Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Teddy Exports is a fair-trade export company with an explicit commitment to social and economic development. In 1992, Teddy Exports set up the Teddy Trust into which it directs 50 percent of its profits to support a range of welfare activities for its workers and the local community. The company has been able to undertake extensive and innovative HIV/AIDS workplace programmes, including education and prevention campaigns, providing job opportunities and care for people living with HIV/AIDS, and offering financial support to non-governmental organizations. One project focuses on the provision of low-cost (sometimes free) health care to truck drivers at community health centres near truck stops. In the framework of the Healthy Highway Project, supported by the United Kingdom Department for International Development, two ‘truckers booths’ have been set up on the main highway in southern India and one at an oil refinery unit in Manila. They provide information to over 80,000 truck drivers and raise awareness on HIV/AIDS through street plays, slide shows, leaflets, stickers and condom distribution. The well-targeted messages and the anonymous nature of the assistance offered have encouraged the truck drivers to seek treatment and counseling.