PeaceWorks specializes in good business and good deeds

Daniel Lubetzky, CEO and founder of PeaceWorks, at the company’s Chelsea office last month

By Stephanie Schroeder

During the holiday season just passed, “showing good will toward all men (and women)” no doubt became a hackneyed phrase, as it does year in and year out. But one Chelsea company actually practices what the scripture preaches.

PeaceWorks—a gourmet foods company, which has been headquartered on West 21st Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues for the past five years, maker of the increasingly popular KIND fruit-and-nut bar storming bodegas, pharmacies and specialty stores near you—thinks of itself as a catalyst for peace by encouraging joint food-production businesses and ventures among people of opposing beliefs in volatile regions, particularly the Middle East.

Daniel Lubetzky, 38, began PeaceWorks, LLC—a so-called “not-only-for-profit” business—in 1994, after graduating from Stanford University Law School and visiting Israel on a fellowship to research the potential for Israeli-Arab cooperation. According to the social entrepreneur, the not-only-for-profit model means, “we don’t do anything that is not good business.

We are striving to make the place a better world through best business practices and by being socially, politically and economically responsible corporate citizens.”

His Middle East experience fresh in his mind, Lubetzky began with a basic economic principle that each party (Jews and Muslims) should share in an exchange and each bring something to the table that benefits the other. The son of a Holocaust survivor, Lubetzsky was born and raised in Mexico. “As a minority in Mexico City, I was very influenced by my father’s stories of the Holocaust,” he remembers. “I am motivated by the same fear that grips all Jewish people—that it could happen again. I founded PeaceWorks both to obviate that fear and do good business.”

Cooperation among people of different backgrounds and from neighboring countries at the trading, labor, ownership and management levels is one way PeaceWorks fosters mutual aid and teamwork in communities where war or ethnic strife exists.

By trading with neighbors from rival groups or combining resources, PeaceWorks builds relationships among and between such warring factions as Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims in the Middle East—and works with the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, along with other minorities in Indonesia and elsewhere.

Supplies and labor are mingled between peoples of two or more warring factions, for example Israelis and Palestinians, and management from both sides collaborate sto run gourmet food businesses. Working this way, PeaceWorks brings together those who would not “normally” peacefully co-exist, let alone be in business together. And, both sides generate profits, work for their own (and each others’) people, and operate under a code of ethics that dignifies and signifies PeaceWorks/One Voice’s mission.

Lubetzeky is optimistic that his not-only-for-profit model, based on sound business principles and cooperation, is the only way to solve conflict. “Changing their economic situation changes people’s lives. And in changing people’s economic lives, they are changing their political lives,” he said. “We assist in giving voice to all of those who want to change, both economically and politically.”

To that end, Lubetzky also started the PeaceWorks Foundation/OneVoice after the breakdown of the last of the Camp David negotiations in 2002 and the outbreak of violence in the Middle East at the time.

According to Darya Shaikh, executive director of the foundation, its real work is done on the streets of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. “It is our work to shatter stereotypes and get the message across that the moderate majority wants peace,” she said. “We are engaged in action internationally to support these moderate voices, but not impose our values on other cultures.”

Says Shaikh, “Ninety-five percent of the ‘action’ of OneVoice is mediated through Middle Eastern town-hall meetings, street mobilization and other grassroots activism that brings people together. Through these continued efforts, the historic peace initiative at Annapolis happened.” Shaikh was referring to the November 2007 peace conference at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where U.S. President George W. Bush brought together Israeli and Palestinian leaders, along with representatives of 40 countries, and used the occasion to launch serious negotiations on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The foundation also works in tandem with college students all over the world, particularly in the U.S. and in the Middle East, who support peace. The students, who use grassroots activism to gather the support of their families, neighbors, friends and colleagues to rally behind peace in their home countries, help make both Israeli and Palestinian moderate voices heard.

OneVoice lobbied people around the world to support the peace talks and received 620,000 citizen signatories to the OneVoice principles and mandate, which demanded that “Israel and Palestinian heads of state immediately commence uninterrupted negotiations until reaching an agreement, within one year, for a two-state solution, fulfilling the consistent will of the overwhelming majority of both populations.”

The final outcome of the Annapolis meeting was a determination to end bloodshed, suffering and conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples and states. An agreement was reached by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the PLO Executive Committee and president of the Palestinian Authority, to carry out “vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008” with the goal of two states.

In addition to thinking globally, Lubetzeky is also starting to think locally: PeaceWorks donates to the Food Bank of New York City, which distributes food throughout the five boroughs. “While we are good corporate and world citizens, we need to become better neighborhood citizens,” Lubetzky admits. “We are planning to move the manufacturing operation of the Kind brand to the U.S. and are looking for locations. We want to keep it all socially responsible. So, we’re examining closely all our options.”

Meanwhile, the KIND brand continues to grow. Lubetzky insists they are popular because people just think the bars taste good. “But we also believe individuals and retailers want to support products and business that are making a difference in the world,” he added. “People can feel good about purchasing KIND bars, even if their motivation is just to have a delicious, healthy snack.” It all comes back to doing a world of good.

And what if peace in the Middle East actually does happen? “Then our work is just beginning,” said Lubetzky.