NORWALK, CT - TechnoServe founder and former CEO Edward P. Bullard IV (deceased) and current President and CEO Peter A. Reiling have jointly been selected as among the world's most "Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs" by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in Geneva.

Ten have been so designated, four based in the U.S., four in Asia and two in Africa. The work of these individuals and their organizations spans various fields including health, rural business development, microfinance, environment, and media and communication.

This is the third consecutive year that the Schwab Foundation selects the world's foremost social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs identify practical solutions to social problems by combining innovation, resourcefulness and opportunity. When selecting the members for its network, the Schwab Foundation applies a number of criteria that together characterize an outstanding social entrepreneur. These are:

1. Innovation: The candidate has brought about demonstrable, high-impact social change by transforming traditional practice in a given field.

2. Reach and Scope: The social enterprise has spread beyond its initial context and has been adapted successfully to other settings.

3. Replicability: Aspects of the initiative can be transferred to other regions and are scalable. The social entrepreneur and his/her organization are committed to openly sharing with others the tools, approaches and techniques critical to the replication process.

4. Sustainability: The candidate has generated the social conditions and/or institutions needed to sustain the initiative and is dedicating all of his/her time to it. If a not-for profit, the entrepreneur's organization is achieving some degree of financial self sustainability through fees or revenues, or is engaged in creating mutually beneficial partnerships with business and/or the public sector. If constituted as a for-profit organization, the orientation toward social and environmental value creation predominates, with financial return treated as the means to a social end, rather than an end in itself.

5. Direct positive impact: The candidate has founded, developed and implemented the entrepreneurial initiative directly, together with poor or excluded beneficiaries and stakeholders.

6. Role model: The candidate is an individual who can serve as a role model for future social entrepreneurs and the general public.

7. Mutual value-added: The Foundation can provide further legitimacy, networking and resource mobilization opportunities to the social entrepreneur and his/her organization. Likewise, candidates demonstrate an interest in building a network of outstanding social entrepreneurs that stimulates and supports its participants to actively help one another.

About TechnoServe
TechnoServe is an international non-profit development organization with 35 years of experience. Its mission is to help entrepreneurial men and women in poor rural areas of Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe to build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, communities and countries. TechnoServe provides its clients -- start-up and existing businesses and entrepreneurs -- with a wide range of services including strategic and management consulting, business plan development, technical assistance, market research, financial and commercial linkages. TechnoServe identifies unmet demand in domestic, regional and international markets. It then works with entrepreneurs and industry participants to build prototype businesses that take advantage of these market opportunities while providing jobs, markets and much-needed income for low-income rural families. In addition to its worldwide staff of 317, an array of world-class companies -- among them Cargill, Ernst & Young, General Mills, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Procter & Gamble, and Young & Rubicam Gitam -- provides advisors and mentors to TechnoServe and its clients.

Since its founding by Ed Bullard in 1968, TechnoServe has worked in 22 developing countries. The organization currently operates in El Salvador, Ghana, Honduras, Kenya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda, and works closely with an affiliate in Poland. In 2002 alone, TechnoServe-assisted businesses generated US$13.3 million in sales and US$900,000 in profits. These businesses paid US$10 million to 37,000 small-scale farmers for their produce and provided jobs for an additional 1,570 hardworking men and women.

About Edward P. Bullard IV
After spending a year working in rural Ghana in the early 1960s, Ed Bullard founded TechnoServe to provide hardworking men and women in rural communities around the world with the technologies they needed (tractors, plows, pumps and mills) to become more productive and earn more money. Hence, the organization's original name: TechnoServe: Technology in the Service of Mankind. That original mission soon evolved to focus on building farmer-owned businesses -- because a business involves the commitment, skills and resources necessary to ensure sustainability.

Through his leadership of TechnoServe (he was President and CEO until his death in 1996) and his volunteer position with InterAction, Bullard also acted as a mentor and advisor to many other leaders and field workers of other development organizations, many of whom subsequently adopted TechnoServe's "hand up" (versus "hand out") approach to providing assistance.

About Peter A. Reiling
Peter Reiling became President and CEO of TechnoServe in 1996, having been recruited by Bullard in 1987 and served as Country Director in Ghana from 1992. Under his leadership, TechnoServe has taken a much more market-oriented approach to building businesses that will positively benefit rural communities. Rather than ask, "what can we grow here?" TechnoServe's in-country teams of business advisors now analyze the marketplace and benchmark the competition in order to discover unmet demand, high-value opportunities and visionary entrepreneurs. Reiling is also responsible for forging strategic alliances with world-class companies like Cargill, McKinsey & Company, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Procter & Gamble and Young & Rubicam Gitam, who act as advisors and mentors to TechnoServe staff and clients. To identify and nurture new entrepreneurs, TechnoServe now also provides business and entrepreneurial training to teenagers and young adults in Africa and Latin America and conducts countrywide business plan competitions. Finally, together with the Aspen Institute and in-country business partners, Reiling has launched the Africa Leadership Initiative (ALI), designed to foster a new generation of civic-minded business leaders in Africa and to encourage them to play a more active role in promoting social and economic development in their countries. In the period 2002-2007, nearly 100 ALI "Fellows" in six countries (Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda) will take part in a series of leadership seminars. Each will also commit to undertake a leadership project to address a pressing social need in their community. Plans call for the expansion of ALI into Central America in 2004.

"Beginning with Ed Bullard's leadership and continuing today, TechnoServe has always sought to find innovative, cost-effective and sustainable solutions to combating rural poverty in developing countries," said TechnoServe Chairman Paul E. Tierney, Jr. "I know that I speak for TechnoServe's worldwide staff and Board of Directors, and for our many partners and supporters when I say how very pleased and honored we are to see Ed and Peter chosen as among the Schwab Foundation's 'Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs.'"

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship (http://www.schwabfound.org/) provides a global platform to promote social entrepreneurship as a key element to advance societies and address social problems in an innovative and effective manner. Founded by Klaus and Hilde Schwab in 1998, the Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to the Founders, its Board Members include Paulo Coelho (Brazil), Quincy Jones (USA), Sadako Ogata (Japan), Zanele Mbeki (South Africa), Adolf Ogi (Switzerland), Lord David Puttnam (UK), and Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh). Pamela Hartigan is the Foundation's Managing Director.

TechnoServe, Inc.

TechnoServe, Inc.

TechnoServe is leading a movement that empowers people in the developing world to build businesses that break the cycle of poverty. Growing enterprises generate jobs and other income opportunities for poor people, enabling them to improve their lives and secure a better future for their families. Since its founding in 1968, the U.S.-based nonprofit has helped to create or expand thousands of businesses, benefiting millions of people in more than 30 countries. The Financial Times has rated TechnoServe one of the top five NGOs for corporate partnerships. Charity Navigator has also awarded its highest Four Star ranking to TechnoServe.

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