The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in November stirred up many hot topics about how we live together on this planet. This sudden, horrific event on a small street in middle America raised questions about our civilization and humanity, how little we have advanced as a species.
One of these questions hits directly on One Street’s purpose by questioning why the encounter even happened. The police officer believed that Michael and his friends should not be walking in the middle of the road. For a police officer to assume that such a basic human right as walking in the public right-of-way is illegal strikes at an injustice that affects all of us. Those of us not driving an expensive motor vehicle have been shoved aside. Our public rights-of-way have been taken from us.
If this bothers you, you will enjoy this article.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Why to Avoid a Triple Bottom Line for Bike Programs
I’m fairly well fed up with the concept of the triple
bottom line. The idea goes that a company or social enterprise can do a good
job of ensuring all three of these at once: profits, environmental stewardship,
and social good. Bull. As long as profits are in that bottom line, someone will
always fudge the other two.
Here’s an excerpt from Defying
Poverty with Bicycles that explains a bit why we do not recommend using
this concept for Social
Bike Business programs:
“As the terms social enterprise and social business have
gained popularity, so has the abuse of these terms. Major corporations have
been under greater scrutiny lately and often attempt to hide behind these terms
to present an altruistic image. Just as many corporations have employed “green
washing” to create an illusion of environmental stewardship as they continue to
devour natural resources, some are learning to use “social washing” to combat
claims against the social harm they are causing worldwide. So, as you do
further research on these concepts, keep a wary eye out for false models. As
long as a company or corporation prioritizes a monetary bottom line, social
needs will always fall by the wayside.
This explains why One
Street does not use the term “triple bottom line”
i.e., monetary-environmental-social. We have found that many companies and
corporations that tout a triple bottom line fall short of carrying it through.
The monetary bottom line often overrides the other two as companies under
pressure to make the most profit seek out the most desperate, impoverished
people to make their products, force them to work long hours and pay them the
very least they will accept, thus heightening their poverty. The pressure to
meet the monetary bottom line also tempts outsourcing to new, more desperate
countries leaving a wake of laid-off employees behind. On the environmental
side, practices that truly protect the environment, such as replanting trees
and reclaiming waste are always more expensive than environmentally destructive
practices. With a monetary bottom line included, many companies can only give
lip service to the other two.
Instead, One
Street ’s Social Bike Business model focuses on the
social bottom line: the number of disadvantaged people served by the program.
By following proven and successful businesses practices to increase the number
of disadvantaged people served, the monetary and environmental bottom lines
become unavoidable. In order to serve as many disadvantaged people as possible,
the business must have strong and reliable profits. And because harming the
environment harms people, this would subtract from the number of disadvantaged
people served, so environmental stewardship becomes mandatory to achieve the
bottom line.”
Could you envision running a bicycle program with a single,
social bottom line?
Sue
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