Lunch with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt
Another report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland
I'm pelting around in the snow from hotel to hotel to join meetings on Corporate Social Responsibility, Poverty and Girls Education, Women's Issues, Hunger in Africa, CO2, Social Return on Investment (SROI) etc., using the gathering as a big university campus and a chance to network with kindred spirits.
One chance meeting was at a presentation that I led, "Does an economy need morals?" - at the last moment, two empty chairs opposite me at the lunch table were taken by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who were keen to find out more about how People Tree works with small scale producers and the challenges we face. Although she modestly describes herself as a "student of fair trade", Angelina (a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR) really understands human rights and social justice.
When I sat down after delivering my passionate speech, Angelina shot me the most gorgeous smile across the table, and we all discussed together for an hour and half about how, to promote Fair Trade, there needs to be more awareness-raising about the problems with conventional trade. Needless to say I got so carried away I barely touched my lunch.
Clearly we need large corporations to re-evaluate urgently their social and environmental impact on the world. Large corporations need to meet their legal obligations immediately - and one way to make this happen is buying and campaigning for Fair Trade.
Highlight of the day: Dancing at the closing party of the WEF to great jazz with musicians from New Orleans.
At Davos Soirée, with two other social entrepreneurs James Fruchterman, Chairman of Benetech and Martin Fisher, Founder & CEO of KickStart
45% of the world's population don't trust big business
Being creative about solving the world's problems: a report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland
This year's WEF agenda encouraged participants to discuss and take the lead to find creative solutions to the world's problems - and gosh, I do hope they move quickly . . . Together with the 2,300 business delegates are world experts from the leading development agencies and environmental NGOs, foundations, universities and think tanks, and us "social entrepreneurs". Forty people like me, all running different companies and organisations at grassroots level, creating livelihoods for the most marginalised people, protecting people's rights.
Someone should write a pocket guide to economics that gives concrete examples of how the so-called "free" market system isn't free at all. I'm sure this is why I gave up my economics A-level half way through, frustrated to hear how Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and "perfect information exchanged between producer and consumer" mean that a fair price can be reached. It doesn't take a particularly bright 17-year-old to work out that the reality is quite different. Presumably most of the business elite at Davos have realized this too, but for some reason the debate always starts on the basis that we have a "free" market, and anything extra for the community at large is nice of companies to do.
A book like this would save a lot of time and might cut down some of the 220 or so other meetings during the 5-day Davos programme. More importantly, it would also help to slow down the exploitation of the world's natural resources and help over a billion people to escape from the poverty trap. It would also help to nurture a better kind of economics and business graduate.
A leading union representative and regular at Davos quite rightly became passionate when reminding the audience at the workshop on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that ILO labour standards have been agreed by all nations some fifty years ago, so business should not still be ignoring them. In practice the prices of the products that we buy rarely reflect the basic human rights of the people who toil to make them. If companies were simply to meet their legal obligations on labour rights and environmental regulations, we would find that poverty would be reduced on a massive scale. Yes, products might cost a bit more, but I'd rather pay a bit more now, than later, in associated climate change and the continued misery of global poverty and unrest.
Highlight of the day: Having lunch with Rory Stear of Freeplay.
What's a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?
Meeting the global elite: A report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland
Spending a week with the world's elite in a remote ski resort in Switzerland was the furthest thing from my mind two years ago. Then suddenly, People Tree's work was picked up on the radar screen of Klaus and Hildi Schwab, who as well as being founders of the WEF in 1972, founded the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Never having won so much as a swimming prize, I was really surprised to be acknowledged as one of the world's "Outstanding Social Entrepreneurs". And that's how my journey to WEF meetings began.
I am here to share my experience of Fair Trade and how People Tree works to impact poor people's lives in the developing world. I will also be giving a couple of talks on the need for morals and values in business. We all hope we can have some influence on decisions that may otherwise further undermine human rights, development and environmental sustainability.
Social Entrepreneurs (SEs) are people who use a business model for social innovation. I am really lucky to be here with 40 other SEs, working in a range of areas from Fair Trade, income creation, human rights, homelessness, etc. including Mel Young, founder of the Big Issue Scotland, Gillian Caldwell from WITNESS, Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy, founder of Barefoot College India, Martin Fisher, co-founder of Kick-Start East Africa and other amazing people.
Fortunately, whilst travelling here, I had four hours to wade through a programme of hundreds of meetings, to decide what to attend. Scattered over a dozen hotels and the Congress Centre, my Thursday 26th starts at 7am with a breakfast meeting on global issues, moves back and forth around the village between 8 venues, and finishes at 11pm with a Dinner for Civil Society. Just like last month at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong (where People Tree put on a Fair Trade Fashion Show to great acclaim and front page news), I find myself not part of the establishment and not part of the protestors; the movement in Social Entrepreneurship is working with one foot in the "business" world and one in the movement for Social Justice.
I'll be shuffling around from place to place in snow boots and ski wear, with my Fair Trade Sunday best underneath and heels in a bag, for the meetings. I'm literally walking the Fair Trade talk. Highlights of the day: sledging 20 minutes down from my hotel to the village, from the pitch black of night (and not being able to stop myself scream) with a dozen other SEs.
Check back soon to find out how I get on.
