“Magic Touch,” teaches Ecuadorian youth the importance of equal rights

We at 3BL Media have been working with PCI Media Impact for some time now, assisting in part with marketing their Magic Touch(Toque Magico) youth-oriented serial drama across the layered internet. Actually I would say it’s been more enjoyable for me than tedious work at all. Following the weekly misadventures and morality issues of the “Toque Magico” characters has turned itself into a regular American Serial – a roller-coaster of surprises.

So, I think it’s only fair that I introduce PCI-Media’s radio drama to those who might not be all to familiar with it. I hope, that after listening/reading this week’s episode, you’ll want to start from the very beginning of the Toque Magico series. I mean, it’s only fair..

- Terence

PCI Media Impact, a non-profit organization specializing in the use of Entertainment Education to promote social change, premiers their Ecuadorian serial drama, “Toque Magico (Magic Touch)”, every Wednesday on both YouTube and Facebook.

Magic Touch was first broadcast in 2008 to promote youth awareness of gender equality and assist in the cultural elimination of inequity and prevention of violence against women.

This week on Toque Magico:

Chapter XIV: Little toad, big toad…harasser

Educational topic: Sexual Harassment in the School

Mister Master NN encloses Virgi in a time bubble to sexually abuse her. The inspector confesses to the apprentice witch that he has known for a year that her womb was dimmed. He sees her as an easy target that has nothing to lose in maintaining sexual relations with him. Magdalena returns from eternity to stop him from committing the violation. Finally, Virgi escapes and turns in an anonymous letter relaying the abuses that could have been committed by Mister Master NN and is able to put an end to the corruption.

Mieko Nakabayashi: Japan Must Stop Wasting Money

I just saw my old friend and former colleague Mieko Nakabayashi. She is now a bright star in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) who is running to represent Kanagawa’s first district in Japan’s lower house in the Aug. 30 national election. In many ways, she epitomizes Japan’s opposition the DPJ: She is hard-working, innovative, and conservative on budget issues.

Mieko was doing “yuudachi” (evening campaigning at subway stations, targeting people coming home from work). This aspect of Japanese elections is the core of democracy here; the candidate and her staff burst on to the public squares near commuter railway stations to make the case for their candidacy. A DPJ politician who introduced Mieko harshly criticized former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s deceptive administration, which he said only focused on postal reform. Today is the first official day of Mieko’s campaign and she is working from 6am to 9pm each day to get her message out:

True to her unique background working on budget issues at the U.S. Senate years ago, she is a blue dog (in fact, her campaign color is marine blue, a link to Yokohama’s maritime culture), fiscal conservative. In line with the top pillar of the DPJ platform, her key message is, Japan must stop wasting money. It is already the most in debt rich country in the world. Like the GOP in the United States, Mieko compared Japan’s budget to a household, asking passersby whether they would feel OK with running a household with such high levels of debt (to income).

Mieko said that in this election, the Japanese people will truly have a choice and that choice will allow for a thorough review of the budget. By reviewing budget priorities, Japan will be better able to afford social services like job training–a line that reminded me of the Obama campaign. While the DPJ has campaigned against graft and excess, it has been attacked by ruling party LDP for suggesting the need for new social service.

When Mieko and I worked at a Japanese think tank years ago, a common theme was the need for a competition of ideas and policies—a marketplace of ideas, in the parlance of Washington think tanks. Mieko used this kind of thinking to advocate for a real competition between political parties to bring about competitive policies for Japan. All in all, Mieko struck me as showing a lot of integrity, humility, and sincerity, resembling the colleague I knew years ago. And the people in the Yokohama suburban neighborhood seemed to embrace her as such with many people from all walks of life stopping to shake her hand and read her literature.

Given some of the alarm in Washington about the prospect of having a new party in power in Tokyo (the LDP has been in power almost consistently since 1955), I asked Mieko what her approach to the U.S. alliance would be. Not to worry (no surprise for me), for Japan, “the U.S. relationship is the most important in the world.”

Devin Stewart’s original content can be found at Fairer Globalization

Gap Inc. Honors Employees for Giving Back To Their Community

I’m using this time to give recognition to someone making a difference with the talent and forthright given to them:

Aaryn Pratt, a Gap Inc. employee who lives in San Rafael, California, received this year’s 2009 Gap Inc.’s Founders’ Award for her commitment to her community partner, MAC, and her innovative idea to further engage volunteers through an e-learning program.

