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A Generation of Global Citizens: Craig Kielburger’s Keynote Address

By Nina Carduner

Award winning Canadian activist for children’s rights, Craig Kielburger gave the closing keynote speech of this year’s Global Washington conference. He opened with his own favorite moment from today’s agenda: the fast-pitch session, in which eleven organizations gave a two-minute presentation of their priorities and activities.  “It was an extraordinary moment,” Kielburger said. He then went on to talk more about his work in advocating for the rights of children, in North America and across the world.

Kielburger’s first inspiration came when, as a 12 year-old boy, he read a newspaper article about a 12 year old laborer boy killed in Pakistan. He organized his friends in school; they started a small group called Free the Children, and worked to make a difference for children across the globe. They quickly ran into their first barrier: since they were all children, most non-profit organizations did not take them seriously. In fact, one group they called said that if they really want to help, they could go find their parents’ credit cards. This early experience has fueled his work to empower children all over the world to feel they can make a difference.

Empowering youth has been a consistent theme for Kielburger. The importance of his work was underscored when, as a teenager, he received an extraordinary call  from the Dalai Lama, who invited Kielburger to a conference and a diverse group of international voices to discuss and answer one question: “what is the single greatest challenge facing our world?”

Every answer from poverty to climate change was dismissed as simply a matter of will to solve. After days of discussion and deliberation, the group came up with the answer. They decided that the world’s single greatest challenge was a lack of political will. Kielburger challenged the attendees of today’s conference to ask themselves, “how do we raise a generation so that every single person in the world can recognize that they, too, have be part of this movement toward social change?”

One of Kielburger’s current projects to answer this question is a multi-location event called We Day, where 20,000 children and youth of all ages convene to be inspired by change makers, popular musical acts, celebrities, and world leaders. Each attendee earns a ticket for this special event through local and global service. Essentially, although tickets are free, the attendees must donate time, energy, and enthusiasm to a cause of their choice. To date, We Day has been a regular event in Canada and various parts of the world. Seattle will be the first stop on We Day’s US tour in March, 2013.

In closing, Kielburger told the story of a Quechua word “minga,” which is the coming together of people for the collective good. When he learned this word on a trip to Ecuador, he couldn’t answer a local woman who asked him for an equivalent word in English. To that effect, he emphasized the need for “mingas” in families, schools, and around to world, but we also need mingas in the non-profit world to move “from silos to impact.”

As a final theme to an inspiring day of dialogue, interaction, and connection, Kielburger encourage the audience to continue their work. “It’s time to raise a generation of global citizens.”

2012 Global Hero Award: Therese Caouette

By Nina Carduner

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn presented the second annual Global Hero Award, which recognizes a Washington-based change agent who has made significant contributions to global issues. In light of Seattle’s Next 50 celebration, Mayor McGinn shared his appreciation for being the mayor of a city that is full of people dedicated to connecting locally in efforts to leverage global social change. He recalled that, 50 years ago, Seattle sowed the early seeds of innovation and outward facing compassion when the city hosted the ambitious 1962 World’s Fair. We may not have fully understood the challenges we would face, but thanks to those early innovators, Seattle is “known for caring,” leadership in creativity, innovation, and deep compassion for everyone in the world. As a city and a community, McGinn said, Seattle reflects a group of people who connect their values both locally and globally.

This year, the Global Hero Award went to Therese Caouette, Executive Director for Partners Asia, in recognition of three decades’ work with organizers and advocates in Southeast Asia. Caouette’s work has emphasized community engagement as a means to building leadership and skills to bring resources to the local levels where they are most needed. Using participatory models in research and development projects has been the cornerstone of her work with refugees, migrants, and displaced persons across Southeast Asia and most recently, on the Myanmar border. In a brief acceptance speech, Caouette spoke movingly of the progress made by refugee and displaced persons communities on the borders of Myanmar. She is currently a faculty member at the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand.

The Evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility: Development, Fair Trade, and Best Practices

By Nina Carduner

Plenary Panel, Redefining Development: From Silos to Collective Impact

• Raymond C. Offenheiser, President, Oxfam America
• Joe Whinney, Founder & CEO, Theo Chocolate
• Amir Dossal, Founder and Chairman, Global Partnerships Forum
• Moderator: Bill Clapp, Founder, Global Washington & Seattle International Foundation

Moderated by Bill Clapp of the Seattle International Foundation and Global Washington, the panel addressed recent trends in public-private partnerships, as well as some of the changes both sectors have had to make in order to create lasting social impact. One major trend has been the increase in direct foreign investment from the private sector. Twenty years ago, the primary funding for foreign economic development came from multilateral government agencies. Over the last decade, aid funding has been decreasing as world governments face significant domestic economic challenges. Meanwhile, large corporations and small businesses alike are beginning to invest and trade in the world’s poorest countries, which has exposed them to challenges and risks they may not have faced domestically. Foreign governments are challenging these companies to prove they are doing good work for development in those countries; this has lead to deep discussions on supply chains and their environmental and social impacts. Now, companies are generating new compliance standards and some have even adopted the human rights charter into existing company policy. Coca Cola has been a prime example of this type of socially-oriented evolution in the private sector, working to increase social responsibility while keeping costs down. Ray Offenheiser of Oxfam observed, “we are moving toward globalization 2.0.”

Amir Dossal, founder and chairman of the Global Partnerships Forum, expanded on this notion by adding that companies are not just asking, “how can we make profits?” but also, “how can we do good at the same time?” He cited MTV’s working in conjunction with Coca Cola to address HIV/AIDS in Africa: to raise awareness, education, and supply basic resources to combat the spread of infection. To Dossal, the rhetoric of corporate social responsibility has gradually evolved into corporate leadership in terms of individual social responsibility. As individuals realize the need for social responsibility, corporations in turn take on a larger share of best practices in development and philanthropy.

Offenheiser articulated a few effective methods that Oxfam America has found in creating successful public-private partnerships. These methods include building core competencies in the public sector to approach and understand the perspective of private sector companies, as well as leveraging changes in company policy to increase beneficial outcomes. Most effective has been the use of “quiet dialogues” to engage progressive minded companies, eager to incorporate sustainable social practices into their supply change, but not ready to go public with their efforts. These dialogues often result in new norms for company behavior and involvement from trade associations.

Joe Whinney of Theo Chocolate brought a private sector perspective to the panel. Consumer engagement and transparency are the keys to creating social benefit in the supply chain; Theo Chocolate’s business model centers on paying cocoa farmers fair prices for their product, which they believe produces a higher quality chocolate. Thanks to customer engagement and unprecedented transparency on all company policies, handbooks, practices, and pricing (which is all available online), Theo Chocolate has been able to create an educated consumer base that is willing to pay a higher price for higher quality.  Whinney emphasized the importance of these practices in an unconventional recommendation for the current USAID budget: “take half of the USAID budget and put it into consumer education in the global north so you can build an educated market that is willing to pay for a better product. At the end of the day, it’s consumer education that pulls future investment.”

As Dossal exclaimed, “When you do this work in silos, you have less opportunity to have impact. It’s not just about me, it’s about us working together. Once you do that, you start seeing solutions and impact through a different prism.”