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For close to a decade, the Giving Tuesday movement has been the social antidote to the excesses that often mark the holiday season. Year after the year, the people and organizations behind Giving Tuesday have been successful at urging citizens to donate whatever funds they can afford or to work within their communities to assist those amongst us who could use a lift. While traditionally Giving Tuesday occurs five days after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, in May 2020 another Giving Tuesday, organized in only six weeks, also witnessed a surge in donations to help people who were most affected by the global pandemic.

This year’s Giving Tuesday occurs next week, on November 30. While listing every worthy organization deserving of funds is an impossible task, should you be inclined to open your checkbook or type in your credit card number online, we offer a few ideas on how you can join the spirit of Giving Tuesday and offer a hand up to your community.

For those who want to be a part of Giving Tuesday here in the U.S. but are not sure where to start, this directory can help you find campaigns and local organizations in your area.

National Domestic Workers Alliance

Domestic workers — the majority of whom are women of color and immigrants — were especially hard hit by the pandemic and the economic fallout — and U.S.-based National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) has been among these oft-overlooked workers’ staunchest allies.

These people, including nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers for seniors and people with disabilities, were often the first to lose their income streams last year as families with means sheltered in place, required fewer services, and grew wary of others entering their homes. In addition, many domestic workers lack access to health insurance and paid sick leave through the agencies for which they work.

A donation to NDWA can help support this organization’s advocacy and support for domestic workers – which include the benefits that it provides to its members through a low monthly or annual fee.

Consider supporting local STEM education programs

While today’s economy is largely stacked against citizens who work for low wages in the service industries, the demand for technology workers is opening more doors to better-paying jobs. And no, we’re only not talking about plum engineering jobs at the leading tech giants – a STEM boot camp, a few technology classes or a certification can often lead to a job that is more rewarding personally while making it far easier to pay the bills. Meanwhile, more public school districts are launching STEM education programs that target youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Such programs can benefit from donations and sponsorships; many have the “donate” button promptly displayed on their websites for good reason.

Sharing the spirit of Giving Tuesday isn’t limited to donations

If you want to be a part of Giving Tuesday and you feel as if you can do your part by avoiding the giant online and brick-and-mortar retailers, that’s more than a fair response. Of course, the question comes up: What are the alternatives?

Let’s start with the Black community, which the pandemic especially hit hard. Promised a bill of goods over a year ago, many of those pledges companies made to Black business owners have since fallen short. With one study suggesting that almost 60 percent of Black-owned businesses ran into large financial risks, many of them quickly realized that they had no choice but to pivot and figure things out on their own.

So whether you prefer to shop online or are searching for a local business to spend your dollars, there are countless resources: This Fast Company article from 2020 offers a strong starting point. Further, if you’re throwing a holiday-themed gathering, consider trying a new caterer or venue for that party. Eat Okra, which runs an app that at last check says has been downloaded by at least 330,000 diners, could offer new culinary ideas and a way to keep those dollars circulating within your local community.

There’s a fundamental need for Giving Tuesday: fighting hunger

If your approach to Giving Tuesday, or the donating of funds throughout the year, is to address the most fundamental needs of your neighbors, then food banks must top your list this holiday season. The need is especially dire this fall and winter, as the continued surge in both food and housing prices are making it more difficult for families to get by and buy the bare minimum.

The news on food insecurity in the U.S. alone is bleak: Most food banks coast-to-coast are struggling to meet demand. The D.C. region’s Capital Area Food Bank, for example, reported to Axios last week that it will distribute about 45 million meals by its fiscal year-end, a huge jump from the annual 31 million meals in the pre-pandemic days.

To be clear, a donation to a food bank doesn’t mean going through your cupboards or pantry – the best thing to give is cash. “Cash donations also go much further as food banks across the nation can turn one dollar into four meals due to partnerships with food manufacturers or farmers to purchase food at cost or wholesale,” wrote Richelle Noroyan for 3p earlier this year.

Remember your LGBTQ neighbors

While corporations love to change their logos and express their standing by with the LGBTQ community during Pride Month, the reality is that year after year, in the grand scheme of things, corporate financial support for this community is quite paltry. The pandemic was also brutal to local LGBTQ centers, many of which were shuttered for months on end due to restrictions to combat the ongoing public health crisis. Now, the rise of anti-transgender legislation and the politicization of LGBTQ-themed literature in public schools make many wonder if we’re living in 2021 or 1961.

