Interview with Wakanyi Hoffman: The invisible force behind Ubuntu philosophy and storytelling

Growing up on the outskirts of Nairobi city, Wakanyi Hoffman’s childhood was filled with heartwarming folktales. She decided to become an Ubuntu Keeper of Indigenous Wisdom who shares her ancestors’ stories wherever she goes.

A storyteller, author, mother, African Indigenous Knowledge scholar, and global speaker, Wakanyi is a “global nomad” on a mission to teach children to embrace the whole world as their home. She is a board member at Seeds of Wisdom, championing indigenous elders’ wisdom and knowledge exchange and the founder of the African Folktales Project.

In this exclusive interview for Community Index Magazine, Wakanyi discusses the power of storytelling and the Ubuntu philosophy around the idea that the sense of self is shaped by your relationships with other people, a beautiful way of living that begins with the premise that “I am” because “we are.”

1. You are an African Indigenous Wisdom Scholar and a renowned keynote speaker on Ubuntu philosophy. As a global nomad, you have a rich intercultural experience that offers you a holistic perspective on the human condition. What are the essential lessons that make Ubuntu a way of life from which we can all learn to co-exist in harmony and peace? How does Ubuntu guide you in your own life and work, especially as a sustainability leader?

Ubuntu is a way of being authentic in your self-expression, honest about who you are, what your values are, and how you see yourself in the world through others and as part of the natural world. Some simple steps to apply it to your life are: performing small acts of kindness which can and do have ripple effects, being radically generous with no strings attached, going out into nature more often than you visit a coffee shop or a shopping mall, noticing the trees, flowers or birds and being grateful that these extensions of natural life exist.

I believe that, by noticing other life forms, your life becomes less about you, and more about the entire ecosystem in which all of life is possible. If you notice a tree in a park, you have an immediate connection to that larger life. You will also notice if the tree is missing and be compelled to do something about conserving the trees in your neighbourhood. You don’t need to buy carbon credits to save the trees in the Amazon if that’s not your ecosystem. The trees right outside your backyard are calling for your attention, too.

This understanding that we are extensions of all of the life around us is deeply rooted in my psyche. I believe strongly that my ability to decide what I care about paints a realistic image of where I am at in life, and gives me a chance to contribute practically to society. If I care about the wildlife in my neighbourhood – squirrels, birds, ducks, deer or any other, then I will be inclined to know more about their life, and this creates an immediate connection between me and the creatures in the world around me.

There is a story a friend shared about the way to becoming enlightened (the way of the Buddha), and he said: “The destination is the path.” Upon further inquiry, he explained that the earlier belief was that the path was the destination, meaning that one had to work towards becoming enlightened, whereas the latter (“The destination is the path”) means that one has it in themselves to embody the buddha-like qualities and then go about achieving them. In other words, the belief that you are already enlightened makes you embody the qualities of an enlightened being. If you think in regenerative terms, then you begin to act in ways that are regenerative. I think in a way this is descriptive of what Ubuntu is. You are born with ubuntu (humanness), and then you embody ubuntu qualities which enhance your life as you grow older. This idea resonates with me and that’s how I visualize the way I approach life.

2. Climate change can unleash a cocktail of emotions: anxiety, hopelessness, or even despair. What role does storytelling play in tackling this issue and dealing with these difficult emotions?

These emotions can also be the result of poor storytelling, in my opinion. It is natural to feel hopeless in the face of the alarming data and statistics about the quality of human life in the face of this looming doomsday scenario. However, can we also look towards the past and dig up some hopeful narratives? There are countless stories of how indigenous communities have averted similar crises using knowledge and wisdom that I believe are still accessible and relevant to modern society. What if we reimagined this doomsday scenario not as apocalyptic, but as optimistic – as a day of redemption, a day of reunification, a day of peace? If we can imagine this, we can walk into a brighter future. We can avert this crisis if we have a different story to tell.

