Children at risk in the Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip, located between Israel and Egypt, has been a recurring hotspot for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years. With half of the population in Gaza being children, UNICEF reports that almost 60,000 are in need of immediate psychosocial care due to the deep emotional impact of the current violence.

Many of us away from such tragedy and trauma can only imagine what these dear children have endured.  What succor and sustenance for them?

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Syrians and Iraqis at a border camp

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country. It also has a mandate to help stateless people.

Since 1950, the agency has helped tens of millions of people restart their lives. Today, a staff of more than 9,300 people in 123 countries continues to help and protect millions of refugees, returnees, internally displaced and stateless people.

Reference:  The UN Refugee Agency.

It isn't just the citizens of one country in turmoil, but also the citizens of another country in turmoil, who seek refuge in the millions.  We live in such a progressive, privileged world, that one hopes this sort of displacement and hardship would never have to happen.
 

What does it take in Syria?

Take Action

In 2013, the heads of UN agencies sent a message saying “ENOUGH” to the crisis in Syria.

But the crisis continues — it enters its fifth year on 15 March.

With no end in sight, we ask what does it take for those with political influence to end this senseless suffering once and for all?

Join IN

Join us and express your frustration about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria, and send a message of solidarity to the people of Syria.

Take a photo holding the sign #WhatDoesItTake.

Post the photo to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #WhatDoesItTake and adding a message of solidarity for Syria’s people. Example: #WhatDoesItTake to end the #SyriaCrisis.

Reference: Syria - #WhatDoesItTake.

Both figures and images are heartbreaking in this short clip from the United Nations.
 

"A quiet mind is poised to react more astutely"

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What makes meditation palatable to entrepreneurs and executives these days is that it is perceived as a tool to help increase productivity. A quiet mind more easily recognizes unexpected business opportunities and is poised to react more astutely. “If you are looking solely for an investor, you might be guided to, or looking for, the guy in the business suit,” [Wisdom 2.0 Founder] Mr. [Soren] Gordhamer said. “Instead, you may need to be talking to the guy in jeans.”

Reference: How to Find a Job with Meditation and Mindfulness.

Good news for such job seekers, that there are scores of companies and organizations bridging the spiritual with the pragmatic.
 

Sohum "signifies a divine connection with the universe"

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini

But not everyone believes that meditation and yoga are appropriate in the workplace. A recent article in The Harvard Business Review cautioned that “mindfulness is close to taking on cult status in the business world,” and it enumerated ways that a meditative disposition could backfire in the office. Stress can be a useful prompt to engage in critical thinking, noted the author, David Brendel, and is not something to retreat from through meditation. And even as Aetna and others chart what they say are the health benefits of mindfulness and yoga, not all researchers are convinced.

“The public enthusiasm for complementary health practices — and meditation in particular — is outpacing the scientific research,” said Willoughby Britton, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, who is studying the potential negative side effects of meditation. “Widespread implementation is premature.”

Mr. Bertolini has heard the critics, and takes pains not to impose yoga or meditation on any employees. (There are no incentives for workers to take the classes.) But he can’t help but champion both causes. They helped him come back from the abyss.

Reference: At Aetna, a CEO's Management by Mantra.

As in the preceding article, this one speaks to a life-changing, corporate-wide bridging between the spiritual and the workplace.  I find it to be a compelling shift in milieu not known to adopt anything even remotely esoteric.  But I highlight the above remarks, because it is important to acknowledge both sides of the story.  Not everyone is bought in, and many plead caution and call upon research.  Understandably so, yoga, mantra and mindfulness notwithstanding, it is a good idea for any CEO to be thoughtful about making such a shift.  Still Bertolini's near death experience is nothing to dismiss or discount vis-a-vis what we do and what is important to us in the workplace.
 

"There is no work-life balance. We have one life."

Yoga, meditation, ‘mindfulness’ – 
why some of the West’s biggest companies are embracing eastern spirituality

These contradictions – Buddhist teachers who aren’t Buddhists, corporations with spiritual communities, capitalism embracing traditions that shun materialism – are perhaps unsurprising in the modern age. Just as General Mills products are sold around the globe, feeding people from India to Indiana, so too the fundamental tenets of the world’s great religions are freely traded in every corner of the earth. The result is that the people who work hard to make high-margin, low-calorie breakfast cereals are at the same time striving to improve their spiritual equilibrium and even get a taste of enlightenment. “There is no work-life balance,” [General Mills' Deputy General Counsel Janice] Marturano says. “We have one life. What’s most important is that you be awake for it.”

Reference: The mind business.

By my mid-adolescence, I questioned the wisdom of my Catholic upbringing and the tenets of the church.  For many years thereafter, I set aside any religious matter from my mind, as I gravitated toward the spirituality and philosophy of the East, Taoism, in particular.  In fact, I characterized myself as spiritual not religious.  Discovering T'ai Chi was my prompt for this shift.  For the longest time, I kept this side of me separate from the professional identity I carved in the corporate milieu.  The reason I revel in the foregoing article is that it bridges these two sides for me and scores of others.
 

Blake Mycoskie: Doing Business and Doing Good

How TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie created a global apparel brand one step at a time [rf. One for One.®].

I have argued that to do good meaningfully over the long run, one has to have structure, processes and commitment that underpin and sustain that effort.  More specifically, philanthropy succeeds best when it makes money as part of doing good and it does good as part of making money.  This way, it isn't so reliable, or merely reliant, on donors to fund its efforts, initiatives and projects.

So, in this respect, a business is a perfect vehicle for doing good.  But the question from Forbes Joseph Deacetis is a good one:  How can TOMS survive as business by giving away one pair of shoes for every pair it sells?

Mycoskie gives us a good clue:  In part, TOMS makes it work by managing its costs (shunning splashy marketing campaigns) and gaining cost efficiencies (relying on customers to spread the word about the good they do by buying TOMS).  I am sure there are other efforts along these lines.  Also it may be that TOMS rely on a host of its other products, such as totes, sunglasses, and necklaces to help fund its shoes giveaways.  Shoes, in other words, maybe a strategic loss leader for the company.  On the whole, though, I imagine that TOMS have formulated algorithms for the best price points that permit them to do good and earn money.

To my argument at the outset, profit and philanthropy can meaningfully, viably walk hand in hand.