The Trickle Out Africa Project is an ESRC funded research study that examines the role of social and environmental enterprises in poverty alleviation and sustainable development across the 19 countries of Southern and Eastern Africa. Funded from February 2011 until March 2013, the project grant was awarded to Dr Diane Holt (Principal Investigator) who was then joined by Dr David Littlewood (Research Fellow). Even though David has now taken up a lectureship at Henley Management School at the University of Reading, Diane and David continue to collaborate on the Trickle Out Project and future planned projects.
Trickle Out has delivered a free online directory of social and environmental businesses hosted on their website that has almost 4000 listed organisations. There are also 20 case study organisations participating in the detailed impact analysis and details of these and the research findings can also be found on the website.
The project website has received over 4 million hits in the last 12 months (until April 2013), 7500+ document downloads, 9 million+ page views, 530,000+ unique visitors and has become the premier site for information on social and environmental enterprises in this region. The project has received wide ranging media coverage and was recently shortlisted as a finalist for the All Party Awards for International Development in the category Outstanding
Academic Study in Development'.
The case studies, directory, podcasts, media coverage and other information can be found at the website at www.trickleout.net