I'd like to screen that right now for a few minutes and then we'll sit back and listen to you. It's possible to create a premium food product and transform lives and communities at the same time. We're doing it every day with cashews here in Mozambique. I'm Don Larson, founder and CEO of the Sunshine Nut Company. And I'm Terry Larson, Director of Social Impact. A cashew deteriorates from the moment that it's taken out of its shell. Most cashews, they sit around for three to six months unroasted getting stale. We roast within three weeks because we're right here in Africa where they're grown. I came to Africa in 2004 as the Director of Cocoa Operations for the Hershey Company. I was one of the largest cocoa buyers in the world and was surprised at the extreme poverty of the African farming communities. So many international companies benefit from the resources of Africa while the people of Africa remain in poverty. In 2011, we sold everything and moved to Mozambique to create the Sunshine Nut Company. The Sunshine Approach is a sustainable business model that brings lasting transformation. We buy our cashews right here among the Mozambican farming communities at fair prices. We roast in package in country and we hire young men and women most of whom were abandoned and orphaned in their youth to run our factories. We sell our cashews at competitive prices in major retail stores and then 90% of our profits go back to the poor and orphaned. 30% to uplift cashew farming communities like providing medical training and planting new cashew trees to give families an income. 30% goes to the care of orphans and vulnerable children. There are a lot of broken families in Mozambique. Our Sunshine Houses pair loving widows with orphaned children to create new family units. The remaining 30% is invested into new Sunshine companies to transform communities across the continent. We do the most amazing cashews but it's much beyond that. It's like what we can do for our workers and what our workers that were also orphans most of them and what they can do to effect other kids. And so you've mobilized all of that and maybe if I could we'll get through the whole story but I want to ask these screaming questions like are you happy? When did you find out you were happy? Were you unhappy before? Are you just more happy now? And as we are watching and listening think about our lives and our careers you know what motivated you to make such a change and how would we know that call? So there's like too many questions there but where would you like to start? Well that's a very good start to this you know because I was very successful you know and I got to a point that I was successful at an early age you know my early 40s as CEO not of Hershey but I actually left Hershey and built the largest cocoa processing factory in the world to sell to Hershey for a couple years and at the end of all this when we sold the factory to the largest chocolate maker in the world I really like was very disillusioned was where I was at I had a lot of great job offers but it's like I was unfulfilled I was not satisfied with life I had every toy I mean I had a hot air balloon I had my Porsche I had you know just about anything anyone ever wanted considered successful including a family a nice house of the pool just every toy and that is not what makes you happy you know and most people strive their whole lives wanting to get that thinking that it will make them happy and what it really is I think the the midlife crisis comes in here you know and it's really I don't think it's necessarily midlife crisis of substance I think it's more ingrained in are you doing what you were created to do and and so what what I did is I went on a quest to to find that out and one of the things that it resulted in is assessing do I want to have success in life who do I want to have significance do I want to lead a life of a legacy okay and I had a good role model the role model was Milton Hershey you know who was the founder of Milton Hershey's the company Hershey chocolate but he at the end of his career he spent all of his time at an orphanage that he and his wife started up and throughout his career he took care of the farming communities he took care of his employees and then he took care of orphans and so really what I did is I decided I want to leave a legacy I want to do something to help the world to promote peace and to and to to leave things better than when I started and so we moved to Mozambique not knowing anyone to implement using a food company the same way that Hershey has done by providing for a hundred probably hundreds of thousands of orphans one of which was my father-in-law that was an orphan in the 1950s but Milton Hershey gave his fortune and his company a hundred years ago to uh an orphanage and that orphanage now is the controlling interest of an eight billion dollar chocolate company so what we're doing is we've taken that concept completely separate from Hershey and we're using cashews to take care of the farming communities of Mozambique the orphan population of Mozambique and of my employees wow I didn't know that about you about Hershey so your wife's father was an orphan that was supported by the Hershey's orphanage supported by owns the controlling interest in Hershey yeah of the chocolate company yeah and uh that's the reason I joined Hershey and it's very honest very ethical company I rose through the ranks there very quickly and it was largely because we were working for a purpose and I think um you know companies and and business has gotten away from that you know in the 70s a guy named Milton Freeman he's the one that said the sole purpose of a company is to put money in the share in the stockholders pocket and after that a lot of these things went away all the philanthropic aspects of companies and taking care of the the stakeholders and all the the value chain it went away and so as a private company we're wanting to bring that back and to do it in my you know in my own way and in a way that promotes peace and promotes prosperity and promotes dignity and opportunity and the principal tenant of our model is we want to transform lives not just uh not just uh you know create employment necessarily