I think a better imagination can dilute these feelings of anxiety and hopelessness and replace them with hope to activate our survival instincts. Collective imagination is our way out of this. A question I think we should ask when in despair is: “Where is hope?” Rather than focusing on despair, we can channel our efforts into creating a sense of hope. Hope gives way to action. If we can imagine solutions, then there is more hope and less anxiety. ”We often forget that we are all storytellers. The main character is yourself. What happens when we forget our roles as storytellers is that we then designate ourselves a passive role and leave someone else to tell our stories. This would be likened to a director handing out a film script to everyone but the main character, and then realizing that the main character’s role was never written!

3. You are an author of children’s books and the initiator of the African Folktales Project, an ongoing open-sourced resource of indigenous wisdom and knowledge for pupils. How did you manage to create a fusion of storytelling and sustainability educational content?

Initially, this was a Master’s thesis back when I was studying at UCL. I had this idea to collect folktales from Africa and use them to develop a curriculum to teach children about storytelling and build a bridge between African indigenous knowledge systems and formal education. I started to notice a pattern in these stories – they were all sources of solutions to the challenges of achieving the SDGs! This is how my idea to develop a “folktales for SDGs” curriculum was born. I have since taught at universities in the US (Brooklyn College and Presidio Graduate School) to educators and students and used African stories to introduce the SDGs in a way that is accessible to the public, beyond the confines of indigenous communities.

4. You believe that “seeing yourself as part of someone else’s story will bring justice to the world”. How important it is for children to find their reflection in books? What is the role of stories in changing the narrative from inaction to acting as conscious global citizens of the world?

Children are naturally receptive to external messaging, and this is why seeing themselves or not seeing themselves in stories is such a powerful way of empowering or disempowering them. Storytelling is the way that we convince ourselves of our relevance in this world. We are here because we have told ourselves that we belong here, on this planet. All traditions, cultures, and spiritual organizations have an original creation story. What happens when, in that creation story, you don’t see or hear your own one? Then you may as well not exist, or you actually don’t exist at all. That can be a source of an identity crisis. That is the tragedy of not seeing yourself in a story, and then by extension, not being included in someone else’s story.

Each story that you tell yourself includes different characters. You are always the main character, and everyone else plays a role. My mother plays the role of mother in my story, and in her story, I play the role of daughter. In both of our stories, we are each the main character. My mother will never become the centre of my story, and I’ll never become the centre of her story.

We must teach children to never forget the role of the main character. Even more important is to go beyond being the main character and the storyteller – you begin observing yourself, your behaviour, how you invent the characters in your story, how you treat yourself, and how you show up in life. That is a form of Ubuntu in action too, which is really mirroring your values with the storyteller. You then begin to mirror your authentic self to society. You can’t do this effectively if you’re not the storyteller of your story. Once you establish yourself as the storyteller, it becomes easier to assign yourself the main character, and to go beyond that to become a real observer, going beyond the identity of Me, Myself, or I. You become identified with all the other characters and all other beings.

Interview with Alice Schmidt: The Sustainability Puzzle Challenge

This interview was published in Sustainability Index Magazine 2023.

How Can Sustainability in Business Look Like

Alice Schmidt is a global sustainability advisor who has worked in 30 countries on 4 continents with 70+ organizations across sectors, deeply passionate about creating opportunities across the social, environmental and economic spheres.

We discussed with Alice about her new book, „The Sustainability Puzzle: How Systems Thinking, Climate Action, Circularity and Social Transformation Can Improve Health, Wealth and Wellbeing for All”, and her insights on how systems thinking, circularity, climate action and social transformation can improve health, wealth and wellbeing for all.

1. You are the co-author of „The Sustainability Puzzle” book, a useful and accessible read for all those who want to understand the links between social, environmental and economic issues and solutions. It has a touch of optimism which is often missing from today’s sustainability conversations. How did you manage to invite your readers to zoom out and look at the bigger picture before zooming in again?

