A New Future by Toms Shoes, Tweed Shire and Room to Read
Peter Drucker said “the best way to predict the future is to create it.”
It’s easy to feel dispirited when day after day the headlines tell a story of a world seemingly drunk with greed, corruption and violence. For the most part, we accept the status quo, believing there is nothing we can do. But I agree with Drucker. And Edmond Burke, to whom this quote is attributed: “All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
The future is ours to create.
1. What kind of a future are we heading for if we don’t dramatically and immediately change our corporate behaviour?
2. What kind of future do we want and what are we willing to create or sacrifice to achieve it?
3. What are you doing about it?
There are many examples of individuals who have changed the course of history. There are great leaders who inspire entire nations and individual nobodies who change the world for those in their little patch of paradise. Here are just three such stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things with small, inexpensive steps, and some big ideas.
Toms Shoes
In 2006, Blake Mycoskie was travelling through Argentina, and noticed that the children had no shoes.
Walking is the primary mode of transportation in developing countries, with children required to walk for miles to get water, food, and medical help, in bare feet. Shoes are an unaffordable luxury. But the wearing of shoes protects feet from getting painful cuts and sores that become infected. So Blake decided he would create a shoe company that sold shoes in the United States, and for every pair sold, a pair would be donated – one for one.
Blake returned to Argentina a year later with 10,000 pairs of shoes. His company, TOMS Shoes, plans to give over 300,000 pairs of shoes to children in need around the world in 2009. Something seemingly so inconsequential and taken for granted by children in developed nations, is an enormous contribution to the quality of life of children in developing countries.
What kind of a difference can you imagine taking place in economic development, cultural exchange and even world peace, if so many more businesses in different industries adopted this “one for one” program?
Room to Read
John Wood, a senior executive with Microsoft, quit his job to establish Room to Read. While visiting Nepal, John was struck by the desire and enthusiasm for education, coupled with an obvious lack of resources. A firm believer that education is the way out of poverty, he began in the rural communities of Nepal in 2000, building schools and libraries. Since then, Room to Read has expanded its reach through Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Laos and India, and more recently in Africa and Bangladesh.
Partnering with villages to build schools, then bi-lingual libraries filled with donated English and local language books, it then created scholarships for girls who don’t usually have access to education in these countries. Room to Read is now also sourcing new content from local writers and publishing local language children’s books.
Room to Read has to-date built 765 schools, funded over 7,000 girls’ scholarships, donated more than 2.8 million English-language children’s books and published 333 new local language children’s titles – in all, positively impacting the lives of over 3.1 million children in the developing world.
John Wood was at the top of the corporate game and left to create opportunities for millions of children worldwide. What kind of a world it would be if our business leaders showed this kind of character throughout their working lives, and through their businesses?
Tweed Shire
The Tweed Shire, a small community in northern New South Wales, Australia, and finalist of the 2005, 2007 and 2008 International Riverfoundation National Riverprize, is twinning (mentoring and supporting) the Gallamoro Network (GNet), an NGO working in the world’s largest slums in Nairobi, Kenya, where water related diseases cholera, typhoid and dysentery are common.
Their aim is to clean the polluted urban catchments of the Nairobi and Kavuthi rivers (described as environmental disasters) and implement a safe-water project each year. This twinning effort has seen the installation of a high-tech self-powered, sustainable water purification system in the Kenyan Village of Obambo-Kadenge by officers of Tweed Council, which now provides safe and clean drinking water to 3,000 people.
It has resulted in direct financial contributions from Tweed Council and Tweed Council staff, and the financial support of Tweed shire businesses and community groups to purchase and install equipment, build drains and teach the community about hygiene.
The success of the campaign is in the mobilisation of local unemployed youth living in the slums, as volunteers engaged in rubbish removal, recycling, and river restoration. To motivate them and provide reward for sustained effort, Tweed established the great Nairobi River Youth Soccer Tournament for the Environment with hundreds of soccer balls, shirts, shoes and socks donated by Tweed sporting clubs. Four hundred youths from Nairobi took part in the first tournament in December 2005.
Community engagement remains strong with exchanges of volunteers and students each year. It is a heart-warming demonstration of how small deeds can do great things. Tweed has shown how small communities can reach out across the world and change the world for those people – just imagine the possibilities, if every community reached out to another in this way!
Think Differently
Do these stories inspire you to think differently about the role you and your business can play? Rather than have a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) department, how about a socially responsible business?
Why can’t we think bigger? What would happen if we allowed ourselves some what if’s, and could be’s and why’s? What would happen – what could happen – if we began asking of our management and staff: What is the big picture? The higher purpose? The why, what is our reason for being?
What if we were to ask, where are we going? What is our vision? And if no vision exists, make it up. Ask, what is our passion? And if there is none, create some.
Imagine. What if?
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Category: CSR & Sustainability, Reputation Management
