About Us
With Purpose, Products, And People
About Us
With Purpose, Products, And People
There is an African word, Ubuntu, which means: ” We are someone because of the relationships we have in our lives.” Business Connect is a business that has risen out of the experiences of living in several African countries, raising family there, having friends across many cultures and languages. We are connected. More importantly we seek the benefit of others.
Giving Hope
Giving Hope
Our Values
Our purpose is to give hope to the impoverished by creating employment in the marketing of life enhancing products—within a business model that is sustainable and environmentally balanced. Our values define who we are: Employment, Faith, Profit and Transparency. Our team members come from various business backgrounds and we embrace business with enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit. Our lives reflect decades of service, both locally and internationally. We seek a greater network: more encompassing, with more resources and solutions. We do this to end the suffering caused by the clean water crisis.
Lou Haveman
Co-Founder of Business Connect
Established
Established
Our History
Founded in 2010, Business Connect is a social enterprise (L3C) committed to providing citizens living in developing countries with affordable and easy access to essential resources, such as water and light, to strengthen education, health and economic growth opportunities within the communities it serves.
Working with more than 65 countries across Africa, Asia and Central and South America, Business Connect is an organisation mobilizing people to achieve their goals through business opportunities and supplying the world with life-enhancing green technologies.
Established
Established
Our History
Founded in 2010, Business Connect is a social enterprise (L3C) committed to providing citizens living in developing countries with affordable and easy access to essential resources, such as water and sanitation, to strengthen education, health and economic growth opportunities within the communities it serves.
Working with more than 80 countries across Africa, Asia and Central and South America, Business Connect is an organization mobilizing people to achieve their goals through business opportunities and supplying the world with life-enhancing green technologies.
What Drives Us
What Drives Us
Our Purpose
There is a saying: “People don’t know what they don’t know.” More than 1 billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. Another 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day. Poverty in the global South, however, goes far beyond income poverty. It means having to walk more than one mile everyday simply to collect water and firewood; it means suffering diseases that were eradicated from which countries decades ago. Every year 11 million children die—most under the age of 5 and more than 6 million from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia. Our work has risen out of the experiences of living in several African countries, raising family there, having friends across many cultures and languages. We embrace a multi-dimensional bottom line approach committed to employment, profit sharing, transparency and faith.
Global
Our International Experience
The founders of Business Connect, Lou and Jan Haveman, have lived and worked in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Kenya and South Africa. They visited well over a dozen African countries. Their children were born in Africa. They now call Michigan their home.
Business Connect was formed to create hope through business. With over 30 years of community development experience in training and empowering people in the developing world, we want to see people develop greater capacity to meet their own needs in sustainable ways.
Helping Local Entrepreneurs
We continuously seek to move from being good-hearted, well-intentioned people doing wonderful things to trying to find a way to turn things over to a self-sustaining model from day one. Our goal is to bring life-enhancing products to the ‘last mile’ – creating local entrepreneurs who, in turn, create healthier communities. We partner with many social enterprises, schools, missions and NGOs to identify and then build the capacity of these entrepreneurs.
EXPLORE PRODUCTS
Access To Clean Water
The majority of people living in poverty in the global South live in isolated rural areas and spend hours every day walking to collect water or firewood for their family. Not only do these tasks keep kids out of school or take up time that parents could be using to earn money, but the water often carries diseases that can make everyone sick. Access to clean water and clean light means education, income and health – especially for women and kids.
EXPLORE PRODUCTS
Sustainable Communities
Business Connect is seeking new ways to engage, empower and mobilize people living in the global South to create healthier and sustainable communities. Families living at the last mile do not realise that cooking with kerosene is bad for their health nor do they realise that drinking dirty water may cause them harm. By educating the younger generation – mostly orphans and disadvantaged youth – we want to also educate caregivers about the benefits of utilising clean resources that will help reduce mortality rates experienced in impoverished communities.
EXPLORE PRODUCTS
Life-Enhancing
Life-Enhancing
Our Products
Business Connect features a wide assortment of essential and environmentally safe, life-enhancing products to benefit families living in crisis in developing countries.
Our Team
Our Skilled Leaders
Business Connect is composed of a international team determined to maximize the availability of products, providing communities in the developing world or in crisis with greater access to essential and life enhancing resources.
Lou Haveman
FOUNDER
Lou has lived and worked in four different African countries over two decades. In 2010, he and his wife, Jan, established Business Connect, a life-enhancing product company to benefit families in crisis in the global south. Since then, Lou has brought successful businessmen and emerging entrepreneurs together in partnership.
