Financial Times News/Profile: Present & Correct
FT - 6 Dec 08 (5 Dec online - Full article here)
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Extracts from article:
As we approach the festive season, there is the inevitable challenge of finding suitable gifts.

Many of the entrepreneurs I meet have their own interesting Christmas gift ideas.

Shaylesh Patel of Healthy Planet had the traditional career route of first working for a big accountancy firm, and then as financial director of an online travel company.

When he became a father, he began to worry about a report that said, for the first time in recent history, that the life expectancy of his children was less than his own. Seeing the connection between the way we lead our lives and its effect on our health and the planet, he formed Healthy Planet with a friend, a geographer.

Healthy Planet has a simple premise. Through the website, you adopt some land and everything on it, in one of the 77,000 national parks around the world. Some 90 per cent of the money you provide goes straight to that land and you can choose which local sustainability project you wish to support.

For example, if you are concerned about the Amazonian rainforest, you can cover the costs of a park ranger who will help prevent illegal logging in your chosen area.

Patel has teamed up with Google Earth, so you can monitor your land directly.

Healthy Planet is already a great success. Individuals adopt land as gifts or for themselves, while schools use it for fundraising as well as geography, information and communication technology and citizenship projects. Large organisations use their corporate social responsibility budgets to help save the planet in a specific and efficient way.

The most interesting aspect of Healthy Planet is that, while it is a registered charity, it is also a bona fide social enterprise. This means it is run like a proper business.

Entrepreneurs are always thinking of ways to create wealth, and the big difference between this recession and the last one is that, this time, most of the young people who come to me for help are social entrepreneurs.

Some such as Patel are trying to save the planet or help people in the developing world. Others are building traditional commercial ventures to make money, but also have one eye on helping those less fortunate themselves.

Healthy Planet and other similar organisations demonstrate an appropriate and realistic way forward out of the recession.