Aaryn will use the grant fund to develop and launch an e-learning program to expand the agency’s learning and education programs for its volunteers. CASA volunteers go through rigorous interviews and a 32-hour initial training. The e-learning would supplement this training; provide back-up training options and a more blended learning experience. It would also serve as an option for the required 12 hours of annual continuing education after the initial training is completed.

You can read about the rest of the Gap Employees making a serious difference by reading the rest of this press document

PCI-Media Impact; GlobalGiving Participating in Open Challenge, an online fundraising drive

PCI-Media Impact is participating in GlobalGiving’s Open Challenge, an online fundraising drive, to save one of their most successful social change communications campaigns, which was recently cancelled as a result of the June 28 military coup in Honduras.

Agua de Ángel is a multi-faceted communications campaign developed by PCI-Media Impact and their Honduran partner, Red de Desarrollo Sostenible (Sustainable Development Network, in English), to encourage rural communities to protect and conserve local water supplies, which are increasingly threatened by deforestation, pesticide use, and mismanagement of solid waste.

The focal point of the campaign is an educational radio soap opera by the same name, Agua de Ángel, which broadcast its first five episodes in May and June on a government radio station.  As a result of the military coup, the program has been taken off the air, and the Sustainable Development Network needs additional funding to broadcast on commercial radio.

To learn more about this fundraising effort or how you can contribute please visit the GlobalGiving Open Challenge page.

Business Ethics Blog: CSR is Not C-S-R

Regular readers will know that, over the last month, I’ve posted 3 blog entries critiquing the term “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). I’ve asked, rhetorically, whether the “C,” the “S,” and the “R” make sense. I’ve argued that, no, in each case the word those letters stand for fail to capture the range of issues devotees of “CSR” typically think are important. Basically, the conclusion is that “Corporate Social Responsibility” isn’t (just) about corporations, isn’t just about social questions, and isn’t just about responsibilities.

Now, this isn’t to say that there’s no topic at all that would suit the term “CSR.” If you really are just interested in corporations (and not other kinds of businesses), and if you really are just interested in their obligations (and find questions of rights, permissions, values, and virtues relatively uninteresting), and if you really are only interested in corporations’ outward-looking, specifically social obligations, well, then I guess you really are talking about CSR. But I suspect the number of people — and the number of companies — whose interests are that narrow is pretty small.

So, this all seems to imply:

• If you want companies to think carefully about the full range of normative (ethical) questions related to commerce, don’t ask them about CSR.
• If you want business students to be prepared for the decisions they’ll one day face as manager, don’t teach them courses in CSR.
• If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the ethical challenges faced by business, don’t read a book with “CSR” in the title.
• If your company wants to manage effectively the full range of ethical issues it’s likely to face, and not just one subset, don’t hire a “CSR” consultant.

Now, clearly I’m trying to be a bit provocative. You could have good reasons to do each of the things I’m warning against above. And many companies and consultants who use the term “CSR” use it, I’m sure, as a mere term of convenience, and are fully aware that it’s only a very rough label for the full range of ethical issues in business. But if you care about the topics I’ve covered in the last 3 blog entries on this topic, and if you happen to find yourself talking to a company or consultant (or professor) who’s excited about CSR, you might want to ask a few questions about what they mean by that.

This blog entry by Chris MacDonald appeared originally on The Business Ethics Blog.

Western Union: Remittances Financing Global Economic Development

Here’s a company whose business enables migrants to send money back home just about anywhere in the world–385,000 locations in 200 countries and territories (up from 120,000 locations in 100 countries just 5 years ago), while the company’s philanthropic foundation helps migrants and their families to get an education, get jobs, and build small businesses.

In a conversation with Luella Chavez D’Angelo, President, Western Union Foundation, she told me that “we view migrants as heroes.”  According to D’Angelo, “global migration is as old as history. Who is more heroic than the man or woman who leaves home to endure loneliness and alienation in order to find work in a foreign land to put food on the family’s table back home and help their children have a better future.” (Most of us have the good fortune to be where we are today because a relative did that for us back when.)

See http://bit.ly/XvNbc for continuation.

This blog was posted with consent from Fast Company and Alice Korngold.

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.

Socially Responsible Chinese Business

Elegant Roots blog

We hear a lot of suspicions of Chinese-made products these days. The fears are understandable since they concern deep impact matters of child and pet safety – those dependents/innocents who need our protection and toward whom we need peace of mind. The headlines of recalls or product poisonings have all too often related to Chinese-made products.

