As a Social Entrepreneur, are you walking on any backs?

Today is International Women's Day so lettuce take a moment to reflect.

If you are trying to grow a radishly different enterprise then you know about challenges. You'll also recognize opportunities. Some of the opportunities will be challenging and others will seem easy (peas-y). A day honouring women is a day honouring challenges for that is what women, globally, have faced for millennia. Systems of oppression remain firmly esconced throughout much of our globe and there remain many challenges despite a century of ardent feminism. The problems that remain are so pervasive it is hard to know where to start.

As a social entrepreneur you may well know the arduousness of evaluating the moral relevance of each and every decision you make as a business owner. A group of us recently joked about the discussions that likely took place over the Toronto District Beekeepers Association's full glossy flyer. The joke started a brief conversation about why they went with such an expensive (and surely not environmentally sustainable) piece of promotional gear (it is quite durable so could possibly be reused or is meant to be passed around from the original person who picked it up).

These are not trivial matters to the socially conscious entrepreneur. I personally know one social entrepreneur who will never use anything but digital material for promotion due to the environmental costs of anything but even bytes leave an environmental mark.

The posting I wrote about the Cupcake Economy was the first in what I hope to be a series that examines the phenomena of social entrepreneurs and their organizations metaphorically walking on the backs of those forced by circumstance to accept work that does not provide a living wage.  I focused on the wage issue in that first post but now I wish to focus on the living component.

I like what my friend Michael Sacco, founder of Chocosol Traders, has to say about earning a living. As a successful social entrepreneur, he strives for something he and Wayne Roberts are calling "Subsistence Plus". My understanding of their philosophy is this: Make enough to support yourself and your family plus a little extra to have fun with. Fun is a very flexible term which for some might include a vacation and for others an exhaustive classical music collection and yet others it could be simply the means to support charitable work. At it's heart I believe the subsistence plus philosophy means living with as little ego as possible.

How do we reflect that in our decisions as social entrepreneurs? Do we hire interns knowing that they will need to have another source of income (or charity) in order to live independently? Do we import cheap migrant labour that you know have to leave their families and communities so that they are not actually living a full life (as most of us, globally, would agree that living with ones' chosen family is desirable and is what I mean by saying a 'full' life) while earning their (mostly grossly underpaid) wages?

Or do you limit your organization's social responsibilities to issues of environmental sustainability which translates to the question of treading as lightly on Mother Earth's back as possible?

Today, on International Women's Day, it is important to recognize that as Social Entrepreneurs, we can no longer just consider Mother Earth's back. Equally imperative is the question of whether your business is treading, perhaps unwittingly, on the backs of the oppressed and voiceless. Ensuring a living wage is provided for all stakeholders in your organization is a goal that every Social Entrepreneur should be striving towards. So please, take a moment today to ask whether your organization, your suppliers, your customers, and your employees are all providing opportunities for a living wage in all of their business practices.

If the answers are not satisfactory, what will you do about it?  And also, I'd love if you'd share your ideas!

Click through to buy this (first ever) UN song released today.

Amplification: Playing Well With Others

This post has one central thesis:

Social Media:  

Has become much more about Media than Social.

These thoughts come after getting called out on a facebook thread by a prominent left wing activist for using the word sheeple. It is still not clear to me if this person understood what culture jamming is since they did not respond to my suggestion that the culture jamming nature of this currently going viral video inserted the 'on the surface' misogynistic reference to get the 'sheeple' to start to talk about how today's conversations about important ideas quickly degenerate into ridicule about a person's appearance instead of the bigger picture. By not acknowledging that this video is perhaps part of a larger culture jamming effort about environmental racism this person, in fact, has behaved like a sheeple. Irony.

This is what has kept us down. Conflict should end in both people seeing an issue in new - and better - ways. That is the essence of innovation (a subject I'm an academic expert in). Although I originally started out as an expert in innovation in the technological sense, I am increasing concerned with innovation in the moral sense. Progress has been rampant in the former and seems to have stalled on the latter.

The optics of conflict diminish authority. Here at Lettuce Connect we will remain a community of people and enterprises that are working towards a better world in various ways and until someone (or some organization) personally harms me or my family I remain determined to stay non partisan on any issue.

Destroying the planet is definitely something that will harm me and my family so I am willing to make an effort to see how others are contributing to the dialogue to increase awareness on this issue. Culture jamming offers unique opportunities to challenge the messaging we are receiving. In essence, it is taking ownership of the media by bringing the social back into the equation. It is forcing Media to acknowledge the Social adjective technology has thrust upon it.