This Advocate article from 2019 offers a few ideas on where you donate spend your dollars. The Horizons Foundation, which organizes an annual “Give Out” day, is worth considering; if your focus is more on supporting human rights for the international LGBTQ community, New York City-based Outright has launched its own Giving Tuesday campaign. To help LGBTQ youth in crisis, The Trevor Project is another organization deserving of donations.

Image credit: Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash

With the holidays on the horizon, many shoppers around the world are filling their baskets with Cadbury chocolate. Meanwhile Mondelēz International, parent company to Cadbury Dairy Milk as well as other brands such as LU Biscuits, Oreo and Toblerone, recently committed to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain by 2050, including targets for cocoa ingredients. 

What’s in the net-zero plan

In 2020, Mondelēz International set a science-based target to reduce its absolute end-to-end greenhouse emissions (“from farm to shelf”) by 10 percent by 2025, compared to a 2018 baseline. Previously, it had aimed to reduce emissions in its manufacturing operations by 15 percent by the end of 2020, and after meeting that goal upped its commitment to include a wider scope across the supply chain. 

This new goal raises the target once again with an aim for net-zero emissions across the entire supply chain. The net-zero target aligns with the company’s signing on to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Race to Net Zero initiative, which intends to mobilize businesses, governments and investors to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 in line with the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In order to meet its long-term goals, Mondelēz International set ambitious targets within different components of its supply chain — for example, sourcing 100 percent of chocolate and wheat through the company’s sustainable ingredient programs: Cocoa Life and Harmony Program, respectively. Other targets include increasing energy efficiency in biscuit ovens and steam boilers and reducing food waste by 15 percent in manufacturing and 50 percent in distribution. 

“We focus on where we can have the biggest impact”

Unlike many other industries, the bulk of emissions from a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company like Mondelēz International do not come from owned manufacturing or operations. Most are Scope 3 emissions: indirect upstream and downstream emissions within the value chain, and specifically those associated with agriculture. That means CPG companies have to work with their suppliers and the farmers who grow these raw materials in addition to government regulators and other stakeholders in the industry to make more sustainable ingredients available and scalable. 

“We focus on where we can have the biggest impact that is relevant to our business,” Chris McGrath, vice president and chief of global impact, sustainability and well-being at Mondelēz International, told TriplePundit. “We’re one of the largest buyers of cocoa, for example, and it’s part of our footprint.” 

About 70 percent of Mondelēz International’s footprint comes from agriculture, McGrath said. The company’s move toward net zero builds on previous initiatives aimed at improving the sustainability of key ingredients in a way that meets suppliers’ needs. To some extent, that is still how the company operates. “We had done a lot of work to know what was going on with the suppliers we were working with — for example, cocoa growers in Ghana,” McGrath said. “Then we learn as we go. We’re taking that approach with net zero: We’ve done a lot of work to know how we need to scale, and we’ll continue to publish more specific goals as we measure impacts.”

The company’s sustainable cocoa program, Cocoa Life, in particular is a cornerstone to this work. Launched in 2012, the program aims to address issues such as climate change, gender inequality, poverty and child labor in the cocoa industry, which is mostly located along the equator in West Africa. "We as a company can ensure have real impact to improve the environment and people’s lives,” McGrath said. “This is also a business strategy: We are one of the biggest chocolate and biscuit companies, and we need a strong supply chain from a company perspective and also from a people perspective.”

Cocoa Life works with cocoa farmers on the ground with a focus on improving their profitability, benefiting the surrounding community, and restoring and conserving forested areas. “We are in partnership with our suppliers in the program to adapt new agricultural practices to help farmers grow more cocoa on existing land,” McGrath explained. “We’ve always taken a holistic approach to help the farmers make a positive impact in terms of their livelihoods and also reduce carbon emissions. Continuing to partner with our suppliers is one of the levers to get to net zero.”

As such, one of the company’s primary net-zero goals is to source 100 percent of its cocoa from around 200,000 Cocoa Life Program farmers by 2025. “We train farmers with our suppliers on good environmental practices like providing shade trees,” McGrath said. “We’ve given out over 2 million shade trees, which have a positive environmental benefit and protect the cocoa seedlings, enabling the farmer to produce better and faster.” Beyond 2025, the company is looking to scale the work and lessons learned from the Cocoa Life Program. 