Most of us work in silos and focus on a rather narrow set of professional questions and responsibilities. In sustainability, this sometimes leads to outcomes that do more harm than good. In the book, we highlight this with lots of real-life examples and some graphic art as well. For example, electric cars can be a piece of the puzzle, but only if they’re powered by renewables and only where they do not replace perfectly functioning conventional vehicles and the materials they are made of are sourced sustainability.

More importantly, by looking at the bigger picture, we realize that cities of the future should function without cars. Sustainable mobility is about walking, cycling and public transport – not about e-mobility only. Therefore, another piece of the puzzle is designing cities in ways that make sustainable forms of transport more attractive through parks and green space, cycling infrastructure and appropriate incentives, for example.

2. In your opinion, piecing together The Sustainability Puzzle in organizations is vital: it’s about doing justice to the breadth and depth of sustainability and balancing a systems perspective with concrete solutions. What is the key element that business leaders should consider to ensure that they are starting their sustainability journey right?

As a first step, business leaders must make the connection between people, planet and profits. What many have yet to fully grasp is that individuals and businesses alike depend on ecosystem services, the services provided by planet Earth to us for free.

By polluting, emitting greenhouse gases and using non-renewable materials we are not actually destroying the planet – the planet doesn’t need us humans. What we’re destroying is the ecosystem’s ability to provide to us the conditions we need to thrive and survive.

3. As a keynote speaker, you often talk about topics such as multi-solving, planetary health, social impact, and especially sustainable business and ESG. Why do you think sustainability has become such an important component of strategic leadership thinking? How does your audience feel after hearing your insights on creating a better future by addressing global challenges today?

Indeed, both when giving talks and when advising my clients I emphasize that sustainability is not about putting social versus economic or environmental issues. It’s about finding win-wins – and sometimes triple wins – for people, planet and profits.

Let’s take the example of urban mobility again: investing in green space rather than roads improves people’s health and well-being. It makes them feel safer and more inclined to walk and cycle. By doing so, they contribute to saving taxpayers’ money that’s otherwise necessary for building and maintaining car infrastructure. At the same time, injuries through traffic accidents go down, and air pollution – a major problem in many cities around the world – decreases as well, improving people’s health even more. Moreover, all that walking, cycling and taking public transport keep people active and engaged with their communities, another important factor in their health.

So, there is a virtuous circle, as urban spaces become more attractive for pedestrians and cyclists, decreasing the need for car travel even more. Having cars in urban centres is very last-century I find, but many politicians have yet to discover this.

This is why sustainability has become so important for leaders: well, they are beginning to see the business case. Firstly, regulation is tightening, secondly, they feel pressure from suppliers and customers. Employees, too, are interested in sustainability and young people in particular want to work for sustainable companies – they’re even willing to accept lower incomes if they feel good about the company they work with. Banks and investors are also demanding transparency. All of this makes the business case even clearer. Real leaders recognize that in a context of rising pressure and increased transparency, greenwashing is not the answer. In fact, portraying yourself in a much greener, better light than you really come with considerable risks. True sustainability leaders recognize that they better invest resources in really scrutinizing their business models than only in green marketing, and they do not shy away from transformational change.

My audiences often tell me about “lightbulb” moments as they begin to make the connection between people, planet and profits. They welcome the evidence-based but optimistic approach, neither naïve nor lacking in seriousness.

4. In order to ensure success and profit, thorough research is necessary when setting up sustainability projects and programs. This involves analyzing stakeholders, identifying and assessing potential partners, and understanding the socio-economic or cultural environment. How does efficient monitoring look like? Why is it essential to see whether all elements are on track and to address those that are not?

Indeed, sustainability success requires keeping on top of evidence, setting goals and monitoring. Not all aspects of sustainability are straightforward to measure. Yet, you cannot manage what you do not measure, so measuring is essential. In order to do this effectively and efficiently, I usually recommend my clients to focus on a few, impactful levers, and to rather measure and monitor some key indicators well than to spread themselves too thinly. Importantly, they must look at outputs and impact rather than at activities and inputs only.