The fears of everything Chinese, though, are irrational. We should avoid stereotyping such a large and diverse country as though it were a monolith of manufacturing carelessness. China is incredibly diverse ethnically, geographically, and yes, even in social responsibility and on green issues.

ElegantRoots.com is proud to be associated with a story of social responsibility expressed through an entrepreneurial spirit of doing good – all, as they say, with Chinese characteristics.

Shokay International is the brainchild and heartsong of some very special entrepreneurs, Marie So and Carol Chyau. As they say, Shokay represents luxury with a story and style with a touch of humanity.

Here’s the story: Traditional Tibetan yak herders living in the western Chinese province of Qinghai are minorities living at a dangerously low subsistence level. For centuries Tibetan herders have gathered raw yak fiber by combing out the yak’s undercoat, thus making yak down — a natural, sustainable, renewable and humane resource. Though yak down matches or exceeds alpaca and cashmere in luxurious softness and durability and is washable and lovely in its natural color, yak down has never had a reliable market for the herders to serve.

Meanwhile, Carol and Marie, one from Taiwan and the other from Hong Kong, were studying at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and The Wharton School. They were inspired to create a new business based on two core principles—the business had to be profit-making but not profit-maximizing and it had to have a positive social impact.

Carol and Marie discovered the marvels of yak down and the charms of the Tibetan herding culture. Intrigued by the exotic and lovely yak and the potential to help increase the sustainable income for one of China’s minority populations, Carol and Marie leaped into action. They created a business plan and won a $10,000 prize in the Harvard Business School Plan Contest. And, Shokay, (which is Tibetan for “yak down”), had its launch money.

Shokay started by building a fiber cooperative of 2600 Tibetans from the Hei Ma He Village. Unlike most customers, Shokay directly pays herders a fair price for yak down fiber, thus immediately and reliably putting money into herders’ hands.  Shokay then created other markets for the Hei Ma He villagers to help increase demand. Shokay reinvests a portion of its profits into a development fund to serve the Tibetan community’s greatest needs, such as healthcare and education.

Shokay now has two stores in Shanghai and an office in Qinghai Province. Its sales to 130 stores, mostly in Europe and Japan, have created a dependable international market for yak down that helps to support and preserve the traditional Tibetan nomadic culture and way of life. Elegant Roots is proud to be one in the US. It’s a great way to make a positive economic, social and environmental difference.

Shokay also supports another marginalized Chinese community by providing fairly paid work to the artisans of Chong Ming Island. These talented hand-knitters choose their own schedules and work location, including working from home that allows simultaneous care for their families.

Carol and Marie believe that introducing yak down to the world as a luxury fiber will increase market demand, increasing the value of the raw fiber and the price the herders receive. Carol and Marie started with their wonderful men’s and women’s yak accessories line, then introduced their amazing baby clothes in consult with Shanghai-based American designer Angie Wu: “I took Shokay’s mission as inspiration when designing the Tibetan-inspired [Hoodie] Baby Set.

On August 8, 2009, Shokay launched its Yak Around the World Campaign by sending a hand-knit baby yak to 24 people creating positive social change. When these changemakers receive their yak, they will help kick off the campaign by answering the question, “What are you doing to change the world today?” They will then take a picture with their yak, write a description of their cause or organization, and submit it to Shokay. Then it is then their turn to send the yak to another changemaker, spreading the campaign around the globe. The progress of each baby yak will be trackable on the website Dont Just Yak .  Follow @DontJustYak on Twitter.

Shokay is also sponsoring the Knit a Yak Program 2009 (Hong Kong), to raise public awareness on the issue of single elderly in Hong Kong’s East District through a community knitting campaign.

We congratulate Carol and Marie for designing a company with audacious and far-reaching positive goals for people and planet, thus illustrating the best of socially responsible commerce – with Chinese characteristics.

Elegant Roots Blog

We hear a lot of suspicions of Chinese-made products these days. The fears are understandable since they concern deep impact matters of child and pet safety – those dependents/innocents who need our protection and toward whom we need peace of mind. The headlines of recalls or product poisonings have all too often related to Chinese-made products.

The fears of everything Chinese, though, are irrational. We should avoid stereotyping such a large and diverse country as though it were a monolith of manufacturing carelessness. China is incredibly diverse ethnically, geographically, and yes, even in social responsibility and on green issues.

ElegantRoots.com is proud to be associated with a story of social responsibility expressed through an entrepreneurial spirit of doing good – all, as they say, with Chinese characteristics.

