The pro-poor product market is flush with powerful, low-cost, human-centered innovations that can have a transformative effect on the lives and livelihoods of the poor. Products like clean-burning cook stoves, solar lamps, and safe water filters have proven health and economic benefits for poor consumers. But despite the powerful promise of these products, the vast majority remain market failures for their inability to reach a critical mass of poor consumers. Living Goods’ agent network provides an expansive distribution channel to dramatically scale delivery of these important technologies to those who need them most.

Featured Product: Clean-Burning Cook Stoves

Nearly three billion people in the developing world cook their meals on primitive indoor stoves fueled by crop waste, wood, coal and dung. Smoke from these stoves kills 1.9 million people every year – mostly women and children. Traditional stoves also contribute to global warming as a result of the millions of tons of soot they spew into the atmosphere and the deforestation caused by cutting down trees to fuel them.  Clean-burning cook stoves use about half as much fuel and emit a fraction of the smoke of traditional stoves. Clean cook stoves are truly a triple bottom line product – they improve people’s health, save families money on fuel costs, and help protect the environment. Given the clear cost savings of clean cook stoves – the money customers save in fuel can pay off the cost of the stove in just a few months – clean cook stoves are a bit hit among our customers and a strong source of income for our agents.

Pro-poor Innovations Product List:

-Clean-burning cook stoves

-Solar lamps

-Solar mobile phone chargers

-Rechargeable radio batteries

-Water filters

-Reading Glasses