Multilevel Marketing Is Controversial. This Academic Fellowship Is Trying to Change That.

Channelle D. James teaches a seminar about companies that do good in the world — fight poverty, slash pollution, empower women. For the class’s capstone project, her students learn about the wonders of the Cocoa Exchange.

The company, which sold fair-trade chocolate, worked with a nongovernmental organization to extend small loans to female cocoa farmers in West Africa. Stateside, it was also improving the lives of the American women (and men, in smaller numbers) who signed up to sell its products. Sellers would get all the information they needed to start a small business, along with a flexible schedule,

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