Halle Butvin

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When Halle Butvin visited Uganda with a youth organization in 2006, she was prepared to see a nation scarred by a history of conflict and poverty. What she didn’t anticipate was finding what has become, at least for now, her life’s calling.


Halle Butvin
The experience planted in the city and regional planning alumna a seed of desire to help not only on an individual level but on a social and economic scale.The women she met in districts like Gulu had skills but no jobs. Their children did not attend school. Their families could not afford to buy or build their own homes.

Three years later, that seed has grown into One Mango Tree, a social business Butvin launched to empower Ugandan women in a business venture to design, sew and sell handbags, yoga supplies, home items and jewelry. To meet One Mango Tree’s two missions, profit and social impact, 100 percent of earnings are reinvested in the company or other like-minded social ventures to improve the lives of the employees and the community as a whole.

One Mango Tree head trainer Lucy Auma, for instance, cares for 13 children — two of her own and 11 orphans — as well as her parents. Now that Auma has an income, she is healthier thanks to a more diversified diet, and, like all other One Mango Tree employees, she has a savings account of 15 percent of her earnings.

“When I met her,” Butvin says, “none of the kids were in school. Now every single one is in school. She’s added three huts on her property, started building a brick home and bought a plot of land for herself.”

Butvin now lives in Uganda and is CEO of One Mango Tree, which has grown from four employees to 35. A business manager in Florida handles Internet sales. A company in Seattle buys the merchandise wholesale and then distributes it to retail outlets in the United States. The employees even expanded into a rented 500-square-foot factory building after getting their start in one tiny stall in a market. And recently they began producing their own fabrics in a workshop in Kampala.

Still, Butvin knows she faces many more obstacles. Just one: The company factory does not have a source of reliable electricity; she’s working with Blaine Lilly, associate professor of integrated systems engineering and mechanical engineering, to research ways to use solar power.

As if running her own company on a foreign continent isn’t enough work, Butvin also does new business development consulting to make additional income until One Mango Tree is profitable — a goal she expects to reach this year.

Butvin even thrives on challenge when she’s on vacation: Last year she used her earnings from a consulting job to take a break — climbing Kilimanjaro.

Her business goal is to keep growing One Mango Tree, perhaps expanding it or starting a similar operation in another country.

“I want to give opportunities to young people to come to Uganda and do product design and understand how to do work in another country,” Butvin says. “I would love to get One Mango Tree profitable enough that I could take the profits and invest in other young people that are doing incredible things to give them the opportunity to see through their dream of making changes through business.”

On the Web:

Follow Halle Butvin’s efforts in Uganda on the One Mango Tree Web site, www.onemangotree.com.

Category: Alumni