Moving forward from COP26

Since most large CPG companies have global supply chains, the challenges they face stretch across country and industry lines. Like many of us, McGrath said she hopes the COP26 climate negotiations that wrapped earlier this month in Glasgow can build new bridges. “What I’m hoping comes out of the climate summit is more alignment amongst government and business,” she told 3p. “Moving from commitments and conversation into action, we need to work together to figure out the solutions. We need new innovations in agriculture.”

McGrath is co-chair for the Forest Positive Coalition of the Consumer Goods Forum, where 20 companies are working on solutions for forest-positive business. The cross-sectoral approach to collaboration gives her hope that she will see positive outcomes for agriculture and CPG supply chains. “I find it so meaningful to be able to bring the innovation that’s required,” she said. “Cocoa Life is one of our biggest innovation programs. We worked in partnership with suppliers and NGOs to create a solution that wasn’t there, and we’ve been scaling for nine years.” 

But this is just the beginning, she said, and a more sustainable agricultural sector will require everybody working together. “We need government working to make the investments in innovation and install the infrastructure,” she said. “We need business to step up and work together. We need to mainstream regenerative agriculture.”

This article series is sponsored by Mondelēz International and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Images courtesy of Mondelēz International

Now that the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge 2021 winners have been officially announced, we want you to learn more about each winning team and the story behind each innovation. The Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge is an annual competition that awards cash prizes to early-stage tech entrepreneurs solving the world’s toughest problems. Now in its fifth year, the competition awarded its largest prize pool ever, $1 million USD, to 20 winning teams from around the world.

GramHeet won this year’s People’s Choice Award of $10,000 USD, garnering the most votes from a public online competition among 43 finalists. GramHeet is addressing multiple factors that make smallholder farming a financially unviable profession in India – and force many farmers to abandon agriculture. The organization is currently serving more than 1000 farmers who have seen their income increase by 30 percent. They hope to scale their work in 35 villages in two districts to eventually reach the 118 million smallholder farmers across India who own less than five acres of land.

I recently met with the organization’s co-founders, CEO Pankaj Mahalle and COO Shweta Thakare, to learn how their solution is helping farmers and their families reap higher incomes from their produce.

What problem is your solution trying to solve? 

Pankaj: There are multiple issues that farming communities are facing in India. Even though production has increased a lot, farmers’ income has not. In fact, it is decreasing day by day. Farmers don’t have storage space in their houses or in the village, but they need cash quickly after harvesting their crops – either to repay money lenders or to buy agri-inputs for the next crop cycle. As a result, farmers are forced to sell their produce right away and they often don’t get what their produce is worth. They are selling by force, not by choice. Also, due to poor post-harvest infrastructure, foodgrain losses are huge – losses alone in India are equivalent to the total agriculture production of Australia. All this has pushed 62 million farmers in India into a vicious debt cycle, and 75 percent of them want to quit farming if alternative employment opportunities are available to them.

Shweta:  Also, highly male-dominated agri markets neglect the women farmers in the agribusiness value chain, even though the contribution of women farmers is around 70 percent. Our digital platform allows women farmers to own their produce which they grow, and includes them back into the value chain.

How does your solution work? 

Pankaj: Since agrarian distress is a complex issue, solving it requires a holistic approach with several inter-linked micro-solutions. Even if one such aspect goes missing, it doesn’t bring about the necessary change. Thus, GramHeet proposes an integrated model that aims to provide a one-stop marketplace for farmers at the village level called GramHeet Mandi (Village Trade Centre), in collaboration with Community Based Organizations that operate as franchises. As a social enterprise, we are committed to the “farmers-first” approach and want to ensure that their income increases significantly.

At the Village Trade Centre, we provide integrated post-harvest services like storage, post-harvest credit, primary processing, and market linkages to address distress selling. Farmers can avail these services through our digital platform. When farmers bring their produce to GramHeet Mandi, they get instant credit with minimal interest. With this support, they can hold their produce for three to six months, and when the prices get favorable, they can sell easily from their home through a single click on their mobile app.

Shweta: Apart from better price realization, farmers get the agency to hold the produce and make the decision when to sell and at what price. Our innovative model ensures absolute transparency through quality analysis labs, efficiency through digital platforms, and affordability and accessibility through the Village Trade Center.

