If you’re looking for a more meaningful work experience, make sure you don’t miss the ‘Opportunities for Action’ section of the latest edition of Inspire e-magazine. There you will find such openings as

a. EBBF’s own Global Communication Associate: advancing EBBF’s work to increasingly engage a global audience in this new discourse of value-guided work and business;

b. Integrity Program Manager at the European Network of Integrity & Compliance Officers (ENICO), a non-profit organisation for professionals managing integrity programs in their organizations. EBBF member Jean Pierre Méan, author of the “Figthing Corruption” EBBF publication, is one of the Founding Members of ENICO.

c.  Community Support Manager for AstraZeneca in London. AstraZeneca is a pharmaceutical company hiring a Community Support Manager to contribute to the development of the AZ global community support strategy and policy and to promote this within the business aligned to the Responsible Business (corporate responsibility) strategy.

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There are many more such offers in the magazine, along with inspiring stories of real people doing extraordinary things in their work. So roll up your sleeves and read and apply away!

March 8th, 2010 | Tags: meaningful job offers, meaningful jobs, meaningful work | Category: Job offers | Leave a comment

Below is a selection from a you-don’t-want-to-miss interview with branding expert and business strategy advisor Elsie Maio in which she talks about what it means for a company to put the well-being of humanity at the center of its identity and strategy, and why those that are doing so are finding great success, joy and fulfillment.

Here for the complete interview which just appeared in today’s issue of Inspire e-magazine, and read on for the five reasons businesses should put humanity first.

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… So A, from a business management perspective, it makes sense to anticipate the forces determining success and to address them.  The reason to put the needs of humanity first today, is to be ready before it is the necessity, tomorrow.  And to glean the leadership opportunity while it is still there.  Business has a new vocal stakeholder and it is humanity, the global digital demos. Its collective interest is the quality of life on earth—the Web of Life. That’s the new factor and, given that, putting the needs of humanity first makes sense if you want to please your number one ‘customer.’

B, it’s the sane, self-interested thing to do when More »

March 6th, 2010 | Tags: business putting humanity first, CSR business, Elsie Maio, human business | Category: Inspire | Leave a comment

Click on the image below to enjoy the latest edition of EBBF’s e-magazine INSPIRE
Stories, ideas, values, opportunities for action and meaningful job offers for you, from EBBF members.

March 4th, 2010 | Category: Inspire | Leave a comment

Ming Chong, BIC delegate (click to see video of his presentation)

Concerned with harmonizing the different viewpoints and diverse personalities where you work and live? Interested in promoting cooperation and reciprocity? Try consultation–one of EBBF’s core values. This novel decision-making process, a process of ‘collective inquiry’, is explained afresh in a new statement by the Bahai International Community in the context of its role in contributing to social integration. Below are the first three paragraphs, and here is a link to a video in which the BIC’s delegate to the UN Commission for Social Development offers an elegant explanation of the dynamic process.

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The most compelling model for the integration of the world’s cultures and peoples may lie in the complexity and coordination that characterize the human body. Within this organism, millions of cells, with extraordinary diversity of form and function, collaborate to make human existence possible. Every least cell has its part to play in maintaining a healthy body; from its inception, each is linked to a lifelong process of giving and receiving. In the same manner, efforts around the world to build communities guided by values of cooperation and reciprocity are challenging notions that human nature is More »

March 2nd, 2010 | Tags: BIC, consultation, consultation and integration, consultative decision-making, transforming collective deliberation, valuing unity and justice | Category: Books and Resources, News | Leave a comment

A record number of 17,646 (!) media sites re-printed EBBF’s Press Release announcing the new Ethical Finance knowledge centre. From the Morning Star to CBS Morning watch, to ABC news, to ACCOUNTABILITY a worldwide carpet of media presence for this knowledge centre co-written by Irene Tosti and George Starcher dedicated to highlighting the unique opportunity for financial institutions to embrace a new trend of  responsible business practices.

Enter the search term “ethical finance” into your favorite search engine and most often you will find that EBBF’s Ethical Finance Knowledge Center pops up as the – number one link – in over 4 million references on this dynamic and evolving sector.

You can read, download and share this and previous EBBF press release from the EBBF Press Area clicking here.

February 26th, 2010 | Category: Inspire | Leave a comment

A teaser from an interview with Stephen Vickers, who aside from being the CEO of an organization that gives away its two and a half million euros of profits a year to help people deal with burn therapy and disfigurement, devotes his time to volunteer work in areas of values education and anti-slavery activism. Below Stephen speaks about anti-slavery work, and about its importance in the European context. The full interview in which Stephen speaks about the origins of the values of universality, honesty, and human dignity, and how he strives to apply them to his work and life, will appear in the next edition of Inspire magazine, to be published next week.

