P-CED is an economic development approach that places people at the center of enterprise development. P-CED takes the bottom line one step further: to people, past numbers. Enterprise profitability and economic success cannot be fairly measured in terms of gains of money capital alone. Rather, P-CED holds that the only fair measure is how many people benefit by way of profitability. In short, net profit is redefined in human terms rather than pure quantitative analyses which remove human and social concerns in the name of profit.

P-CED advocates for the development of localized people-centered economics on a global basis.  Toward this end, each local community needs access to:

• a comprehensive, easily accessible information source about all of its currently available local resources

• an extended national and global information resource base to facilitate locating and sharing of resources

• resources for creation of community funding enterprises for profit, with profits to be applied to social needs in addition to private wealth creation

These objectives are now possible by way of the Web and networking projects which can make available a means for communities to identify possible resources toward meeting basic human needs.  Once these needs are identified, strategies are developed and implemented to place resources.

 Traditional approaches to development frequently involve aid funding for short-term relief.  The core P-CED approach is to use this same funding to create new businesses in target communities.  

The P-CED distinction is its focus on using funds to create new businesses rather than using funds only for short-term relief.  These new businesses in turn provide for both short-term economic relief and long-term economic development.  This strategy creates long-term solutions by using traditional aid funding as investment capital.  The investment in effect provides a means of creating more money from aid funding, thereby increasing the effectiveness of aid funding and reducing dependence on it.  In short, the P-CED approach creates new revenue streams in the place of revenue drains.

P-CED has existed as an advocacy voice in the US and abroad since early 1997, following a seminal paper to the US White House in autumn of 1996. That paper outlined profit-for-poverty, profit-enterprises operating to generate revenues to implement best practices in poverty relief.

Since 1996, the concepts of enterprise for social benefit and profit for poverty relief have spread rapidly.  Numerous business schools including Yale, Stanford, Duke, London School of Economics, and Oxford University have since instituted social enterprise programs, Oxford being the most recent entry.  In 2002, the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain formally undertook social enterprise as national government policy.  Under favorable regulations there, P-CED formally instituted in 2004 as a company limited by guarantee for the purpose of social benefit.

To be clear, enterprise for social benefit is not in and of itself a new idea.  Prior to 1996, however, it had never been proposed as a broad, formal economic paradigm on par with traditional free market capitalism.   Some small degree of social enterprise has been around for quite some time in the form of the non-profit sector.  P-CED broke with tradition in abandoning the US non-profit model entirely, proposing instead normal business for profit and channeling profits for social benefit.  The primary reason for the break was that non-profits were, and still are, very tightly encumbered in what they can and cannot do without running afoul of tax authorities and numerous government regulations.  Furthermore, non-profits tend to be tightly restricted on exactly the sort of social benefit they can and cannot provide.  Overall, the rules governing non-profits are stifling.  Social benefit they can achieve are restricted accordingly

In the for-profit sector on the other hand, rules are far less restrictive.  However, for-profit generally means profit for a few individuals typically hoping to become wealthy.  In the US, 1% of the population control 80% of wealth, even as at least one-sixth of the population live in poverty.  P-CED's solution is simple: do business as usual, and apply profits for social benefit.

That is the core strategy P-CED has always advocated.  Substitute personal greed with compassion, and the balance sheets will still work out just fine.   Profit/loss statements take on a whole new dimension and meaning.  Greed and capitalism are not one and the same thing.  "Social" capitalism, social enterprise, is perfectly doable.  This is the most effective sustainable strategy available for alleviating widespread human suffering stemming from poverty and all that comes with it -- up to and including terrorism.

P-CED as an organization now operates primarily in Ukraine, a country that by way of the Orange Revolution has established itself as devoutly committed to peaceful yet determined progress.  P-CED as a concept and practice operates increasingly all over the world.