What inspired you to develop this solution? 

Shweta: I come from a smallholder farming family. I have seen my parents working on the farm day in and day out. Every year we cultivated with the hope that this year we will be able to repay the loan we had taken from the village moneylender, but that never happened. But even after working so hard, the income was not enough to feed the family of four. The family situation got worse and it was difficult for us to manage family expenses through farming; the vicious debt cycle led us to leave the village and find other livelihood sources in the city. All these experiences left a deep impression on my heart which motivated me to start GramHeet.

Pankaj: I come from a very small village in the Yavatmal district, which is unfortunately called the “Suicide Capital of India.” The district has recorded the highest number of farmers’ suicides in India, and 53 percent of the 189,000 smallholder farmers are in a vicious debt cycle. I saw how difficult farming was, and how my parents struggled. They were not able to buy new clothes for us even though we are cotton-growing farmers. These lived experiences propelled me to start our organization.

How has winning a prize in the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge helped you advance your business? How will you use the prize money?

Pankaj: Because of this global award, the local government and stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem have started recognizing and approaching us for collaborations. This prize will help us to modify our quality analysis lab technology. Still, there are some aspects we do manually for quality analysis of food grains, and we want to develop affordable and accessible quality analysis technology for the smallholder farmers.

What advice do you have for other social entrepreneurs? 

Shweta: Once you get a clear understanding of the problem you want to solve, then it will be easy to build the solution more effectively. For any entrepreneur who wants to address complex issues in society, it is essential to understand the problem holistically, then focus on the solution that will be easily scalable for the community.

Pankaj: When you are solving the complex issues of society, uncertainty and risk will be an inherent part of your journey. You need to accept that, and draw the picture that you want to see in the world, and work toward it.

Previously published on 3BL Media news.

As Black Friday approaches, many retailers are sweating it out as they keep scrambling to find temporary workers who can stock items, fold clothes and run the cash and credit registers.

To that end, Macy’s isn’t taking any chances. Although the department store leader last reported a healthy quarter – as in $345 million in net income – year-over-year sales have overall been in decline as the pandemic exacted its own shocks while American shopping habits continue to change. With Black Friday just a week away, the retailer is asking its corporate employees to step up, as in stepping into its stores to help out.

According to the Washington Post, which was able to get its hands on some of the company’s internal emails, the company is asking employees is asking corporate employees to join its retail workers in making sure its stores can function during the upcoming holiday season.

“As a company, we understand that business continues to be different, and where we can, we want to influence our high traffic moments, finding ways to elevate the customer experience,” explained one email. In other words, start by helping to clean up those dressing rooms and move items from the back storerooms.

That request, or thinly-veiled demand, may come as a shock to someone who hasn’t worked a Black Friday or a very late Friday night in December since their college days, but it’s not the most absurd request on the face of the earth. Macy’s is, after all, in a long-term struggle, and analysts are in general agreement that this holiday season will help shape the company’s long-term fortunes – a mantra that has been repeated over the past several years. “With your support, our store colleagues will be able to stay focused on elevating the customer experience — helping them check every gift off their list, and maybe a few for themselves as well,” said another recent Macy’s internal email.

While we’re on the topic of elevating anyone’s experience, there’s another important reason why Macy’s “all hands-on deck” strategy could pay off. Yes, it’s that important Macy’s customers have a decent experience in their stores – it’s one reason the department store chain is in business. But there’s a potential teachable moment here.

Retail workers have been taking it on the chin (sadly, too many literally) over the past year and half, which has led them fueling in part the “Great Resignation” we’ve been hearing about so much the past several months. Nothing is guaranteed, but there is a chance that what white-collar workers see and feel on the shop floor at Macy’s could help on the empathy front, and gain buy-in for policies and programs that will help them retain these employees.

While a boost in pay to $15, $17 or even more surely helps, as does a commitment to tuition reimbursement, retail workers have also been screaming for something that is also important: being treated with a certain level of dignity and respect.

Throwing corporate employees out to the wolves is nothing new: For decades, many corporate rotation hiring programs, which lured new graduates out of colleges or business schools, had long adopted that tactic in part to offer these new hires a better understanding of the companies’ business. And last month, Louisiana-based Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers deployed a program similar to that of Macy’s in a move to tackle the ongoing shortage of workers. The chain had trained its corporate employees on tasks such as operating cash registers and deep fryers while boosting pay for its restaurant workers.