but transform people's lives for the better so you know let's do let's take some time now and look at those principles and walk through what you call as a business model the sunshine approach and then what we're going to do is just overlay some of those principles on the matrix of peace whole systems model of society that peace through commerce it advances in the world working on difficult social emotional economic and sustainable questions and we're going to show our viewers how your approach like a Christmas tree turns the lights on for every sector of society and every intersection of justice prosperity and sustainability and at least where you are operating in Africa because Africa is still has a lot of developing and underdeveloped areas but in the pockets where sunshine approach is breathing living acting you are fostering long-term peace from this whole systems model assessment and view and map of your work in the world so let's talk about some of those yeah some of those principles that we've got a slide on that maybe the guiding principle yeah so the guiding principles you know I like to say our cashews are roasted hot with hope opportunity and transformation and that the business model is um value driven business where dignity opportunity excuse me dignity and love community come together with excellence and then it wouldn't be there if everyone didn't work in unity you know as part of your model you talk about the values unite and that beliefs divide you know and it's the values that it transcends beliefs and religions and everything you know when you have these these principles that we have they are pretty much across different belief excuse me different belief value systems and so we can become very successful in in in bringing unity and bringing cooperation and bringing peace by having everyone involved in the value chain of cash is involved in in a dignified and uh in loving way so what I like about that slide and what you're talking about this is hard stuff where values unite but how you operationalize those values what your belief in whether god is Allah or a christian version of god there is no god you know or they might believe there's a greater power but not anthropomorphic or a deity so we might all believe there's a greater power but we have very different beliefs about what that power is you know defining it and so when you talk about hope and opportunity transformation dignity love community excellence in unity when someone walks in the door they can be all about those values that's correct and and it really transcends religions it really it's it's those are common values that unite people and and that bring peace so and everyone what I find is everyone wants to be part of doing something good and so those who don't are usually the ones that are creating the problems and we do have a slide on on challenges there I mean we are addressing fundamental challenges and we'll get to that in the future look at the net yeah let's look at the next slide so this is putting feet on the ground so this is actualizing beliefs about those values so what are we seeing here about this and so just the way we talk about it at peace through commerce engagement is the realization of your beliefs it's values are one thing but then how do we act them out and so tell us a little bit about these engagement um points of contact you know you know Mozambique the government on one hand says that 80 percent of the population okay is involved in agriculture and then the statistics of the government say that 99.9 percent of all agriculture activities are smallholder farmers or subsistence farmers so really what you have is people that are growing food to survive and there's no employment at all and there's been a a conflict up in the north for going on six seven seven years now where there's been an Islamic insurgency in that region and we were called up um a couple years ago to bring our model and that model is one where we go from the very farming communities all the way to the fork we sell all the way to the consumer from from our subsistence farming communities there are 1.4 million subsistence farmer as you farmers in Mozambique and what we did is we went up to the displaced camps and there's quite a lot of them right now we're seeing one here now some of the these camps are where the tents are so people live there and you say correct they put this place from their home okay so the initially we went up there and we had um meetings with the leaders of within those displaced camps and we realized that we didn't want to move into an area and force people to go back home for employment where it might be an unsafe condition so what we did is then we transitioned and went to where the people had returned where there was military presence there it was a much more safe environment people had returned home there was nothing for them to do they were devastated by the conflicts and they just needed a solution that would bring them into you know opportunity and dignity and and and well-being and prosperity and so that's what we did we we moved into an area the next slide is is where we go into the the various projects that we do so just a minute so you've got this agricultural program going on where you're actually planting cashew seeds you're harvesting and just so that folks know Whole Foods carries uh your cashews we saw a picture of it in the video and I think in Honolulu I've seen them on the shelves uh they're in text so you know we're looking at these agricultural farming communities and and it's it's just amazing to me that they're sitting on the shelves at local Whole Foods markets and other and other major high-end retail areas so that whole operation is where most businesses stop I mean that's a lot and you've got high quality products that get to the consumer while they're still fresh in excellent condition and I could go on and on and on about that but now I'm seeing on this slide homes villages this is where you get into the whole ecosystem of society and you make this a focus that's correct yeah I think the key is we first needed to develop a brand in a market and that's what's absent from most projects that are happening in Sub-Saharan Africa and really