Tag Archives: make a difference

conscious choice as a consumer

How do you know what brands to choose?

You want to buy from companies that support your values, right?  But, have you wondered HOW you can investigate these companies, and the brands you buy from — without spending your entire day researching them?

Gender social activism meets consumerism!

Now there is an app for that! Buy Up Index rates consumer brands on key areas of interest to women (and probably many men, too).

They do the research, you direct your dollars to companies that score high on qualities like these:

  • Dedication to women’s leadership (exceeding current benchmarks in C-suite, boards, and management)
  • Working environment (factors like maternity/paternity leave, childcare and flextime)
  • Corporate citizenship (supporting women based causes)
  • Marketing tactics (things like the portrayal of gender roles and use of women’s bodies to sell products unrelated to women or their bodies)

Buy Up Index looks ranks corporations based on a concrete set of metrics and only those companies that make an “A” ranking are allowed to promote to those of us using the app. You can read more about their methodology on their website.

I have been pestering you for a while now to use your purchasing muscle to change the game. Buy Up Index has just made my admonition a whole lot easier. I love this quote by Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop:

“Consumers have not been told effectively enough that they have huge power and that purchasing and shopping involves a moral choice.”

What moral choices can you make today that will make tomorrow better, for our daughters and for everyone?

6 Ways to Answer “What can I do to make a difference?”

It’s easy to look around and feel that there is little you can do to make a difference, and affect real change. There are so many BIG issues I am passionate about; but it’s easy to wonder what I can possibly do to make a difference. Do you feel that way too?

Yet, every day in small, unobservable ways we are making a difference — either in support of our beliefs or often in direct opposition to the things we care about.

How we spend money, where we spend money, and what we invest in are all ways of voting for the causes we hold dear. Sometimes they actually are even more powerful than our votes during election time.

Here are just a few ways you could make a difference in your daily choices:

  1. Buy local food where possible from farmer’s markets and CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture). It will improve the lives of real people growing our food rather than factory farms that not only have poor practices that may be hurting your health but also often unfair treatment of the people doing the work at these farms and factories.
  2. Buy clothing and accessories from companies that ethically source their products and commit to not using abusive practices or child labor to create your fashion. More and more options abound for these choices through companies like Etsy who creates a market for independent artisans and Raven & Lily who create stellar designs for women in 3rd world countries to produce and then bring these women’s efforts to our market for us to buy.
  3. Look for and support emerging entrepreneurial companies in your community or online at places like The Grommet where new consumer ideas have a chance to be seen and supported by average people, rather than letting large retailers decide what you have to choose from.
  4. Move your investments from companies and funds that have money in things you do not approve of to things you are passionate about — healthy food supply, energy resources, child labor, environmental issues, education, or anything you deem critical to future generations.
  5. Ask about and investigate the companies that you do the most business with, rather than assume they value the same things you do.
  6. Look for ways to find solutions that improve your contribution to the world that do not break your bank or your back by thinking outside the box. When my first child was born, I was appalled by the amount of diapers going into our landfills. But I was a corporate executive with no time and no inclination to wash cloth diapers. Then, a friend gave me a present of one month of diaper service. I did not even know something like that existed. But once I started using them, I was hooked. It was clean, easy and no more expensive than the mountains of paper diapers I might have thrown in my trash over his baby years. When my third child was a baby we lived in the Dominican Republic. A box of 5 paper diapers cost about the same as a box of 100 stateside and the local women actually showed me that cleaning diapers was really not as hard as I had come to believe in my modern western civilized life. When I returned home, I returned to my diaper service – -but no longer out of fear that cleaning diapers was as bad as I imagined. It was a choice, and it was available.

What things might you be unaware of that could change your actions to be more aligned with your beliefs? Western women spend 85% of the purchasing dollars. What message are you sending with the dollars you spend?

follow your heart and make a difference

Lead with your heart and success will follow

Jane Chen, of Embrace Innovations, has created a wrap for premature babies to keep their body temperature stable–a big risk for these babies. Her baby warmers are significantly less expensive than incubators and one model has an insert that can be warmed with hot water, eliminating the need for electricity. Jane is making both an impact on thousands of lives and a profitable company. Now that is thinking with her heart and outside the box!

Most people think of helping poor impoverished adolescent girls as charity. However, the Girl Effect Accelerator (GEA) thought differently. Sponsored by Nike, GEA has sponsored 13 entrepreneurs who had product ideas targeted exactly at this market of low income young women, especially in poorer areas.

Ayzh, another GEA company, has a low cost clean birth kit to decrease infections during and after child birth. According to BBC News, Zubaida Bai, the company’s founder, says that companies such as her own, with the support offered by GEA, are helping to challenge the mistaken belief that only charities can assist people living in poverty. I love this idea that we can create profitable companies that do good!

These women had ideas and got the boost they needed by getting information and mentoring from the GEA initiative. (GEA does not fund the selected companies–which may be what Nike needs to think about next, since access to capital is often the missing link in women with great ideas getting them to the level needed to make an impact.)

If you had the needed capital, mentoring support and a team with the right skills, what idea would you pursue to make the world a better place? Wait a minute, let go of that thought that you can’t because you have bills to pay, kids to raise, or some problem to fix, first.

Just imagine you have everything you need. Now ask yourself again, if you had the tools and support to make it happen what idea would you pursue that could improve the world?

Take 5 minutes every day to journal and imagine what this would feel like to pursue. Add in the details of what you would do, who you would be helping, and what it would look like. If you do this regularly with enough imagination you might find yourself one day living your dream!

 

stop violence against women

One Billion Rising

Did you know that one out of every three women will be beaten or raped in her lifetime? That is one billion women!

This was a statistic that both knocked me off my feet and brought tears to my eyes. I am a mother of three beautiful, vibrant young women and that statistic hits much too close to my heart.

This is not a statistic you can ignore and think it is someone else’s problem (or only happens in impoverished areas or countries).

I love what Eve Ensler is doing about it. She has started a movement called One Billion Rising and they are working to end violence against women. Each year, they ask women around the world to come together to sing and dance raising their voice in union.

Here is what she says about it:

“We rise through dance to express joy and community and celebrate the fact that we have not been defeated by this violence. We rise to show we are determined to create a new kind of consciousness – one where violence will be resisted until it is unthinkable.” – Eve Ensler

At last week’s Academy Awards, President Obama, in his recorded message, asked those in the entertaining arts to help end violence against women and girls through their power over our cultural view of what is normal.

Changing this is a group activity. Only when we stand together can we actually change this horrific statistic. A woman individually can attempt to remove herself from violence, but women collectively can create a power that changes it permanently. Men raised by strong women–who are not abused–are less likely to abuse. Girls raised by compassionate men–who do not abuse–are less likely to get into an abusive relationship.

Look around your own community. Are there groups you can help? Are there programs in your schools to help empower the girls? What might you do that could make a difference? Every act helps. Every step that empowers our young women and demonstrates to our young men women’s value takes us closer to the world Eve speaks of–a world where violence is unthinkable!