Shokay International is the brainchild and heartsong of some very special entrepreneurs, Marie So and Carol Chyau. As they say, Shokay represents luxury with a story and style with a touch of humanity.

Here’s the story: Traditional Tibetan yak herders living in the western Chinese province of Qinghai are minorities living at a dangerously low subsistence level. For centuries Tibetan herders have gathered raw yak fiber by combing out the yak’s undercoat, thus making yak down — a natural, sustainable, renewable and humane resource. Though yak down matches or exceeds alpaca and cashmere in luxurious softness and durability and is washable and lovely in its natural color, yak down has never had a reliable market for the herders to serve.

Meanwhile, Carol and Marie, one from Taiwan and the other from Hong Kong, were studying at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and The Wharton School. They were inspired to create a new business based on two core principles—the business had to be profit-making but not profit-maximizing and it had to have a positive social impact.

Carol and Marie discovered the marvels of yak down and the charms of the Tibetan herding culture. Intrigued by the exotic and lovely yak and the potential to help increase the sustainable income for one of China’s minority populations, Carol and Marie leaped into action. They created a business plan and won a $10,000 prize in the Harvard Business School Plan Contest. And, Shokay, (which is Tibetan for “yak down”), had its launch money.

Shokay started by building a fiber cooperative of 2600 Tibetans from the Hei Ma He Village. Unlike most customers, Shokay directly pays herders a fair price for yak down fiber, thus immediately and reliably putting money into herders’ hands.  Shokay then created other markets for the Hei Ma He villagers to help increase demand. Shokay reinvests a portion of its profits into a development fund to serve the Tibetan community’s greatest needs, such as healthcare and education.

Shokay now has two stores in Shanghai and an office in Qinghai Province. Its sales to 130 stores, mostly in Europe and Japan, have created a dependable international market for yak down that helps to support and preserve the traditional Tibetan nomadic culture and way of life. Elegant Roots is proud to be one in the US. It’s a great way to make a positive economic, social and environmental difference.

Shokay also supports another marginalized Chinese community by providing fairly paid work to the artisans of Chong Ming Island. These talented hand-knitters choose their own schedules and work location, including working from home that allows simultaneous care for their families.

Carol and Marie believe that introducing yak down to the world as a luxury fiber will increase market demand, increasing the value of the raw fiber and the price the herders receive. Carol and Marie started with their wonderful men’s and women’s yak accessories line, then introduced their amazing baby clothes in consult with Shanghai-based American designer Angie Wu: “I took Shokay’s mission as inspiration when designing the Tibetan-inspired [Hoodie] Baby Set.

On August 8, 2009, Shokay launched its Yak Around the World Campaign by sending a hand-knit baby yak to 24 people creating positive social change. When these changemakers receive their yak, they will help kick off the campaign by answering the question, “What are you doing to change the world today?” They will then take a picture with their yak, write a description of their cause or organization, and submit it to Shokay. Then it is then their turn to send the yak to another changemaker, spreading the campaign around the globe. The progress of each baby yak will be trackable on the website Dont Just Yak .  Follow @DontJustYak on Twitter.

Shokay is also sponsoring the Knit a Yak Program 2009 (Hong Kong), to raise public awareness on the issue of single elderly in Hong Kong’s East District through a community knitting campaign.

We congratulate Carol and Marie for designing a company with audacious and far-reaching positive goals for people and planet, thus illustrating the best of socially responsible commerce – with Chinese characteristics.

Debunking the Myth of Sustainable Brands

Let’s face it: there is no such thing as a ‘sustainable brand.’ Achieving true sustainability means constantly thinking about ways of giving back more than a company takes from the environment and society. In essence, sustainability means creating tangible value for stakeholders.

While brands are important corporate assets, the value they create for stakeholders tends to be largely intangible in nature. Brands themselves do not physically pollute, clean-up, employ, invent, invest, engineer, design, reach out, assist, collaborate and singlehandedly, they cannot save the world. Corporations and the networks, innovations and people inside them, on the other hand, can – and often do.

Irrespective of how catchy the phrase ‘sustainable brand’ is, the fundamental issue remains: either a company is sustainable, or it’s not.

Some companies approach sustainability with an unparalleled level of innovation and fearlessness. I have written about such companies numerous times in books, essays and articles, which is why I am so disappointed to see many of them continuously omitted from the surveys, articles, and highly-touted lists pulled together and promoted by the corporate social responsibility (CSR) industry – particularly those citing the “greenest,” “most ethical” or “most sustainable” citizens or brands.

