CSR Minute: Google Stops Censoring in China; Equator Coffee and Teas’ Facebook Store

Corporate Social Responsibility News: Google Stops Censoring in China, Announces Unethical Hacking; Equator Artisan Coffees and Teas’ FaceBook Store

CSR Minute: GE Partners with China; Boston College Corporate Citizenship Advice

Corporate Social Responsible News: GE Partners with China; BOS College Center for Corporate Citizenship on Web Advice

Yahoo Homepage Features App With Daily Environmental Quizes And Facts That Plant Trees And Knowledge

Launching the week after Global Climate Week (Sept 20th – 26th), mokugift’s GreenLifestyle daily quiz and green fact-sharing application on Yahoo!’s homepage empowers up to 118 million* individuals to make every week Global Climate Week.  By taking three daily quiz questions, users can learn new environmental facts every day in just a few minutes.  With a few more clicks of the mouse, they can challenge a few friends to a quiz and pleasantly surprise them with new green knowledge.

For busy users, with a single click of the mouse, they can broadcast a daily environmental fact to friends that use Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger 10 through Yahoo! Updates.  Anyone can add Mokugift’s GreenLifestyle app to his or her Yahoo! homepage exploring the My Favorites application gallery on Yahoo.com.

Mokugift’s GreenLifestyle is a break from the gloom and doom of economic and environmental news.  GreenLifestyle gives everyone the opportunity to learn about the environmental choices that they are empowered to make in their daily lives.  Sharing this knowledge is a positive experience that they can enjoy every day.

Organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Global Climate Week 2009 (theme: ‘Seal The Deal’) focused attention on raising awareness of the upcoming crucial climate policy meeting in Copenhagen, in December 2009.  Through its “Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign,” UNEP is appealing to global citizens to achieve the goal of planting seven billion trees—roughly one tree for every living person on the planet—by the end of 2009.

Users of mokugift’s GreenLifestyle earn points by answering quiz questions correctly and by challenging friends to quizzes.  The top 1,000 users of each month get to plant a real tree for free via mokugift.  Points are reset to zero each month, so everyone has a chance to plant a tree for free and do their part in the Billion Tree Campaign.

Mokugift’s GreenLifestyle gives the all users the opportunity plant a real tree as a gift for a friend for $1 apiece.  Mokugift trees are planted by farmers practicing environmentally sustainable forestry and agricultural methods in tropical zones in Central America, Africa and Asia. The plantings not only restock, with native trees, existing forests that have been depleted, but also contribute to more diverse, productive and economically sustainable land-use systems. An average tropical tree absorbs 50 pounds of carbon dioxide annually over its lifetime, providing enough clean oxygen for two people.

Yahoo.com is one of the most popular homepages in the US and the world, with approximately 118 million monthly visitors (comScore, August 2009).  “Yahoo! gives us an amazing opportunity to make environmental education a fun and easy daily activity for 118 million individuals.” says mokugift co-founder Krates Ng. “Yahoo! is a great partner in our mission to empower more people to participate in the UNEP Billion Tree Campaign”.

An official partner of UNEP, mokugift not only empowers people to participate in the Billion Tree Campaign, it also provides the tools to inspire others to participate. Tree planting is an easy first step to a more environmentally responsible lifestyle, and Mokugift enables anyone concerned about climate change—even those lacking access to planting space—to make a difference. Mokugift.com fosters global environmental solidarity by letting everyone see how their actions inspire their friends, and friends of friends, to take part in the Billion Tree Campaign.

Anyone receiving a mokugift tree receives their own mokugift.com web page, a virtual island that serves as a platform for encouraging others to plant trees themselves or “gift” trees to others. Active promoters of tree planting via mokugift receive acknowledgement for their achievement on the site and are rewarded with free tree planting. The planting of real mokugift trees is administered by award-winning nonprofit agroforestry organizations such as Trees For The Future and Sustainable Harvest International.

Mokugift invites everyone to try out GreenLifestyle on Yahoo! and start their day with positivity and empowerment to make a difference in the fight against climate change.

*comScore, August,2009

About UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign
Launched in November 2006 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the objective of encouraging the planting of at least one billion trees worldwide each year, “Plant for the Planet: The Billion Tree Campaign” is now recognized as one of the UN’s most successful environmental campaigns. To date, UNEP has tracked the planting of more than three billion trees in 166 countries. Now in its second stage, the campaign, which stresses the power of partnerships, has set a new goal of seven billion trees planted before the end of 2009—roughly one tree for every living person on the planet.  Every tree counts, and UNEP counts every tree.

For more information on the UNEP’s billion tree campaign, please visit
http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/

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Shareholder Communications Forum to be Streamed Live … All of the Sessions, None of the Travel!

Insight Forums, LLC today announced that it is providing a video stream of its Shareholder Communications Symposium to public company and fund firm executives who cannot attend in person. The event is being held October 6 and 7 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago, and streams of all sessions on both days are being made available. Registration for online participation for both days and access to session recordings after the event is just $175 and may be secured at
http://www.insightforums.com/?sub=394
.

The Shareholder Communications Symposium is an exclusive forum dedicated to helping governance, shareholder communications and investor relations professionals balance cost and service, and gain additional benefits in the form of environmental stewardship and improved brand equity. Sessions include coverage of such issues as Notice & Access, Summary Prospectus, Virtual Shareholder Meetings, Retail Proxy Voting, Social Media for Public Companies, Plain Language and Sustainability; for details, see either the event Web site at www.insightforums.com/scs2009.php or an interactive “Zmag” description at
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/0619a12d#/0619a12d/5
. Symposium exhibits are co-located with those of the Document Strategy Forum.

“We know that schedules and travel budgets are tighter than ever, and streaming seemed the obvious and immediate answer,” said Steve Weissman, Program Director and Senior Analyst at Insight Forums. “While it doesn’t substitute for the in-person networking and collaboration the on-site attendees will enjoy, it does open the door to people who otherwise would miss it completely.”

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Tuesday Tracts: Social Enterprise, A Fish Story

Ordinarily, we write Tuesday Tracts to feature people who promote social justice through enterprise. www.elegantroots.com/blog/

Today, though, it’s about the nature of social enterprise. Social enterprise blurs the distinction between “not-for-profit” and “for profit” entities. For-profit social enterprises, though organized to realize a profit, are not organized to maximize profit. Rather, the moving force is the notion that commercial viability through the opening of markets for economically marginalized people creates a strong, resilient and vibrant level of security and stability that improve all facets of life: nutrition, health, independence, education, etc.

The elegant notion at ElegantRoots.com, from which we take our name, is that a people’s traditional arts when applied to a commercially viable design create a win-win for artisan and recipient. But only when a market can be opened and maintained for the resulting product, the artisan wins, enjoying a traditional lifestyle and a growing independence, rather than being forced into the ever growing but not sustaining large urban sprawls. The purchaser wins by having a nonpareil product from the touch of an artisan’s hand.

Creating a market for these products extends the benefits of globalization to people who have been otherwise left out.

But I promised you a fish story.

You know the old proverb: give a person a fish and you feed her for one day, teach a person to fish and you feed him for a lifetime…. Well, social enterprise pushes this further: Buy fish from a person at a fair price and you improve lives in a community immeasurably in innumerable ways beyond a full stomach.

Especially when you apply the long tail of the internet. E-commerce is the perfect way to create a market big enough for these wonderful, specialty products.

Read more: www.elegantroots.com/blog/

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