Sustainability has become a really hot market, so providers of certification and support have mushroomed all over the place. It is important for companies to choose wisely whom to partner with. Often, well intended is not the same as well done. At any rate, collaboration – across silos, sectors and industries – is essential for sustainability success.

Interview with Cosmin Ghiță, CEO Nuclearelectrica: The Future of Nuclear Energy in Romania

This interview was published in Sustainability Index Magazine 2023.

Nuclearelectrica on the benefits of nuclear energy and current projects

In 2022, Nuclearelectrica announced a strategic partnership for the development of the first small modular reactor (SMR) in Romania, in Doicești, Dâmbovița county. The reactor built by the American company NuScale received the approval of the US Regulatory Commission in 2020 and is the most mature SMR technology on the market.

In the discussion with Cosmin Ghiță, CEO Nuclearelectrica, we learn about the strategic importance of the SMR project for positioning Romania as a future leader in the production and assembly of SMR components and in the training of specialists in the field. We also review the benefits of nuclear energy and its contribution to Romania’s energy mix, as well as other ongoing Nuclearelectrica projects.

1. In 2021 you launched a new mission: „Building a sustainable future for tomorrow’s generation”. What role did the company assume in this new context and what innovations did it bring at the operational level?

The company’s vision includes 3 major action coordinates:

• The re-energization of Romania through clean energy, up to 66% after 2031, through the three strategic energy projects in different stages of development: Refurbishment of Unit 1, Units 3 and 4 Project, and the Small Modular Reactors Project;

• “Nucleus of Excellence”, the human resources platform dedicated to the growth of a generation of specialists, oriented towards attracting and developing a unique career for young people in Romania;

• “Nucleus of care”, a platform through which we provide support for development in three strategic areas: education, health, and environmental protection.

Together, these directions have the role of building a sustainable future for tomorrow’s generation. It is the DNA of the nuclear industry, the intrinsic value of an industry in full development program.

2. In what way has nuclear technology advanced in Romania in recent years?

The nuclear industry’s innovative answer to the needs of the system, energy security, complementarity with renewable sources, advanced nuclear safety and flexibility is the small modular reactor (SMR).

Currently, there are more than 10 SMR projects announced in Europe and North America (US, Canada, UK, France, Romania, Poland, etc.) with estimated commissioning by 2035 and more than 70 SMR technologies in development worldwide.

The NuScale technology, the one that Romania will implement, is the most mature from the perspective of implementation. For Romania, the opportunity to be among the first countries to develop SMR technology comes with numerous benefits for the development of the local nuclear industry and the supply chain for the production/assembly of NuScale technology components to Central and Eastern European states.

With over 26 years of experience operating at the highest standards of excellence, Nuclearelectrica has the opportunity to become a regional NuScale technology operator, as well as a regional center of excellence in operational training. In this sense, we will implement a NuScale simulator at the Bucharest Polytechnic University and launch regional operational training programs.

3. What are the benefits of nuclear power in the context of climate and energy security objectives?

Among the benefits of nuclear energy, we list the following:

• It is available 24/7, regardless of weather conditions

• It is a clean, safe, resilient and affordable source of energy

• Globally, nuclear power covers 10% of total electricity needs

• Nuclear power generates 50% of electricity with low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

• The nuclear industry in the EU supports 1 million jobs

• Globally, nuclear power prevents the release of 2 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to the production of 400 million cars

• It is competitive: nuclear power is one of the cheapest forms of energy

• It is essential to the decarbonation mix; renewable sources can have an effective impact only in conjunction with nuclear energy due to their intermittent nature

• It is essential to the energy mix of the future; the energy sector is the main source of CO2 emissions, and climate change experts recommend increasing low-CO2 sources from 30% to over 80% in 2050

• Nuclear energy saves raw material; by recycling fuel, primary resources are effectively managed, and by recycling uranium and MOX fuel, a 30% saving of raw material can be achieved; globally, 96% of spent fuel is recyclable (95% uranium, 1% plutonium)

• Nuclear energy protects health; there are no emissions of fine particles, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrates or phosphates into the atmosphere

4. What major projects have you developed lately?

The Refurbishment of Unit 1, the Project of Units 3 and 4 CNE Cernavodă, and the Project of Small Modular Reactors. The company’s strategic projects are, at the same time, a priority for Romania in relation to the need to increase energy production capacities without CO2 emissions, ensuring energy requirements and independence, and achieving decarbonisation targets, consumer protection, socio-economic development, supply chain development, and Romania’s positioning as a leader in the implementation of new nuclear technologies in the region.

