Happy New Year!

Fact: 2010 will be a better year than 2009.  Fact: 2010 will be a year that makes 2009 look great.  Both will be true.  2010 hopefully will be a better year in all the areas that impact the state of the planet and its people.  Human rights, healthcare, environment, education, social justice – Factivist will be unearthing and revealing those facts that will ignite the powerful and the powerless to make a positive difference.  You’re invited to share with us any facts, data, revelations you come across that you believe should be shared in the form of a Factivist message.  To jumpstart the conversation about what kind of trends, issues, facts will be at the forefront of 2010, here’s a link to 15 predictions for 2010.  Some aren’t surprising, some are.  http://tinyurl.com/ycf29h2

From all of us at Factivist – here’s to a happy, healthy 2010 for all of humanity!

Happy Holidays!

If you received our December 23rd holiday mailing officially revealing Factivist to our online community, you have found yourself reading this.  It’s our wish this holiday season that the work you are doing to make the world a better place results in great success!   It’s also our wish that the work we are doing at Factivist serves as an inspiration to you and others.  You’ll see our web site features ten different Factivist messages dealing with issues ranging from hunger to healthcare, environment to energy.  We are featuring ten as a reference to the organization that founded Factivist, Good for Business.  Good for Business is currently celebrating its Tenth anniversary.  Factivist is an initiative that is part of this celebration.

We truly welcome your thoughts and feedback on Factivist.  We hope that you become a regular visitor to Factivist to see what new issues we are taking on and how you and others can take action.

Happy Holidays from all of us at Factivist!Hpp

Equal Pay, Poor Kids, Consuming Planets, Saving Oceans

The four recent Factivist messages spotlight interrelated topics.   We address the fact that women continue to be underpaid in relationship to what men make.  In fact, for Latinas, women make just 59¢ on the  $1.00 men are paid.  Economists point out that if the equal pay discrepancy were erased, it would be a significant step toward alleviating poverty. On the topic of  poverty, one of the most beautiful and wealthy states in the United States has the fastest growing rate of children living in poverty.   Colorado, the Columbine State, has experienced an 85% growth in childhood poverty population since 2000.  Today, nearly 200,000 live in poverty in the State that Aspen, Boulder and Beaver Creek call home.  And what about everyone’s home – planet earth?   If the all the people of world decide to live the way most of us live in North America, we’ll need 5 more planet earth’s to survive.  We need to stop buying and consuming what we want and focus on what we truly need to be happy – much of it being  stuff money can’t necessarily buy – things like truth, beauty, compassion, art, relationships, love – things that keep our souls and spirits afloat rather than sinking deeper and deeper into a sea of stuff.  Deep thoughts? Our oceans are in deep trouble.  90% of our big fish have been eliminated from our big waters since 1950.  Fish like shark, dolphin, tuna, marlin, swordfish, halibut, cod, etc.   In fact, if we keep fishing the way we are today, we’ll have no ocean fish, including sole to feed our souls by 2048.

Now, all these facts shouldn’t paint a picture of hopelessness.  Fact is, you can do something about equal pay for women right now by going to nwlc.org/fairpay.  You can give a hand to children living in poverty Colorado at coloradokids.org.  You can help reduce the human footprint and reduce the need to order up planets number 2,3 and 4 by visiting storyofstuff.com/anotherway.  And you can start fishing for real answers for keeping 70% of our planet alive and  healthy at sharksavers.org

If you know of other organizations that are truly making a difference in these areas, let us know at Factivist and we’ll do what we can to spread the word about their good actions.

 

Business for Social Responsibility Conference

As is usually the case, attending the annual BSR conference is inspiring and energizing.  However, at this year’s conference in San Francisco was the first time ‘Factivist’ was present.  Listening and interacting from the Factivist point of view provided a whole new perspective on how business can be a force for good (considering the fact that 44% of the worlds largest global economies are corporations).  ‘Transparency’ has always been a leading theme at BSR conferences, but this time, transparency directly was translated into truth-telling – and telling the truth in a way that moves people (the active ingredients of Factivist).

One communication fact that popped up on several occasions at the conference was   the number of CSR reports increasing to 3100 in 2008 from 2000 in 2007.  But only 4% of the reports are read!  Many pointed out to the fact that the reports, although packed with pertinent information, are often not presented in a way that nudges not only the mind, but also the soul.  There seems to be room for some Factivist influence in this category.  The sense was that the reports could too often be dry, thick, lifeless and wonky  (erring on the side of ‘analysis for analysis sake’), and thus not making powerful connections with citizens and key audiences.  It’s a fine line presenting complex issues in an overly simplistic way  without going down the ‘dumbing down’ road.  Still, there is a great opportunity to present crucial and rich information in an way the prompts intrigue and interest first, bring the viewer in through a door that touches all their senses instead of just the lower back side of the right brain.