Who knows, this Black Friday roundup lends an opportunity to learn new life skills, such as this ingenious Japanese method of folding shirts that makes tidying up a clothing display so much easier.  

Image credit via Macy’s

Over the past two decades, the United States and Europe, and especially the United Kingdom, have shifted away from the use of coal for electricity generation. The closure of over 340 coal plants in the U.S., and its rapid fall in usage in the U.K. are often shown as examples of how we can quickly shift towards cleaner alternatives and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But, at least in the case of the U.K., the alternative, it turns out, isn’t that much better, especially from a climate perspective. The U.K. is now the biggest burner of wood biomass for electricity, with several formerly coal-firing power plants now burning wood pellets, emitting nearly as much CO2 as coal. The source? One area is the southeastern United States, where companies like Enviva have set up wood pellet factories and export facilities, aiming to supply not only the U.K., but also Europe, Japan, and South Korea as those regions transition away from coal.

“Because of all the commitments to net zero that many countries are making, they're seeing biomass energy as some sort of component of that,” said Peg Putt, coordinator of the Forests, Climate and Biomass Energy Working Group at the Environmental Paper Network, who are concerned about the push to burn wood for electricity generation.

The companies pushing for increased use of wood biomass see it as part of the solution, both for forest owners, and transitioning away from coal. Coal-fired power plants can, relatively quickly, be converted to burning wood biomass, making it a quicker alternative than renewables like wind and solar, which can take far longer to bring online. In fact, the biggest wood biomass burning plants in the world, run by Drax in north England, used to be coal plants.

“We believe that bioenergy is a vital part of an all-in strategy to reduce carbon emissions and displace coal,” said Kim Cesafsky. director of sustainability at Enviva at a press conference. “Scientists and leading authorities on climate have all concluded that bioenergy is an essential part of the climate solution."

But is burning wood really better? Science, as we know, is often evolving. A cautionary tale might be the expansion, in the 2000s, of biofuels as an alternative to petroleum. Both corn-based ethanol and palm oil-based biodiesel were seen as climate solutions because they came from plants, which absorbed as much carbon as was emitted when they were burned, making them carbon neutral. It’s a similar argument being put forth by the bioenergy industry, which claims that forests will regenerate fast enough to offset any emissions from burning wood.

But, as it turned out, biofuels' climate impact was more complicated. When other factors were considered, such as transport emissions, land-use change, and peat emissions, it turned out that not only were biofuels not carbon neutral, they were, in many cases, responsible for more emissions than the fossil fuels they replaced. Wood biomass, Putt argues, is the same.

“Treating burning wood from the world’s forests as anything other than another source of carbon pollution that damages forest carbon storage [is] a false climate solution,” said Putt “Claims that burning forest wood is sustainable would be laughable if policymakers were not so prone to falling for biomass industry propaganda.”

Enviva argues that it only uses debris and low-quality wood, but Derb Carter with the Southern Environmental Law Center says that’s not what his organization, and allies, have found.

“We investigated that with some of the organizations we work, and verified that the primary emphasis then, as it is now, is utilizing whole trees to supply the biomass,” said Carter. There are allegations that clear-cutting of forests is becoming increasingly common as Enviva seeks to expand wood pellet production for export, and if so, means the environmental impact is far greater than is being advertised.

In fact, the science on wood biomass’s climate impact remains uncertain, though the industry will have you believe that the issues that plagued palm oil and corn biofuels don’t apply to their industry. At the same time, is using wood biomass instead of coal really the optimal solution? Shifting away from coal is good, as it is the most polluting and climate-intensive fossil fuel, but “less bad” doesn’t make biomass an ideal solution. There are real clean energy solutions – solar, wind and geothermal – that can play a bigger role with more focused government and private sector support.

There is some action on this front, as last month, Drax was dropped from an index of green energy firms, showing that climate financiers, at least, are no longer willing to accept burning wood as green energy. In Japan, seen as a future growth market as it aims to shift away from coal, a new coalition is pushing against biomass imports, citing concerns about its environmental impact on forests and greenhouse gas emissions.

We need to continue to shift away from coal as quickly as possible – but make sure that the alternatives are also better for the planet and people too. Increasingly, wood biomass doesn’t seem like the green solution it has been advertised as, like palm oil and coal biofuels before it.