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EBBF: You’re quite involved in anti-slavery work, and I understand you’ve lectured extensively on it. What is the idea of modern slavery, and why are you so concerned? Is it something that affects us in Europe?

Stephen: Let me start by saying that I’m not by nature a nationalist, rather I regard myself as a world citizen. But there are certain traditional values in the UK to be defended. One is that once Britain had decided to get rid of slave trade in an act of parliament in 1806-7 it forced other governments to do the same. This is commendable. In fact, Bahá’u’lláh lauded Queen Victoria in the 19th century for having abolished the slave trade.

Slavery is illegal all over the world. The United Nations makes it something everyone must oppose, like piracy (although countries seem to be reneging on that duty, too). But there is a difference between de jure slavery, which no longer exists, and de facto slavery, which does. In this case, the owner isn’t asserting chattel [property] rights over people, but gains rights over them by controlling them, for example, by moving people between countries, taking away their passports, telling them that they owe him money, beating them up, forcing them into prostitution, or forcing drugs on them to make them more controllable. Even employing domestic servants from other countries without giving them holidays is a mild example of this kind of modern slavery.

And yes, it does affect Europeans. For example, in Western Europe More »

February 24th, 2010 | Tags: anti-slavery activism, stephen vickers, values-based ceo | Category: 101 ways to make a difference, Inspire | Leave a comment

One of several job offers to appear in the upcoming edition of Inspire e-magazine:

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International Alert, peace-building NGO, seeks its European Representative in Brussels. 

 Description:
• to lead Alert’s advocacy designed to improve the EU’s ability to build peace in its external relations;
• to manage the ongoing Initiative for Peacebuilding projects, in which Alert leads a research and advocacy consortium of ten European NGOs;
• and to help to raise project funds from the EU for Alert’s own peacebuilding work.

You are persuasive and you communicate clearly. More »

February 22nd, 2010 | Tags: EU representative jobs, meaningful jobs, meaningful work | Category: Job offers | Leave a comment

‘Spiritual laws are as real as the laws of physical reality.’ A snippet from an archival interview from Inspire e-magazine, in which EBBF member Mika Korhonen (on right, with son) speaks about applying values–what he calls ’spiritual laws’–to the world of work, and to life in general.  The full interview can be found here.

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EBBF: When I first spoke with you, you said that the integration of values into work was less about heroes and heroines giving great talks and creating grandiose projects, but more ‘like a way of life’. What do you mean by this?

Mika: The past few years of my life have been quite ‘educational’, I have to say. I went high up in the career lift – from a software engineer to a director – and then ended up dropping off and spending fifteen months home with my two sons. I lost something in that process and I think it was the ‘wrong’ kind of ambition acquired by imitating the surrounding business culture. I thought that what I did defined who I was. If somebody asked who I was I usually answered with my work position and name of the employer but I eventually learned to replace that phrase with ‘I am a father of two boys’. What is important in life was redefined. It became clearer that I am happier if I do not make compromises with what I believe is right, even at the work place, and as a side effect I might also create something good.

Of course it is not just me defining what is right and what is wrong. Over the years I have learned that spiritual laws are as real as the laws of physical reality. More »

February 18th, 2010 | Tags: spiritual laws, values, work values | Category: Inspire | Comments (3)

In the last entry we saw how some principles rooted in Buddhist teaching concerning human purpose were translated into a cogent, convincing and practical perspective on work and human labor. Here we continue with the topic of the application of principles—this time from a Bahai perspective—to practical economic questions. To do so we include some selections from an article in One Country called “Animal spirits,” spirituality, and the economic crisis.

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… The prevailing view was that economic behavior was driven by an “invisible hand” that stemmed from a rational human response to incentives. More recently, however, economists have increasingly examined the psychological, sociological, and other “human” factors that drive economic processes.

… The idea that rational self-interest is not the only factor in describing economic behavior was long ago discussed by John Maynard Keynes. In the 1930s, he used the term “animal spirits” to describe emotions or factors beyond self-interest that affect economic behavior, such as optimism.

But as experts and laymen alike ponder the new directions in economic science – not to mention the causes of and remedies to the current crisis – it may be helpful to give extended consideration to yet another factor: the spiritual side of economic reality. More »

February 16th, 2010 | Tags: applying spiritual principles to economic crisis, Bahai teachings and economic crisis | Category: News | Leave a comment