The last year has been an important one for New Ventures. We have done an extensive review of our operations and strategy, and thought deeply about our role in today’s global economy. The process included consultation with many of our peers, our colleagues at the World Resources Institute, our partners at our six Local Centers, and the entrepreneurs we have supported in the first ten years of operations.

We see unprecedented relevance and opportunity around our work on Entrepreneurship, Environment, and Emerging Markets; and introducing our new brand and website marks an important milestone in the relaunch of our operations. We hope that our new brand and website will be effective tools to advance our mission and goals.

Our new website was developed over the last six months with help from the talented designers from Modo Design Group. It has five main sections and we encourage you to browse around them all:

• The Who We Are section introduces the history of WRI’s New Ventures initiative, our Global Network of environmental enterprise acceleration, and the profiles of our team members globally.

• The What We Do section introduces our approach to supporting the growth of environmental enterprises in emerging markets, explaining in detail our activities around Enterprise Acceleration, our efforts to create a new Asset Class for environmental enterprise and our vision for a true Global Network of learning and collaboration.

• Our Portfolio is the heart of our new website and the essence of our work. A versatile search engine allows you to browse our Portfolio enterprises by different criteria, including their country of origin, their Environmental Intent, and the Sector or industry where they operate. This classification is part of our work on metrics for environmental impact, and our effort to truly understand the nature of the activities of environmental enterprises in emerging markets. We have updated most of our company profiles through interviews and field visits in the last months, and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. Our goal is to have 100% of the Portfolio available online by the end of August 2010. We will also include updated metrics of financial, social and environmental performance of our portfolio, as we gather the data during the fall of 2010.

• Our Take Action section is an open invitation for you to join us in our mission. It describes different ways you can get involved with the work of New Ventures, starting with joining our mailing list and following us on Twitter to receive updates on our activities.

• Lastly, our News section provides the latest updates on our activities and events in Washington and each of our Local Centers. Our goal is to update this section on a weekly basis, so make sure to check back periodically.

We want to hear from you, and will greatly appreciate your help spreading the word about New Ventures. Also, please contact us at any point to give us feedback on how we can keep improving. We are taking the first steps to scale the impact of our work and accelerate the growth of environmental enterprise, and look forward to your help and engagement with our cause.