Khaya Cookie Company 
Tagline: Cookies with a cause
Founder: Alicia Danielle Polak
Founded: 2004
Mission: Hires unemployed women and men and turns them into highly skilled bakers

In 2003, Alicia Danielle Polak was working for The Freeplay Foundation, a nonprofit corporation that makes and distributes windup radios in underdeveloped African countries. A former investment banker who specialized in IPOs, she had traveled to emerging and developing countries and been struck by the poverty she saw. She decided to parlay her experience into something where she could help others. "I was pretty happy," she says. "I was doing what I wanted to do, traipsing all across Africa." Still, something was missing. "In my head, when we would walk away from these distributions, I didn't feel awesome," she recalls. "I never felt I was doing enough."

Flying over Khayelitsha one day, Polak looked down at the poverty-stricken black township where so many people were unemployed and wondered, "Why can't I do something to create jobs?"

Soon thereafter, missing the taste of American ice cream, Polak found herself on Ben & Jerry's website, checking out some of her favorite flavors. At loose ends, she began reading a copy of the company's annual report. "They have this line where they say one of their aims is to create wealth and redistribute wealth." That's when she knew what she would do. Ice cream wouldn't work because of the cold chain, she realized--so she decided to start a cookie company.

She let her contract with the aid agency expire and worked out a plan. She needed a cookie that wasn't available in South Africa, so she opted for chocolate chip. And because she wanted to bring the work to the women, she decided to find a facility in Khayelitsha.

It took dozens of phone calls to find an appropriate facility in the community of Mfuleni. Then she appealed to the community leader. "Here's my idea," she said. "I would like to start a cookie company. I can hire at least one worker." The answer was no.

So Polak made an offer the community couldn't refuse. "The lights were off; electricity there is pay-as-you-go," she says. So she told the community leader, "You let me turn the lights on. I hire one woman and, if it doesn't work--at least you get the lights turned on." Finding the Right Market

She named the company Khayelitsha Cookie Co. after the township and created colorful packaging with the help of a local artist--but the public wasn't buying. Named after a poverty-stricken township, the cookies lacked cachet. Polak reassessed her market. "I'm a tourist. If I love this stuff and created this packaging--like a tourist--who else is going to love it? Tourists. If the tourists love it, the hotels will buy it." And suddenly she had a target market.

Within five months, Polak says, she had a core staff of five, plus a pastry chef--a staff that doubled during the holidays or for special projects. Two and a half years later, confident her project was a success, Polak knew she could make it bigger. She wanted to export the cookies to the United States.

She sold the existing company to a group of men and women who agreed to keep 25.1 percent of the shares in trust for the women working there. The company continues to do well by selling to major hotels and large retailers. Meanwhile, Polak enlisted the aid of the Societal Wealth Program, which assists companies that help people sustain themselves. She named her new company Khaya, which means home. And she geared up for export to the U.S.

That required a different product. "When we decided to export, I needed to figure out what would be unique and different here (in the U.S)," Polak says. The result was cookies featuring indigenous African ingredients such as rooibos extract and grapeseed powder, blended with locally grown dates and organic apricots, rolled oats and seeds.

She found a production facility, which now employs 510 people, near the township of Mbkwemi in the Drankenstein region of South Africa. "The only existing business near there was British American Tobacco, and they let everyone go." So people needed jobs.

Next she found a distribution center in Philadelphia, which also has a high unemployment rate. "Khaya isn't just about creating jobs in South Africa. I'm about finding local places where we can pick and pack," Polak says. At peak, during the holiday season, the production center employs 14, she says, "but we're at about half that now."

"For every 1,500 boxes of cookies sold," Polak says, "one new job is created that supports sustainable opportunities and job skills training for the women and men of the local community, where the ingredients are sourced and the cookies are made. In the United States, we create four new jobs for every 500 orders that are picked and packed from our Distribution Center."

Polak expects to be profitable in 2010. Meanwhile, though, she's creating jobs for the jobless, both American and South African. "Job creation doesn't end on one side of the globe," she says. Americans unload the cookies at the port. They're trucked by Americans and packaged by Americans.

"I feel particularly passionate about creating jobs on my own soil, too," she says. "Those purchases make a huge, huge difference."