Tomato spread to defuse Arab - Israeli tensions

CAG Research Fellow Tan Yeling is big on social entrepreneurship and is doing her "walk-the-talk" by co-teaching a leadership course to a group of students at Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College in Singapore.

Yeling recently came across an inspiring article on Social Enpreneurship which profiles a "not-only-for-profit" business that has createed profitable joint ventures by putting together Palestinian and Israeli businesses. The man behind this is Daniel Lubetzky - the Mexican born son of a Holocaust survivor who founded PeaceWorks, a successful global business that promotes peace through commerical ventures among Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Tukrs, Indonesians and Sri Lankans.

While in Israel, Lubezky came across a struggling local business that produces delicious sundried tomato spread. Lubetzsky later founded out that the company was importing expensive glass jars from Portugal and tomatoes from Italy. So he suggested the company owner to source the jars from Egypt and tomatoes from Turkey and Palestine. This led to a establishment of joint ventures between Israelis and Palestinians, set up by Lubetzsky's PeaceWorks. Today, tapenades and spreads under the labels Moshe & Ali's and Meditalia are sold in stores across the US. Read "Making Social Entrepreneurship Matter", published in BusinessWeek, 6 August 2008. [Sung]