in developing nations people start these projects but there's no one to sell to and so we spent a lot of time and what I give Whole Foods all the credit in the world the very first thing that happened before I had factory equipment or anything is I had one of the owners of Whole Foods back in 2012 I think come and visit me and interview me and like what's this crazy guy who had everything in America doing in Mozambique and it developed a really good relationship with Whole Foods and they were my first retailer so in 2014 later of 2014 when I sent product it went into the Whole Foods market and it has remained there for the last 10 years now we've developed you know markets in different places in the world and in a lot of other retailers in the US but it's Whole Foods that are the real deal and have been with me since the start and let me let me add that the co-founder of Whole Foods market John Mackie is the co-founder of Peace Through Commerce there we go and my the our corporate meetings were held downtown in Austin at their headquarters where John would come in the room and then the two doors down was Whole Planet Foundation and I'm just Phil Sansone and his team I'm wondering was it Whole Planet Foundation that came and took a look or was it the retail side or both no it was the retail stores but now I've been in working with Whole Planet Foundation I was just in to see them when I was back in the US a couple few weeks ago and so we're looking to find a way to cooperate together and where they can do the micro financing with Whole Planet Foundation you know but but we take care you know that slide that you showed there's the three areas there's the orphan care there's the employee care and then there's the village care you know so those are the things that that we're doing well then and we're we're we've got about five minutes left in the show and I want to if we could show the next slide and then when people come back to this show they can freeze the screen and look at your graphic or just just sort of a business this is the business plan right in very user friendly terms that and that integrates your orphanage on steroids approach to what you're also feeling committed to do you know that Milton Hershey would have been so proud of you because you're already you're doing the orphanages and the employment and the projects I mean you're you're it's on steroids the addition and is this profitable to the base that's always a question can can business owners afford to work on the whole system is that doing well by doing good is there a quality well Milton Hershey proved that out that doing good really worked out well for him and I think that's the case with every company now we've gone further I mean just having the business is good enough now we've elected to give the majority of our profits or our shareholder distribution you know which is what goes to our family back into the foundation to do our philanthropic work and so stop right there so when people slow this down that very on the on the left hand side the call on when we had the bullet points you call out donating 90% of distributed profits to and so when you want to come back and look at this because we won't have enough time to really focus on you know it isn't the question isn't how do you make money when you're giving it away it's almost how do you not make money when you're giving it away in a reciprocal society uh in in a product that's what nature does it's reciprocal what it gives it needs back and you know robin uh kimmerer has written the book braiding sweetgrass where she talks about these reciprocal ecosystems so really you're making the case for how can you not do better when you return reciprocate into the environment and into your people what you're what you received so it really gets down to the point of where do I want to spend my resources and I tried different possessions and it did not make me happy I was not satisfied contrary to what most people will make you believe where it really comes down to is when you take your resources and you help others and that is what's brought true joy and true the abundant life uh you know for us and it's been to see all the orphanage you know we have eight orphan homes right now surrounding our factory in the in the local villages we have over 30 orphans I'd like to get to the point where we have hundreds of homes and thousands of orphans in our care like Milton Hershey has done with hundreds of thousands probably over the the last century in the little time we have left let's look at slide 14 Michael if you could and where this is you are addressing fundamental issues uh using the sunshine approach and the slide does a good job of of showing it you know that so this people can they're just going to have to hold off and what I want to show is the slide of slide 11 and show from a matrix of peace standpoint how the Mozart how your sunshine approach uh in Mozart B covers the public private and civil society sectors using those values and beliefs and actions and then the slide two slides above that show how this approach looks in Africa uh slide 11 matrix of peace whole systems models side by side approach of what you're doing versus many other businesses in Africa and you know developing Africa we have the three sectors if they're lucky but they're not intersecting using your approach you're co-creating prosperity justice and sustainability and how you're addressing the needs the best practices in the public sector on governance in the private sector on business leadership and then in the civil society sector which is the homes the schools the culture so you're you're supporting all three and that's how you light up the whole matrix with interdependency and long-term peace and with that thank you Don Mahalo I'm going to have to leave it there I want to let everyone know that you have been watching The Matrix of Peace show at Think Tech Hawaii I'm your host Phyllis Bleece and CEO of Peace Through Commerce we've been discussing the sunshine business approach to doing business in Africa in a way that furthers justice prosperity sustainability and long-term peace with our guest Don Larson Mahalo Don for joining us Mahalo to our viewers for tuning in Aloha