Anyone familiar with me and my articles will recognise that I have two main themes: support for women, and in particular older women workers, and investing for profit and for good.
I am regularly reminded why women should be supported.
Take water, now recognised as the number one threat to the world economy. The following was taken from a BBC article
About Sourcing Water
“As anyone who has done a survival course can tell you, we can survive weeks without food but only a matter of days without water.
Of course, many of us are lucky enough to have water on tap, but according to the UN, only 42% of people in rural areas had access to clean water in 2004. For those people, sourcing water can take a great deal of effort and ingenuity.
The Hamar of Ethiopia, for example, must walk long distances in gruelling temperatures to get water from their nearest wells. And that’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is carrying the water back for the other villagers since water is anything but light.
In fact, water is so heavy that carrying it any great distance is often a very inefficient way to keep yourself topped up. When women and children from the Tubu tribe set off across the desert for market, they know that the walk will take them eight days in temperatures that can exceed 45°C. They also know that the only way to survive is by remembering the location of a single well along the way, their only lifeline in a sea of emptiness.
Relying on the navigational skills passed down by their mothers, the women must take their bearings from the stars and read the shapes of the sand dunes. But take one wrong turn in these ever-shifting sands and death may be just around the corner.”
Those of us who are privileged to have clean running water on tap can take steps to avoid future conflict over water by investing in new ways to recover and deliver it. That assists women, minimises conflict and provides a profit to you.
A very obvious shift is happening in my world, no longer is making short term profit the focus but taking a longer and more considered approach is returning to our consciousness.
Thirty years ago, when the high street banks started to feed us a dream of wealth, without explaining the responsibilities that brought, Greed became Good. Money and its acquisition the end in itself. A very different approach to banking than what had gone before.
It all sounded very empowering, the man in the street now had access to what had previously been the exclusive privilege of the already wealthy. We were encouraged to “invest in British Companies “ through the new Personal Equity Plans (now ISAs) privatisation was an opportunity for Cyril to take a share in some of our country’s assets.
I have never been one to criticise profit, businesses need it to employ people and invest in its future and that of its customers. I do however object to profit being made at the expense of the majority. Profit and wealth, in my grandfather’s day, were to be shared.
Bling was vulgar
Investing in future technology and new ways of managing the earth’s resources, work for me. Ensuring the companies I invest in are looking after their employees, the resources they use and the environment they operate in, works for me.
If you are not already investing to make a profit and also to make a difference, I encourage you to reconsider.
The property crash, the banking failures and the subsequent recession came from a mind set that looked continually and only at profit, never at quality.
That profit was often illusionary.
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