Regarding presenters at the conference, this was a good one.  Plenary sessions included Fadi Ghandour, Founder and CEO of Aramex International; Elizabeth Bagley, US Special Representative for Global Partnerships; Zhang Yue, Chariman and CEO of Broad Air Conditioning; John Donahue, CEO of eBay; Panel plenaries on sustainability with Ernst Ligteringen of GRI and Ricardo Young of the Ethos Institute and a panel discussion on sustainable innovation featuring Harvard’s  Rosabeth Moss Kantner, John Kao and Nike’s VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation Hanna Jones.  The plenary’s indeed had an international flavor.  Of these, Zhang Yue’s was seminal as he challenged old-school concepts of growth, success and getting bigger.  When he noted that if all the world lived the ‘American Model’, we would need five more planets to survive, Factivist took note.  Go to bsr.org for video summaries of each of these presentations.

Factivist found the high point of the conference to be a breakout session with Sylvia Earle, Explorer in Residence at National Geographic and Time’s first Hero of the Planet.  Confident and passionately soft-spoken, Sylvia’s presentation was riveting as she pointed out the real reasons why business needs to be sustainable.  Not a ‘business’ talk in a direct sense, her observations made us all realize that what’s the point of having a green bottom line if by 2048, all the fish are gone from our oceans (what will happen if we keep behaving the way we are behaving).   What’s the point of innovating new sustainable stuff when 70% of our planet is veritably dead.   Check out an amusing but effective Sylvia Earle on the October 13 Colbert Report http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/252641/october-13-2009/sylvia-earle and her monumental, prize winning presentation at TED http://www.ted.com/talks/sylvia_earle_s_ted_prize_wish_to_protect_our_oceans.html.

Other breakout sessions included Monsanto making efforts to defend itself as a corporate partner on one end, and Kavita N. Ramdas, President of CEO of Global Fund for Women, leading a passionate/inspring session on Investing in Women and Girls.  Ramdas’ session was right behind Earle’s in terms of impact on Factivist.  Full of real world common sense and provocative truths, Ramdas’ noted that smart business needs to recognize 51% of the world’s population and that the first step to alleviate poverty is to pay women what men get paid (right now in most of the world women get paid 65% of what men get).

 

 

Just Means Conference

Monday, factivist was introduced at the first annual Just Means Conference on Social Media and Sustainability http://www.socialmediacsr.com/index.html.  The themes and key words of the conference directly supported the intention, purpose and vision of factivist.  Actually, the word and idea of ‘activist’ surfaced through panel discussions, presentations and conferences.  A driving message was that the messages in the world of social media need to have value and an invitation  to take action – two traits representative of factivist.  Another driving message was ‘telling the truth’.  Social media, like any platform, can be riddled with inaccuracies and self-promotion.  The mission of being real, authentic and telling it like it is  paramount.  Again, a trait that gets at the true DNA of factivist. So, in terms of an initial, from the balcony litmus test at this conference, factivist passed.  It was also well-received in direct conversations with other attendees.   They all recognized the urgent need for something like factivist and they all responded extremely well to the name, look and feel of factivist.  Couldn’t ask for a better first day for factivist!

Now on to day two – a day of continuing to unearth meaningful facts and insights that need to be shared in ways that a difference can be made. Tomorrow, October 21, factivist will be at the 2009 Business for Social Responsibility Conference.  It will be another excellent environment for introducing factivist.  http://bsr.org/bsrconferences/2009/index.cfm

Hello World!

Welcome to the factivistinfo blog. Today, October 19, 2009 is the official launch date of the factivist.info web site.  The site is created to provide a look into the work factivist is doing and to build a community of activists who aim to make a difference.  The work we do is to develop messages in all media that address all kinds of issues.  You’ll see that the first batch of messages on the web site address healthcare, the environment, poverty, literacy, and  homelessness.  We will continue to address these issues and many others.  The key to what we are doing is to take real data, facts and truths unearthed by leading research groups and advocacy organizations and turn those facts into communications that move people at both the emotional and intellectual levels.  Traditionally, such data is presented in the form of bar graphs, pie charts and complex diagrams.  Our goal is to take the complexity of the research and data and introduce it in a way that causes one to stop, think and take action.  The emphasis is on ‘take action’.  You’ll notice that every message we create includes a link to a leading organization advocating for positive change concerning the issue addressed in the message.  This is one way we hope to build a community of citizens who now can not only be alerted to the issues of our time but can immediately get in touch with a group where they can begin to make a difference.  Making a difference – we all want to do it.  factivist is our means of making a difference by applying our experience and talents in communications directly to both the problems and opportunities we as citizens are faced with on a daily, hourly and instantaneous basis.  This isn’t about ‘just the facts’.  This is not about  styling statistics.  This is about uncovering the truths of our time in ways that inform and inspire us to truly do something good.

As we launch factivist, we welcome your constructive thoughts, comments and ideas on how to spread the word (and images).  Be sure to bookmark factivist.info as we aim to post new messages on a more than regular basis.