5. In what way did you find useful the development of corporate governance as a coagulation factor and effective integration of all processes at the SNN level?

The implementation of corporate governance rules ensures a transparent decision-making process, based on clear and objective rules designed to lead both to internal coherence and accountability, but also to increasing the level of trust of all categories of stakeholders.

6. In 2022, you published your fourth sustainability report. What changes did the development of such a report produce in the company?

Nuclearelectrica’s management has a holistic approach to including ESG criteria in the company’s strategy and development plans. This holistic approach is derived at the level of the entire company and at the level of the company’s collaborators through the established processes, procedures, but especially through objectives that are derived from the general objectives of Nuclearelectrica down to the individual level through KPIs.

We have an ESG Working Committee, responsible for evaluating and developing ESG principles and measures for the company.

One of our values is sustainability and it is simultaneously a strategic direction of action. In everything we do, operation and production, internal development, investment projects, environmental management programs, assets, HR, code of ethics and anti-corruption policy, the goal is added value, development for the company and its shareholders, in order to ensure clean energy and energy security in Romania.

Interview with László Borbély and Gabriela Ciulacu Bițan, the Department of Sustainable Development: Inside the Romanian Code of Sustainability

This interview was published in Sustainability Index Magazine 2023.

How will the Code support businesses in Romania?

As part of its 2030 strategy for sustainable development overseen by a dedicated department within the government, Romania has recently launched one if its most ambitious projects yet: a national Sustainability Code. The Code and its guide for use by businesses in Romania have been recently finalized and will be followed by a reporting framework, which is currently in testing phase. Together, the two components will provide companies with a tool for unified and transparent reporting.

László Borbély, State Counsellor, and Gabriela Ciulacu Bițan, Senior Advisor at the Department for Sustainable Development, share more about why the Romanian Code of Sustainability was necessary and how it will support the business environment in the country.

1. The Romanian Code of Sustainability represents one of the most important and ambitious projects that the Department of Sustainable Development is currently implementing. How does the Code support companies in Romania?

László Borbély: As it is already quite well known in the business environment, non-financial reporting has been an obligation for companies with over 500 employees for several years. The new European directives make sustainability reporting an even more complex task that will gradually address an increasing number of entities. Besides the few companies that currently develop rigorous sustainability reports, many do not give enough importance to the subject. In addition, we can’t even know concretely what the situation is because right now the non-financial declarations that are submitted are not transparent.

We have the duty to stimulate the business environment to adapt to the new realities and not to be inferior to what is happening in the West in the area of sustainability reporting. That is why we created the Romanian Code of Sustainability and the reporting platform, which is free, both for entities that have the obligation to submit non-financial declarations/sustainability reports, and for those that wish to report voluntarily. In addition to the fact that the tool we developed ensures uniform and transparent reporting, it provides examples to guide users on how to comply with the reporting obligation.

2. The next period, until 2026, is marked by many new requirements at the European Union level regarding sustainability reporting. What actions will the Department for Sustainable Development carry out in 2023 to support the business environment in the implementation of these changes?

László Borbély: First of all, the entire approach that we started must also be seen in the context of the new regulations at the level of the European Union. In the process of creating the Romanian Code of Sustainability, we took into account all the relevant elements of the new directive, so that through the tool we created we meet the need of the business environment to adapt to the new requirements.