In March, CRO Magazine chose Merck, Monsanto, Chevron, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Smithfield Foods and other questionable choices as “Best Corporate Citizens of 2009” (read my response here).

Last week, a survey released by Cohn & Wolfe, Landor Associates,  Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates; and, Esty Environmental Partners indicated that Clorox Green Works, not Seventh Generation, was the “Top Green Brand.”

Perhaps this result was to be expected given that Clorox Green Works now owns over 40 percent of the green cleaning category. But I found the result disappointing, since Seventh Generation is a 20-year old pioneer in the green cleaning market, a leader in green business practices, and is well on its way to becoming a truly sustainable company. Clorox Green Works was recently introduced and has basically relied on its marketing muscle and existing distribution infrastructure to achieve success with Green Works. Although the Green Works product line is a step in the right direction for Clorox, the company also markets highly profitable toxic products like Formula 409, Tilex, and Armor All.

As frustrating as Seventh Generation’s pass over was, the icing on last week’s faux ‘sustainable brand’ cake had to be Forbes’ lead story: “ExxonMobil: Green Company of the Year.”

Exxon’s latest marketing campaign sends a message to stakeholders: “Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges” while “preserving and protecting the environment.” Some people might buy that message, along with the company’s pitch that, despite its past and allegedly present efforts to fund global warming skeptics, a sizable investment in natural gas equals a genuine commitment to “going green.” But judging from the reader commentary posted on the Forbes website, not everyone is easily persuaded:

What are you smoking Forbes?? Besides Natural Gas?? Or did Exxon just buy a lot of advertising from you? Calling the company that denies global warming is real “green” is akin to calling the Mob a bunch of nice guys. Burning natural gas is not green, period. Cleaner, yes. But not green. Do some real investigative journalism and not just regurgitate some PR hack’s false truths!

As this reader commentary correctly points out, by calling an unsustainable company like ExxonMobil “green,” Forbes crosses the line between journalism and public relations. In the same way, by labeling other unsustainable and ethically dubious companies “Best Citizens,” “Greenest Brands,” “Sustainable Brands,” or what have you, the CSR industry is effectively perpetuating a standard of greenwash.

Greenwash is dangerous to our economy because it runs the risk of breeding consumer and investor cynicism toward genuinely sustainable companies that create environmental, social and financial value through the products they sell, the investments they make and the issues they relentlessly fight for. All of this ‘information greenwash’ being spun out of research groups, media companies and the CSR industry accumulates on the web over a period of months and years. In time, consumers and investors will be left with a data trove of incomplete and arguably inaccurate information with which to make investment and purchasing decisions. That means their money could end up in the wrong places – in companies and investment funds that, if they knew better, they would not support.

That problem is as serious as it is unjust.

Christine Arena is the author of The High-Purpose Company – The Truly Responsible (and Highly Profitable) Firms that are Changing Business Now Like what you just read? Get your daily dose of corporate insights.

Follow Christine Arena Twitter: @christinearena

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action Please

This time around I want to share some thoughts and ideas that came up for me this week about CSR and the conversations we have about it (and as a preview, if you keep reading, you’ll get to hear what Elvis Presley thinks of sustainability).

The other day I had the chance to sit in on a conference call and presentation hosted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business Office of Executive Education and their Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability(BSES) program. Part presentation and part sales pitch for the upcoming BSES in October, the webinar entitled “Sustainability Matters” was hosted by Professor William Barnett, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute at Stanford and Director of the BSES program.

Professor Barnett started out with a discussion of the Kuna Indian Nation living off the coast of Panama. According to Barnett, the Kuna demonstrate the harmony that can exist between indigenous people and their natural environment. They’ve lived a seemingly isolated existence in which they’ve developed incredibly sustainable farming practices without influence from the outside world.

Over time, the Kuna Indians that used to live in the interior country have started moving towards the coast, and although we might assume they continued with their sustainable ways, that turns out to not be the case. Instead, it appears the Kuna have been using the water along the coast as a virtual dumping ground, badly damaging the coral reefs and coastline. Barnett made the point that the Kuna serve as a perfect example that sustainability is not “one size fits all” – that is, what works in one place, or organization, or Indian Nation, might not work in another.