Disclosure: The author received a fellowship from the National Press Foundation that focused on exploring biomass and climate change.

Image credit: Sydney Clark via National Press Foundation

Life for Sewedo Mautin looked very different when he was growing up in Nigeria. He didn’t have a reliable toilet in his home for the first 22 years of his life. He would either go to a neighbor’s house or travel nearly three-quarters of a mile to use a toilet. When he became homeless as a young man, finding a safe, clean toilet became even more of a challenge. Today, Mautin lives in Finland and works for Kimberly-Clark as a product engineer developing baby and childcare products for emerging markets in the Middle East and Africa.

He has leveraged both his life experience and professional expertise in his work to mentor entrepreneurs in the pilot phase of the Women in the Sanitation Economy Innovation Lab, a partnership between Kimberly-Clark and its foundation, the company’s Kotex brand, and the Toilet Board Coalition, a public-private partnership that brings businesses, investors and governments together to scale market-based solutions for sanitation issues.

“We spent a lot of time sharing experiences”

During the six-month pilot, five female entrepreneurs in the sanitation space from the U.S., U.K. and Kenya participated in the Innovation Lab’s mentorship program, which featured 11 Kimberly-Clark employees from around the globe who served as mentors to the entrepreneurs. Mautin was intrigued by the program and applied when he learned that the lab was looking for a mentor for entrepreneurs in Kenya.

He was accepted into the program and partnered with Maureen Amakabane and her Kenya-based company Usafi Sanitation Limited, which markets, sells and installs low-cost handwashing stations, biological waste digesters (bacteria that breaks down waste), and eco-friendly toilets that run without chemicals, electricity or water.

Mautin knows from experience that waste management is a daily struggle in parts of Kenya, and helping entrepreneurs from the region on these issues held personal significance. Both he and Amakabane experienced periods living without access to any sanitation. "We spent a lot of time sharing experiences,” he said to TriplePundit in a recent interview. “These types of experiences in your life really affect your future and how you view the world.”

Paying it forward as a mentor

When Mautin was doing his technical study in Nigeria, his wages weren’t enough to meet his daily needs, and he became homeless. “I continued with my education,” he explained, and help came unexpectedly. He met a man (Kunle Olaide) in his church who gave him temporary accommodation until he was able to finish his studies.

“Today, the guy who helped me has become family,” Mautin said. “He gave me a lifeline.” It was that experience that made him want to pay it forward when the opportunity arose to become a mentor.

Pushing Usafi’s sanitation solution to the next level

Mautin mentored Amakabane with one of his Kimberly-Clark colleagues who helped Amakabane with her marketing skills, and Mautin focused on business plans and partnerships. They were fortunate as well that Amakabane has been in business for about 10 years, so she had already developed proficiency in areas like market needs and product development.

Mautin helped Amakabane to connect with the Technical University of Kenya and look for ways to collaborate on the production of handwashing stations and waterless toilets. Mautin previously worked with a university in Finland, and he brought his experience to bear when navigating the academic landscape.

“We reviewed the entire process together – who to approach at the university and the best way to do so, in addition to walking through intellectual property issues,” Mautin explained. "We talked about what to discuss [with the university] and how she should position her business needs and overall vision.”

Amakanabe also noted that relationship-building was a key element of the mentorship. “[Mautin] helped me curate the technical bit of the business model,” she said to 3p. “We polished the idea of partnering [with the university].”

Solving global challenges through mentorship

According to the World Health Organization, 2 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation like toilets or latrines. Over 800,000 people die every year because of inadequate sanitation and hygiene services, including nearly 300,000 children. Further, health is not the only factor at play. Safety is a serious concern as well, especially for women and girls, who are more prone to attacks and harassment when they lack access to reliable sanitation services and are forced to seek relief in the open.

Amakanabe’s business aims to reduce this inequality, which aligns perfectly with Kimberly-Clark’s global ambition to improve the lives and well-being of 1 billion people in underserved communities around the globe by 2030 – with the smallest environmental footprint.

Mautin was animated when speaking about the mentorship. He gained a lot from it himself while knowing that what he was doing was also helping Amakabane take her business to the next level. “I came to appreciate more about what I do,” he added. “It led me to appreciate my job more and see myself as an 'intrapreneur' at Kimberly-Clark – not just an employee. It helped me think beyond this program and start reflecting on how I can help others who don’t have access to toilets.”

