The ability of a business to flourish is not solely limited by resources. Do not discount the impact of mindsets.
Mission & Core Beliefs
Root-to-Fruit is a collaboration of senior executives aiming to transform lives by enabling businesses and emerging youth leaders to flourish.
We equip leaders to transform mindsets and deepen trust to grow profits for shared prosperity. Root-to-Fruit has four core beliefs:
Successful businesses are best equipped to reduce poverty through job creation and economic stimulus.
Redemptive businesses serve staff through meaningful and creative work and deliver products and services that promote the common good.
Mindsets based on flawed beliefs and broken relationships are the principal cause of poor performance and limited impact of businesses.
A Biblical mindset restores trust and relationships to build redemptive businesses that glorify God.
Origin Story
Root-to-Fruit was born out of a failed attempt at building a sustainable Agribusiness in Tanzania. The Great African Food Company (GAFCo) intended to uplift children out of poverty by improving the livelihoods of commercial, mid-scale and smallholder subsistence farmers. GAFCo grew to over 40,000 acres under production serving local and export value chains through nearly 10,000 contracted farmers in twelve geographically distributed commercial hubs. VisionFund (a subsidiary of World Vision) was a key partner offering farmer input financing and multi-peril crop insurance. GAFCo’s investors included US business owners and executives who had been highly successful in other contexts, but were shocked to experience first-hand the calamitous impact of mindsets on business performance. In the end, the consequences were unendurable.
It seemed evident that intergenerational poverty, injustice, and corruption had resulted in a disempowered staff mindset resulting in failure to engage in standard business norms and conduct. GAFCo also witnessed widespread farmer side selling and disregard of farming protocols and contracts. The actions and decisions of farmers and staff centered on a scarcity mindset, seeking short term gains verses longterm investment in personal and business growth.
Further, the cross cultural mindsets of the leadership team were vastly different. GAFCo’s senior leaders came from the USA and Tanzania, or were long term residents of Tanzania from the USA, Kenya, Netherlands, Scotland, India, and South Africa. It was nearly impossible to understand each other’s seen and unseen motives, actions and behaviors resulting in poor planning, communication and execution.
At the same time that GAFCo was experiencing the consequences of mindsets, World Vision was implementing a new transformational approach to fighting poverty called Empowered Worldview. Empowered Worldview is based on the idea that mindset is what keeps people trapped in poverty. When mindsets are transformed to a biblical worldview, individuals and communities are equipped to escape from dependency and begin to build a prosperous future. World Vision has experienced tremendous success with Empowered Worldview in facilitating economic progress in the midst of poverty as evidenced in Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Rwanda, Kenya, Senegal, Honduras, and other countries. Empowered Worldview training is implemented globally by World Vision, transforming mindsets of staff, beneficiaries and communities.
Most of the GAFCo shareholders belong to World Vision’s National Leadership Council, and are business leaders who walk along side of World Vision globally to fight extreme poverty and injustice to bring life in its fullest to vulnerable children. The collapse of GAFCo was a multi-million dollar lesson giving rise to the question, “Do we continue to heed God’s call and convert our lessons learned into a new mission to improve the performance of organizations through mindset transformation?”
By God’s grace Root-to-Fruit started its journey out of the seed of GAFCo.