In a similar vein, fellow Knowledge Professional and newly christened Faculty Member of the Academy of the Impossible, Seb FoxAllen, wrote an excellent piece on how to better connect the dots between Social and Media on the web. In it, he sagely advises:

So troll power, not struggle; troll patriarchy, not feminism; troll hypocrisy, not disagreement; troll structure, not station: troll upwards, not downwards. But resist the rush to concede the perch of the troll; it’s all many of us have left.

If we continue to divide amongst ourselves we will be conquered. Division amongst progressives leads to rants like this one (unintentionally?) exemplifying activism fatigue (written by another fellow Knowledge Professional cityslkr).

If we want to get our messaging out i.e. Amplify it, we need to learn to play well with others online. We have to make an effort to not have a knee jerk response and take things personally. We need to learn to stop and ask questions, nicely (unless you are trolling up!). Like that book from now long ago advised us: everything we needed to learn we learned in kindergarten. In the online world, and in the context of operating and messaging for a Social Enterprise, we will move mountains together if we play well with others.  Remember this the next time you read something you don't agree with and want to jump in and criticize immediately. Step back. Breath. Make your new online mantra:  Troll Up, Not Down and the playground will get friendlier.

And now, most importantly, like that Art Attack guy used to say - go out and try it yourself!

The Cupcake Economy

Aiding and abetting the flourishment and nourishment of social enterprises should not rely on what I've coined the 'cupcake economy' yet I see a lot of examples of it.  On my personal blog awhile back I ranted on the issue. And just the other day I saw a posting for a part time job in Toronto for a sales representative to do promotion talks for a non-profit urban agriculture garden set up and maintainance service.  The advertisement indicated only that is was part time and didn't say how many hours were to be expected.  That alone was irritating.  After a demanding list of qualifications (previous sales experience being the really relevant bit) I got to the juicy cupcake-y bit:

So let's get this straight, in a city that has up to an 81 minute commute time (one way) I would be the lucky recipient of $20 if I spend a possible 162 minutes in my car and then 60 minutes presenting (or more, especially since you are itching for the $10 bonus that might cover half your gas).  Let's do the hourly wage math on that:  162 minutes + 60 minutes = 222 minutes or approximately 3.7 hours.  If we divide $20  by 3.7 that works out to a whopping $5.41/hour that will help fund the gas/insurance/capital costs of getting to these gigs. If you close the deal you'll bump that to a whopping $8.11/hr which is still 79% of Ontario's minimum wage. Benefits you ask?  We've got publicly funded health care, right? [Click here for the pdf of a thorough 2009 report that debunks the myth that the working poor having adequate health care.]

But hey..as long as your 'passionate about local food' that should make standing in the food bank line up easier and you'll have lots to talk about at the homeless shelter you sometimes shack up in because with those wages you sure aren't gonna be able to have a car, a home, AND food. The job description is pretty clear that the car is your priority if you sign up with these guys.

On a more serious note, the reality of the cupcake economy is large in a world where unemployed youth are scrambling to find meaningful work. The world wide crisis in youth unemployment and a move towards a secular western society (here's a recent American study on the growth of 'unaffiliated') are leaving large societal gaps that struggling new social enterprises are taking advantage of in droves.  If you're passionate about something it is all well and fine to volunteer some time towards the cause but be wary of enterprises that insult you with 'jobs' that are really volunteer positions that offer little to no honorarium (like most internships).

If a job doesn't at least meet a living wage, or if you are not clear about your own non-monetary benefits (as in, it would be good to do this abysmally or non paying job aka internship so I can learn how to promote my own similar social enterprise) - why would you take it? Be very wary. Cupcakes might be delicious but they are basically empty calories.

Our reliance on low paid or non paid work in the social enterprise 'industry' belittles the authority of the social enterprise movement in the long run. So, just like our bodies need good quality calories, our economy needs good quality jobs to move forward.  And just like good food costs more, good jobs do too.  Plan accordingly when mapping out your social enterprise. Ensure that employees receive a living wage from the start. Why should they invest social capital in your social enterprise otherwise?

(As an aside, I personally know the people who posted this job which is why I didn't publicly out them.  I believe they are earnest young social entrepreneurs but I am appalled at their lack of professionalism in the posting and the remuneration scheme.)