Triple Bottom Line... People, Planet, Prosperity
We’ve talked before about our version
of the triple bottom line – People, Planet, Prosperity. We focus on
people (community relationships, staff and volunteers), the planet (through our
Go Green program) and the prosperity of our area through the work we do in the
community, particularly in the three focus areas – all that kids can be;
poverty to possibility; healthy people, strong communities (which we call our
‘neighbourhood’ work).
This week gives us the opportunity to
focus on a portion of “people” (National Volunteer Week) and on the “planet”
(Earth Day) parts of our triple bottom line. We’ll be focusing on the
“prosperity” part of our triple bottom line in upcoming blogs... stay
tuned!
Passion,
Action and Achievement (PEOPLE, Planet, Prosperity)
Thank
you to all our volunteers!
This
week is National Volunteer Week, a time to recognize all those individuals who
“have acted of their own choice to meet a need without concern for monetary
benefit -- people who have translated their sense of civic responsibility into
action.”1 As Jan mentioned at our Community Spirit Awards in
February “community spirit is about passion, action and achievement!” and our volunteers certainly have a lot of
community spirit!
As an avid volunteer myself (I actually
have serviettes that say “stop me before I volunteer again!”, but so far I
haven’t paid any attention to them!) and someone who was a volunteer with
United Way KW before becoming a staff member, I was interested in looking at
our organization from the volunteer perspective...
United Way KW has long history of
volunteerism – over 71 years ago, a group of 11 volunteers met and
Kitchener-Waterloo Federated Charities, as we were known as in those days, was
born. The quote that comes to mind when I think of that group... “Never doubt
that a small group of thoughtfully committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead. Those 11
volunteers certainly started a change in our community!
Since
then many groups of people have made a commitment to our community by giving
their time, energy and passion to making a positive difference through United
Way KW. That small group has grown to thousands? of people, who have given
thousands of hours, helping with strategy, fundraising, community investment
and administrative work. The ‘work’ of the volunteers has changed with the
times and needs of the organization, has helped to make United Way KW the
respected and vibrant organization that it is today.
So...
thank you to all our volunteers, past and present. Change starts
here... and, we couldn’t do it without you!
1 Heritage Canada
Celebrating Earth Day: – People,
PLANET, Prosperity
“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth.
We are all crew.” Marshall McLuhan
Commander Chris Hadfield has done an
amazing job of showing us the beauty of our planet in a way that has captured a
world-wide following through the technology of Twitter. I’ve been interested in
seeing the planet from a bird’s eye view (or is that a ‘space-station’s eye
view’?) since I was young and I’m one of those followers who looks for the
photos of places I know, of places I want to know, and of course, of Kitchener
Waterloo and area.
What his tweets also show, and what he’s talked about is how fragile the earth is –
how it’s something we all have a part in taking care of.
In doing some ’surfing’ on this topic,
I found the following:
·
North
America has 8% of the world’s population, consumes 1/3 of the world’s resources
and produces ½ of the world’s garbage
·
On
average, each Canadian produces 2.2 kilograms of waste each day – 30 million
tonnes of waste per year
·
It
takes the earth 1.5 years to regenerate what we take out of it in one year
·
If
current population and consumption rates continue, by the 2030’s, we’ll need
two earths to support us
Kind of depressing, but, I believe
there is hope for our fragile planet... I recently attended the
Sustainable Waterloo Region (SWR) ‘Evening of Recognition’. Hearing what
others in our community are doing, what part they are playing in earth
sustainability, is inspiring – just having an organization like SWR, which is a
“made in Waterloo” idea, inspires me and gives me hope. United Way KW is
a proud to be a member of SWR. Although it feels sometimes that what we’re
doing through our Go Green program (‘doing as much as we can with as little as
possible’) is small and insignificant, going to an event like this reminds me,
that every little bit makes a difference, and when enough of us do that little
bit, it makes a big difference.
So... how are you going to play
your part in taking care of the earth? What ‘little bit’ are you going to
do to make a difference?
I'll leave you with this quote...
“...to be able to go away from the
world and look back at it, that’s almost the only way to see the world in the
true perspective - you see the fragility of it, you see the beauty of it, you
see how unique it is even in our own solar system. Standing here on the surface
and looking around you don’t really have the same understanding of it as seeing
it as one small precious life giving blue spaceship that we all live on and one
that we all need to take care of... ...{an astronaut’s perspective} one that
everyone needs to see in order for us to survive here on this earth.” Chris
Hadfield
PS – Wade Larson, who recently spoke at
TEDx Waterloo, through his company ‘Urthecast’ is working on
providing all of us with ‘an astronaut’s perspective’ of the earth from the
International Space Station. Coming late in 2013.
