mama shayna's musings

Snorkeling was pure magic.

Submersing into the silent sea, guided by mesmerizing sea life and the rhythm of your own breath. Time slows down under water. You move as in a smooth watery jello, able to flip upside down and right side up, staying calm and composed as long as you remember to breath slowly, rhythmically, and adjust to your buoyancy needs… Your breath is what carries you up and down in the sea.

Slow, thoughtful breathing slowing down time, until an angel fish catches your eye and you stop, fixated, mesmerized as you glide by it. Slow slow. Slowly slowly.

Watching an eagle ray glide through the ocean, flapping uppppp, downnnn, uppppp, downnnn, as you stop - breathless - and then remember, the rhythm of your breath should do the same. Innnnnnnnn, ouuutttttt, innnnnnnnn, ouutttttt.

Could LaborVoices be a way for companies to cut through layers of suppliers to directly monitor conditions on the factory floor via mobile phones and local monitoring of conditions, potentially avoiding crises like the Bangladesh factory collapse which killed thousands?

LaborVoices founder shares that, "most companies have been reactive — oftentimes, brands are only interested in putting resources into supply chain monitoring and improvement in the wake of a major tragedy. It doesn’t have to be this way. The same poor management practices that lead to worker abuse also lead to poor quality, missed deadlines and higher production costs. It is important for brands to recognize that improving their supply chain has benefits that go far beyond avoiding disasters."

Introduced at the Skoll World Forum, the Impact Genome Project uses data to predict social outcomes

Fascinating proposition.  Organizations spend a lot of money and time trying to establish multi-year studies of their program outcomes and impact (I'm living it right now!), as well as put in place systems to monitor ongoing performance to learn and intervene as a project rolls out.  Both can tell us different things about our programs, but both have draw backs...

With impact reports, often lessons and insights are drawn only after a project has been completed. And there is a 'gee, I wish I had known 5 years ago that if I introduced fertilizer to farmers at a different time of year, our changes of purchasing and using it would have been so much higher.'   But often the program intervention is over and what you have left are a set of recommendations that you hope others pick up in their programming.

On the flipside, with performance monitoring only, where there is typically not a comparison community, it is hard to know what would have happened anyways due to external factors... IE how much of the change or impact seen (or not seen) can you actually link to your program. 

On my recent "Sustainability Saturday" conference call for aspiring sustainability professionals, I was asked what blogs and sites I follow most often to stay on top of sustainability news. Besides being an avid reader of the New York Times, the Atlantic, and CNN, I receive regular updates from the following groups, in no particular order.

Peruse at your own pace! (and yes, the word sustainability is becoming way over-used...)

Business Fights Poverty

Guardian Sustainable Business 

World Resources Institute (WRI)

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

The Sustainable Food Lab (SFL)

Marc Gunther's blog

Sustainable Brands

The Presencing Institute

The Sustainability Consortium

Amara Enyia, who plans to run for mayor of Chicago in 2015, certainly isn’t.

Read this energizing interview with Nigerian-American aspiring Chicago mayoral candidate Amara Enyia who tells it like it is - the people want to be inspired by the love and leadership of politicians - not by fear.  I don't know what folks on Chicago's South Side think of Rahm, but I personally have been very disappointed with the lack of creativity with the 'budget balancing' school closings in communities of most need in our city... and on the flip side, heartened by his launch of city mentoring pilot programs linked to strong metrics of success for young men.  So while the jury is still out on Rahm, this young woman's ambition really speaks to me.

"We want a mayor who inspires people, not one who instills fear in people. I think people are ready for a change—for leadership that shares their values of integrity in transparency and equity. It’s not even about pitting the haves against the have-nots. My message is the city will never be as great as it can be unless we all grow together. What impacts [someone] living in Lincoln Park impacts someone in Humboldt Park, and vice versa. The violence in Back of the Yards impacts [someone] even if [they] live in Edgewater. It’s one city; we all rise together." Amara Enyia

A debate rages in the food industry about the benefits of 'organic' agriculture specifically in tropical ecosystems. When I say benefits, I mean the economic (crop production, costs, etc) and the environmental externalities to these production systems (on water, trees, animals, and soil).

On first glance, a progressive might say 'how can organic NOT be the best way to produce,' and a technocrat might say 'focus on overall unit per hectare to use less land; that is better for the environment.'  

Well, we just don't know. A la this article from the Daily Mail which claims no major studies have been done on the benefits of organic banana or cocoa production.  What hard evidence or credible data is out there?  While we have ‘stories’ in our head about organic being good or bad for the environment, I am hard pressed to find a lot of data about this topic in the tropics.  However we probably can agree that 'lower input' agriculture is good as long as we understand the enviro/economic tradeoffs.