He then went on to give a quick overview of 3 important constituencies – businesses, environmental NGO’s, and governments – and the role that each plays in the sustainability conversation:

Business: Traditionally, sustainability (and CSR in general) in business has taken on a compliance function: making sure we stay out of trouble – a view that Barnett said ignores “potential for Triple Bottom Line opportunities”. While it doesn’t always directly pay to be green (that is, moving beyond the “low-hanging fruit” cost cutting measures that help the environment and save money), there are indirect benefits to these types of behaviors (ie: responding to consumer demand for environmental and social responsibility on the part of business). What’s really interesting here, Barnett pointed out, is that “it would be a disservice to assume that they [business and environmental goals] go hand-in-hand”. They are not always complimentary and trade-offs are common and inevitable.

Environmental NGO’s: Barnett said these types of organizations (including Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund) have gone through a “pragmatic shift” over the last decade – moving from aggressive activist to partner with business. Traditionally some of these organizations worked as antagonizers, but they are now learning when to fight and when to cooperate. Barnett said these organizations serve four main purposes: 1) helping consumers distinguish between “greening” and “greenwashing”; 2) creating and supporting certification programs and standards that showcase real environmental change; 3) educating business and consumers and raising awareness; and 4) working with government and regulators to develop solutions, identify constraints, and create change. In essence, these NGO’s are the middlemen that bridge the gap between business and government in sustainability.

Governments: Like compliance in business or activism in NGO’s, the traditional role of governments in sustainability was all about regulation. Today, Barnett said, governments are looking for ways to “harness markets to solve social problems”. In many ways, environmental solutions (like cap and trade, solar power, ecotourism, and others) have become the source of new markets by providing incentives for technological innovation that’s good for the environment.

After a couple of questions from the audience, the call ended – and while it was an interesting overview of the topic, I was left, truthfully, feeling a little deflated. Sure – what Barnett said made sense, and for folks looking for a primer on sustainability, it wasn’t a bad intro.

But I couldn’t help but channel a little Elvis Presley and think to myself:

I know it’s a little off-base but my point for bringing Elvis into this whole thing (beyond listening to some fun music) is this:

I’ve attended a lot of these sustainability events, and sat in on a lot of these calls, and finally gotten to the point where I’m hearing the same thing over and over again. After talking to a few of my friends in CSR and sustainability, they agreed with me. Together, we wondered: at what point does the conversation around sustainability strategy and execution actually become an action plan? How can we dive below the 30,000 foot view, to stop just talking about it and start doing it?

What’s interesting about this is that in some ways it showcases the problem that everyone’s having with sustainability. Sure, some people have been working in CSR for decades so they’re already “in the know”. And while I haven’t been involved myself for too long, I’ve taken proactive steps to immerse myself in these issues and drill down quickly. But in many cases and for many people, the conversation is so new, and the territory in some ways is so uncharted, that people and organizations aren’t acting as boldy as they should because they’re waiting for everyone to get on board. The priority right now is conversationand making sure we’re all on the same page. Thus, conversations like the one Barnett led are important first steps in engaging a wide and broad audience.

And yes, we do want this wide and broad audience to be involved and engaged – so I guess I can be a little more patient while the conversation slowly progresses forward. Change is slow, and talking about why we should change is even slower.

In the meantime, though, I don’t think I’ll be signing up for another webinar any time soon.

This blog was written by Ashley Parsons Jablow, a former nonprofit fundraiser and current MBA student/corporate philanthropy intern and founder of Changebase.

3BL Media’s distribution network continues to grow with the addition of top CSR and Sustainability websites that will be running 3BL Media news.

CSR Digest, Good Business International, Zoosa.org, Realized Worth, the Institute of Green Professionals (IGP), CSR Info, and Social Funds are just a few of the triple bottom line organizations that have recently partnered with 3BL Media to run 3BL’s CSR, Sustainability and Cause Marketing news and information.

“When we were approached by 3BL Media earlier this year to be a part of their affiliate program, we were pleased to join, since 3BL Media’s mission and goals dovetail with ours,” says Good Business International’s Ron Davison. Good Business International is a free public service information and research center dedicated to innovating new business models and documenting values-based social, economic, and environmental trends. “Both GoodB and 3BL Media are committed to advancing and promoting CSR and Sustainability and we wish them every success.”

3BL Media continues to welcome new partnerships with triple bottom line affiliates.

“Each partnership is exciting because every affiliate is contributing something different to the CSR space,” says 3BL Media co-founder Greg Schneider. “What we all share is a desire to deliver the best triple bottom line news and information to the widest audience possible.”