Mautin already told the mentorship organizers that he would like to continue his work with the program, and he also feels his work with Amakabane is not quite finished. “We had a major focus on the university partnership and the technical aspects, so it felt more like we had just planted a seed…there’s more growth to come,” he said.

The bottom line: What makes mentorship work

Mautin’s biggest piece of advice for other mentors and mentees is to set expectations from the beginning. “We need to understand from day one what to focus on and make it clear what is possible and what is not,” he said. “Shared objectives need to be well sorted from the start.”

In the end, Mautin felt empowered by the mentorship experience and thought it tied closely with his work and with Kimberly-Clark’s goals. “When I look at some of my colleagues, we have a lot of technical experience and commercial expertise to support this program,” he told 3p. “The Innovation Lab magnified how my personal purpose ties into Kimberly-Clark’s purpose of Better Care for a Better World.”

At the end of the day, however, it was about people connecting with each other to improve lives. For Mautin, he knows the power that one person can have on someone’s life – like the man who helped him get back on his feet when he was homeless.

He’s grateful for the opportunity to now leverage his strengths, skill set and life experiences to help others through programs like the Innovation Lab. Mautin and Amakanabe agree that mentorship is powerful – its impacts can extend far beyond the mentee and mentor while positively impacting communities for generations to come.

This article series is sponsored by Kimberly-Clark and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image credit via WaterAid/Eben Liebenberg

Military veterans who return to civilian life can face a battery of hurdles. Many employers have responded by engaging in new programs to hire veterans. That is all well and good, but much less attention has been paid to the challenges faced by military spouses seeking civilian jobs. That is a yawning gap that no single employer can fill.

One paycheck is not enough

Anthony Noto, CEO of the financial services firm SoFi, pinpointed the military spouse problem in a recent op-ed for CNN. “Serving our country can cause unique financial challenges down the road,” he wrote “For some, these financial limitations last far beyond their initial transition into the post-military working world. Frequent moves can make it difficult for military spouses to find jobs that offer a steady, second source of income, limiting families to one paycheck.”

Noto’s piece focuses specifically on helping veterans plan for retirement. However, his mention of military spouses deserves closer attention, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced more women and other family caretakers to leave their jobs and tend full-time to the needs of their children and other dependents.

When a military family moves, a working spouse loses more than a job, even in the best of times. They can also be cut off from their caretaker networks including family, friends and neighbors. When they do find work in their new location, they may need to rely more heavily on paid caretakers. That can have a significant impact on their take-home income.

Much has been made of the job-ready skills acquired by military veterans, which help them take advantage of employment opportunities in new growth areas like the wind energy and solar energy sectors. However, their spouses bring no such training to the table. Military spouses also face difficulty in continuing their education or training for new skills, limiting their opportunities when the family transitions to civilian life.

The employment challenges faced by military spouses impact the entire household. Maintaining a family on one military income can be difficult under the best of circumstances. The high cost of rent and other expenses in some military communities has long created additional pressure on household incomes. The pandemic and the current inflationary environment have exacerbated the situation, leading more active-duty families to rely more on food banks and other sources of social support than ever before. 

Employers need to recognize that student loans are a serious problem

Employers may have limited avenues through which to provide assistance directly to military spouses, but Noto advises that employers can at least help provide significant assistance to military families by enabling more veterans to save for retirement.

“Recent research has confirmed veteran families struggle to maintain adequate emergency savings funds, with nearly half (49 percent) of those who receive no pension reporting they have less than $500 in their emergency savings (and nearly one in four families who receive a pension reporting the same),” Noto observes.

Noto suggests that employers can start by educating themselves about the financial situation of the individual veterans they hire, especially in the area of student loans. He points out that many veterans start their retirement plan only after they finish their education through their GI Bill benefits, which means they get a very late start on saving. Paying off student loans can further delay retirement savings.

Standard retirement plans don't cut it either

Employers that offer standard 401(k) plans are not helping employees who are so burdened by student debt that they cannot afford to contribute to a retirement plan. Employers need to be proactive and pursue solutions, such as an IRS Private Letter Ruling. Noto also indicates that lobbying in support of proposed federal legislation in that area would enable employers to accommodate student debt in their 401(k) plans more easily.

