Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2010

Trivani Foundation

If you’ve ever read the back of your shampoo bottle, you’ll know that there are a lot of chemicals with long names like “sodium laureth sulfate.” You might have briefly wondered what those chemicals were for and whether you should be slathering them all over your scalp.

As it turns out, sodium laureth sulfate makes the foam that we’ve come to expect from our shampoos. Unfortunately, it’s also an irritant that can weaken your skin’s defenses, and its manufacture can result in a byproduct described by the Center for Disease Control as “probably carcinogenic.”

Still, it’s not as if you’re swallowing the stuff, right? Actually, the same chemical is likely responsible for the froth in your toothpaste, too.

Modern medicine hasn’t yet figured out the implications of our daily exposure to such chemical agents, but there’s a groundswell of concern. “Total health today is not just about what you put in your body in terms of supplementation, food—these kinds of things,” says Bob Steed, CEO and co-founder of Trivani International. “Total health has to take into consideration what you put on your body and the types of contaminations that are allowed to be exposed to your body.”

Trivani International is a marketing company that sells personal care and nutritional products with a difference. All are designed in-house to avoid potentially harmful chemicals or interactions. Since launching in the US in 2007, the company has grown at a fast clip, spreading to several other countries including Japan.

This growth is driven not just by the products themselves, but the structure and charitable philosophy of the company. Ten percent of Trivani International’s top-line revenue goes to its sister organization, Trivani Foundation, a humanitarian NPO that provides relief and development in poor areas of the world.

Trivani partners with local NPOs to make sure they are reaching the people who are most in need, and in the most effective way. One of their most successful projects has been providing reconstructive surgery for children in the Philippines with cleft palates or other deformities that might doom them to a lifetime of social ostracism and poverty. The foundation has also been involved with building schools and clinics, and recently started working with microfinance organizations to help empower women in impoverished areas.

“We realize there is only one thing that you can help human beings achieve [which] is greater than hope, and that is self-esteem,” Steed says. “When these people realize that with their own hands, through their own energies, through their own creativity, they can create a sustainable enterprise that will generate revenue for them… to eat and to feed their children, everything in their life changes.”

Because customers know that buying Trivani products supports these activities, they are loyal to the brand. Distributors have an even stronger connection, as they are able to directly sponsor a child just by placing an order. Trivani calls it “Purpose Marketing”: in addition to the profit motive, sellers are driven by the desire to do some good in the world.

“If pure charity could solve all of the major social crises, then it would already have been done,” Steed says. “You have to create a win-win situation in the humanitarian experience.”

And with customers enjoying better health, distributors better finances, and aid recipients improved quality of life, it really does look like everybody wins.

See www.trivani.net and www.trivanifoundation.org for more info.