We send our love and solidarity to everyone in these challenging times.
It's time to take stock. To reflect. And to think about the kind of world we want to live in.
Humanity is working together to fight this pandemic. It is encouraging to see how within weeks people have fundamentally changed their long-held habits like shaking of hands. It makes us hopeful that we as humanity have the ability to change other long-held habits and can start fighting many of the other long term crises the world is facing such as climate change and inequality. Together we want to build a better capitalism, a compassionate capitalism, driven by solving global problems.
For the countries we work in including Brazil, Colombia, Uganda, Kenya and India the pandemic could have horrifying consequences. Developing and emerging markets with densely populated areas and less developed healthcare systems will be even less capable to weather this crisis than Europe. Measures being advised globally, are simply not applicable everywhere.
What are we doing?
Since mid-last week, all the Yunus Social Business offices have moved into a remote working mode. We know that small and medium businesses will suffer the most. We have reached out to all our portfolio social businesses to understand how they are affected and how we can help overcome these challenges. We have also reached out to our corporate partners to understand how we can help them to alleviate this crisis and how we can build a more resilient society that is able to come together against pandemics, climate change or poverty.
We are tirelessly working with our partners to develop concrete measures that alleviate the pressure on social businesses around the world. If you would like to help support the social businesses in continuing their essential services in these difficult times, feel free to reach out to info@yunussb.com or Make A Donation.
Stay home and take care of each other.
In 2022, Yunus Social Business (YSB) and Audi embarked on a journey of social procurement together with the intention to learn, innovate, and take the lead on using business as a force for good. Now at the start of the 2nd year on this journey, YSB speaks with Lukas Petersik of Audi to hear about his experience as a corporate intrapreneur striving to turn value chains into a force for good.
Networks exist in many forms and serve a vast array of different purposes. There’s the beautiful synergies in nature that allow humans and trees to breathe each other’s waste, and there’s the way that organisations function through a distributed network of interacting social animals. In all these examples, shared purpose and communication (of one type or another) are key.
Have you heard of Giving Tuesday before? It is a movement to create an international day of charitable giving at the beginning of the Christmas and holiday season. Today we are encouraging you to spare what you can to create a better world - for the future of all of us.