He also urges employers to understand that many veterans do not pursue or finish a college education, placing them at risk of falling behind their civilian counterparts. A holistic “well-being” program would address the cost of education from the past to the present, and into the future. These programs account for student loans, current tuition and college savings plans for dependents where applicable. 

Other ways to help veterans and their families

Noto also encourages employers to provide educational resources and guidance that can help veterans with bad credit records avoid similar mishaps in the future.

Handing veteran employees a pile of brochures and a list of links can be a good start, but Noto urges employers to connect veteran employees with financial planners who can give them individual, personalized attention.  

“As the colliding worlds of work, company culture and education continue to evolve, our definition of well-being — and efforts to support veterans' unique needs — will need to do the same. In the meantime, ensuring resources are allocated toward programs that provide a mix of short- and long-term impact, while also delivering measurable, mutual benefit to both employers and employees, will foster a brighter financial future for all,” Noto concludes.

The missing link in all of this is the military spouse. They face unique challenges in the civilian workforce, and those difficulties are compounded when children and other dependents are members of their household.

Corporate leaders from Etsy to Microsoft, Patagonia and Seventh Generation understand how the lack of affordable child care holds back families and businesses. As members of the Care Can’t Wait Coalition, they have been lobbying for more federal support for both child and family care services.

Access to child and family care also impacts access to affordable higher education and job training, two other key areas that could be addressed through federal action.

As originally conceived, U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill would go a long way toward filling these gaps in social policy. Unfortunately, as of this writing the bill is at risk of dying on the vine. If it does survive, its family care provisions and other social spending are all but certain to be whittled down to provide less help to fewer people.

Corporate leaders who profess to support veterans can pick up the slack by lobbying for additional federal child care, family support, education and job training programs that pick up where Build Back Better leaves off and provide more resources for military spouses as well as veterans.

Image credit: George Pak/Pexels (1 and 2)

The idea of offering a second chance to people with criminal records was gaining traction within corporate America before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Part of this shift in attitude was pragmatic: The U.S. had 7 million job openings in late 2019, and organizations like the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) had offered (and still do) companies the tools and guidance necessary to make second-chance hiring a more seamless process.

Now, there are at least 10 million job openings across the U.S., yet discussions about second-chance hiring have largely ceased. Some of the reasons are obvious: We can start with the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, including disruptions across the global supply chain, which of late have consumed everyone’s attention.

Nevertheless, the reality has not changed for people trying to re-emerge from the criminal justice system and rebuild their lives. In fairness, some industries are responding: A leading banking group says it is encouraging its members to consider second-chance hiring, and retailers such as the Body Shop are testing out the “open hiring” model that Greyston Bakery has long championed.

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Now, a coalition in northern Florida is trying to make a second chance possible by offering a monthly guaranteed income in order to assist the formerly incarcerated as they dust themselves off and get back on their feet.

In Gainesville, Florida, and surrounding Alachua County, Just Income GNV got its start by offering a monthly cash stipend of $300 for low-income residents during the pandemic. Working with the social impact venture Community Spring, local leaders have since launched a similar pilot program that focuses on local citizens affected by incarceration.

The 2020-2021 effort proved successful, so another round of the Torchlighters Re-Entry Support program will start after the new year. A group of 115 randomly selected people will receive $1,000 in January 2022, followed by $600 a month for the rest of the year, Fast Company reports. Applications are ongoing for Alachua County residents who were recently put on probation or released from prison.

The project is entirely privately funded by Community Spring and Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

Supporters of the program say this financial commitment can help break the cycle of poverty and recidivism. Here's the deal: Society assumes that once formerly incarcerated people are released, they're restarting their lives with a clean slate. But consider the hurdles these men and women face as they try to find jobs and places to rent. One 2018 study concluded that the formerly incarcerated are 10 times more likely to experience homelessness than the rest of the U.S. population; another analysis suggested that the unemployment rate for people with criminal justice histories is more than 25 percent.

“When justice-impacted people have an income floor, they will devote time and resources to finding meaningful employment, stable housing and addressing their trauma,” wrote Kevin Scott, who himself was once incarcerated and is now a fellow with Community Spring, along with Lauren Poe, the mayor of Gainesville, in a recent op-ed for the Gainesville Sun. “They will be equipped to overcome a system that reincarcerates based on bank accounts. They will be able to contribute to their families, build careers and participate in their community as fully-valued members.”

Image credit: Ali Abdul Rahman via Unsplash