Tiger Year Wish List

I discovered this great little item in the newsletter from
Hong Kong Social Entrepreneurship Forum (HKSEF) http://www.hksef.org/
It certainly applies to all businesses not just those in Hong Kong!

Learning from social enterprises from all over the world,
what HK business can do
Tiger Year Wish List

• Profit making is a legitimate goal for all business enterprises; maximizing profit is not.
• Fulfilling Corporate Social Responsibility is not an option; it is a must.
• Every business should have a social mission; otherwise it does not deserve to exist.
• Every business should have a policy of buying from social enterprises -- as long as their products and services are competitive in quality and price.
• Every business should ‘adopt’ a social enterprise and do whatever it takes to enhance its social impact.
• Every business should start a business unit addressing a major social issue.
• Every business should make its employees proud of its contribution in making the world a better place to live.

Grow well
Dr Merrin

An eco week in London

I have had a great time connecting with such inspiring people that are making an incredible difference to the way we are living on this planet. Thanks to you all so much for sharing your time.

I thought that it would be quite interesting to let you know who I have met up with as I am sure there are some exciting opportunities to work together.


So here is a list of the people I met in the order I caught up with them. Having said that I am going to start with one of the people that I did not catch up with though who was instrumental in my introductions to many people. Thanks Gina.

Gina Lazenby - http://ginalazenby.wordpress.com/ is inspiring women for success in business & at home.

Katie Young - www.katieyoungdesign.com is pioneering ethical and eco design & product development, and has recently produced stylish raincoats from fabric made from plastic bottles.

Chris Le Breton is part of a team of people promoting The Awakening the Dreamer Symposium in London. He is active with the Transition Towns initiative. He is also planning a bicycle tour from New Zealand to London via Asia in 2010.

Mike Southon - http://www.beermat.biz/mike_southon.php Thanks for sharing the wonderful space at the Adam Street Club and your wonderful insights into business via your knowledge of the Wealth Dynamics profiling. If you really want to experience the energy of Mike then check out Mike Fab-Gere (www.fabgere.com) and book him for an extremely entertaining and educational event.

Joining Mike and I at the Adam Street Club were:
- Shaylesh Patel - www.healthyplanet.org - Healthy Planet enables you to support conservation by adopting plots in protected parks throughout the world and helping to map the parks, monitor the parks and fund conservation actions in the parks.
- John Grant - http://greenormal.blogspot.com/ - is a green marketing expert.
- Al Tepper - http://www.linkedin.com/in/altepper - who is an integral part of Natural Collection (www.naturalcollection.com) the UK's leading green amazon.com type etailer
- Susan Mills and Adam Pattantyus who are driving forces in the Resilient Cities Initiative which is model for swift, aligned action for climate and other social issues. They are yet to have details online about this initiative. They both work for www.merrimackmanagementassociates.com

Catching up with Oliver Tickell was going to be in Oxford and then we discovered he was going to be in London at the Sustainable Development Commissions Break Through event. So as his Kyoto2 (www.kyoto2.org) proposal was one of the 20 projects being presented.

At the SDC event I got to meet the following great people
- Maria Adebowale from Capacity Global (www.capacity.org.uk) was talking about cultural diversity. Loved her approach. Their mission statement is "A fair and equitable society can only exist if everyone has a right to participate in the major decisions that affect their lives. Only with full public participation can effective strategies for social justice, eradication of poverty and a healthy environment be found."
- Lesley Lambert from Compassion in world farming (www.ciwf.org.uk) which certainly struck an accord with my upbringing on a farm and the various situations animals can be raised.
- Mark Shearer from ProjectDirt.com (www.ProjectDirt.com) who are providing a wonderful online platform for groups and business to let people know via maps where they are making a difference in their community.
- Duncan Kay from the Sustainable Development Commission (www.sd-commission.org.uk) where he is a Transport Policy Analyst. Duncan turned up at the conference wearing a suit and riding a bike! Sounds like my travel to work in HK.
- Chris Church from Mapping for Change (www.mappingforchange.org.uk) who specialise in providing participatory mapping services to communities, voluntary sector organisations, local authorities and developers using a suite of innovative tools for communication.

A day around Charing Cross was had meeting up with:
- Jon Ralls who is a leading part of the Be The Change Initiative (www.bethechange.org.uk). One of the components of the Be The Change Initiative is hosting the Pachamama Awakening the Dreamer Symposiums.
- Leon Aarts who is a Social Innovator and the founder of Extraordinary Ones (www.extraordinaryones.com) which is helping individuals make a difference with every purchase they make.
- Jeff and Julie Wicks who are superb couple that base themselves between Hong Kong and Australia (yes they were in London). They support a number of social causes as well as providing great mentoring.
- Ashley Blackmore who I had not seen since being in Bali together in 2005. Ashley provides guidance & stimulus to organisations with sustainable environment & healthy living agendas. http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=65773
- Cyrille Jegu from www.naturalstep.org. The Natural Step is an international not-for-profit organisation dedicated to education, advisory work and research in sustainable development.

The Triumphant Events Team - http://www.triumphantevents.co.uk/
Michael Clarke offered me the chance to crew at Topher Morrison (www.tophermorrison.com) The Winning the Game of Wealth 3 day seminar. What a great event and thanks to Daniel Priestley and the TE Team. Daniel looking forward to hosting your social media seminar in Hong Kong. For those of you in London check out when the next seminar is at http://www.triumphantevents.co.uk/events?access=social-media-affiliate-marketing

Other crew members at the TE Event were:
- Janay Alexander is doing wonderful work helping mothers to keep the child birthing process simple www.thebirthspecialists.com (The website should be active by the end of July)
- John Hancock is giving pets an eco bed option. Check out www.petlifeonline.co.uk
- Justine Clare is doing great things assisting people to utilize Social Media tools. For ideas head to http://Triumphantmedia.wordpress.com

Final thanks must go to Christine and Steve for allowing us the use of their car and house. The house did come with Christine’s mother and sister, which was superb. Thanks Kath and Katy for your hospitality. Katy is a UK immigration specialist and her company is www.definitive-is.com

So a superb week was had and I look forward to hearing the successes of your respective projects.

For those of you who have not met me you might like to check out the view from our place in Hong Kong at http://asia-ecopreneur.blogspot.com/2008/02/magic-of-mui-wo-lantau-island-hong-kong.html

Grow well
Dr Merrin