Where Business And Passion Meets Ethical Values.

Passion is something that gives rise to fulfilment. In class we had an interest case that covered business and passion.

Dilenna had passion to make a change in her environment from childhood and decided to venture into business now that she’s older and sees an opportunity that lies in her passion to stop deforestation while making money but was concerned about it’s economic sustainability.

Her passion for entrepreneurship and the need to supplement her family’s income was her drive towards registering her company, Green Forest Incorporation, GFI, a company that is striving for profit, people and planet.

Profit: She ventured into partnering with different organisations to increase revenue for her brand.

People: She created jobs for people at the warehouse who will couple the Stove80 and Wonder Box that was imported into Nigeria to reduce deforestation as they came in unassembled.

Planet: Her organisation helped to reduce the felling of trees by suburban women who used the woods as fuel to cook their meals, thereby, replacing it with the Stove80 and Wonder Box. 

She had partnered with an organisation, Development Association For Renewable Energies, DARE, a company owned by Yahaya Ahmed which produced a stove (save80 and Wonder Box) with the help of German company, Leren-Heren-Leben who will then send these products to Nigeria while GFI receives it from the ports and distributes it to end users. At this point the issues of bribe to fast track clearing the goods from the Nigeria custom service, NCS arose and this gave Dilinna worries because she wasn’t ready and would not want to get involved in such unethical act rather follow due process, so it actually took time for the products to be cleared at the ports once imported into the country.

Dilinna was also faced with distributing these item as the target customers couldn’t purchase as expected. She thought of recreating a different target market because sales was low and she noticed that many people in the Urban areas will buy from them in larger quantities and resell to woman in rural areas while she was having these thoughts she also wanted supply people in the south more since those the north were more interested in purchasing the Stove80, already that was a big market for them. While in this she resorted to merge with another company, Detlev but to no avail as they was a glitch when they were ready to go to the step via an authorising organisation, Designated National Authority, DNA but some people came up with an idea that Detlev advance some money to them on the side as well to further help fast track approval of their organisation to operate in Nigeria.

To Dilinna, this a great opportunity for her company to scale up since their products also matched her company’s goal to stop deforestation but she was faced with these authorising companies requesting for bribe which didn’t sit well with her.

Lastly, the accounts and inventory documents showed that there was a significant discrepancy between the volume of materials entered on paper and the expected number of units of the Save80 products suggesting pilferage.

At this point in Dilinna’s career she had serious issues contrary to her ethical values going and so her business needed to scale up, it was such a difficult situation for her that she struggled with better decisions to make to avert the situation.