Decidedly Different: Revolutionizing Business as a Tool for Social Good

Our model at The Women’s Bakery is unique. As a social enterprise, we bridge the gap between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. We aim to revolutionize business as a tool for social good, and this is how:

We believe in business as a medium - a solution-providing agency that consciously works for people, not exploitatively against them. Building bakeries has become our means to creating access to opportunities, namely financial independence and social empowerment for women as well as quality, affordable breads for communities.

In our model, bread is our medium and business is our tool to achieve high social impact.

We know that this tool – the business component – is working because our bakeries are getting closer to breakeven. Operating profitable bakeries is important to us because a bakery’s profit is our engine – it's what will allow us to build more bakeries. Because when a bakery can sustain itself, we can take the capital injections that would have gone into that bakery and build a new bakery.

Our goal is to refine a replicable bakery model in which the revenue from bread sales covers the operating costs of that bakery, including the social empowerment programming. This model, therefore, is socially and economically sustainable. 

Our programming is bottom-up, meaning that we listen before we act; all TWB programming is shaped by Rwandese women bakers and managers. We believe there is global relevance to our model; it is one that is built for women, by women, and invites everyone  to build a better future for all. 

Thank you for joining us in our global, powerful, and revolutionary work.