In addition to the final outcome of the consultation process, it was also very important that we were able to drive discussions on this topic and promote sustainability reporting to the public. We are also involved through our inter-institutional network in the transposition of the new CSRD directive, which allows us to keep the interaction between the business environment, NGOs and public institutions open, so that the implementation is done as smoothly as possible.

3. In June 2022, you presented the state of development of the Romanian Sustainability Code at an event organized at the Victoria Palace. What other actions have you taken on this project in the meantime?

Gabriela Ciulacu Bițan: The most important result we have achieved in the meantime is the finalization of the Romanian Sustainability Code and the Guide for its use. The two documents can be downloaded from the dedicated website: www.codsustenabilitate.gov.ro. We are also nearing the finalization of the reporting platform, in the sense that it is in the testing phase.

Since the implementation of the Code requires engagement from the business environment, at the end of last year we also had a promotion campaign under the slogan: „Choose the path of responsibility, use the Romanian Code of Sustainability!”, carried out on social networks (YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Display Newtork, newsletters) so that our message reaches as many entities as possible. We managed to promote the Sustainability Code at the local level as well, through the 8 regional debates held within the Sustainable Romania project. Recently, training sessions for the use of the Code took place, attended by 116 representatives, especially from the business environment.

In the short term, we aim to finalize the legal framework for the effective operationalization of the Code, and in the medium and long term we will continue with promotional actions and the provision of support for the business environment.

4. In what way will the Code support the analysis of a company’s sustainability performance and benchmarking with other companies in the industry?

Gabriela Ciulacu Bițan: Providing a benchmarking tool was also one of the goals with which we set out on the road to create the Romanian Sustainability Code. A big plus that the Code and the platform brings is the fact that reporting will be transparent and unified. The reports of all companies will have the same chapters and the same performance indicators.

The platform allows searching according to several filters, among which: company type, number of employees, field of activity, and most importantly, search and comparison according to each criterion or performance indicator. In the future, when companies have multiple reports and multi-year data series, we will implement the ability to compare results for a specific criterion/indicator from each year.

Interview with Ömer Tetik, CEO Banca Transilvania: Sustainable banking

This interview was published in Sustainability Index Magazine 2023: https://sustainabilityindex.ro/sustainability-magazine-2023/

Banca Transilvania’s objectives for the coming years are to consolidate the portfolio of green financing (to grant at least 3.5 billion lei for green projects), maintain the 20% financing of green mortgages, contribute to financial inclusion and continue investing in the bank’s digital transformation.

1. How has the bank’s mission changed since more and more emphasis is placed on sustainability in the business environment?

From the beginning, our mission has been to support and develop the business environment in Romania, through financial products and services, but also through access to financing for companies, entrepreneurs and the population.

Through the way we allocate resources, we play a catalytic role in Romania’s path towards a circular economy. Therefore, we have learned to integrate aspects related to the environment, social impact or the promotion of good governance into our lending practices.

I would like to mention our affiliation with the Principles for Responsible Banking within the UNEP FI (United Nations Environmental Program – Finance Initiative), which helps us to analyze the impact that our activity has from the perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We are also paying more attention to sectors with high carbon emissions and analyzing the carbon footprint of our portfolio.

2. The topic of Climate Change has been at the top of the agenda for several years and will remain so for a long time to come. How did Banca Transilvania propose to fight against their devastating effects through the partnerships it has?

We choose our suppliers and business partners. Last year (NR: in 2022), 96% of BT suppliers in Romania were local suppliers, selected based on the achievement of ESG criteria, such as energy efficiency and respect for the working conditions and health of employees. We also prioritize the purchase of electricity from 100% renewable sources, and over 80% of our electricity comes from such sources.

Regarding partnerships, starting in 2017 we developed a partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) whose purpose was to grant green credits to individuals for the purchase of residential properties and for the purchase of goods with superior energy performance. Last year (NR: in 2022), 1 in 5 mortgages granted was green. In the same way, through the Roseff program we granted financing for the optimization of the energy consumption of SMEs. Also, as an official partner of the European Energy Efficiency Fund in Romania, we granted loans for the purpose of improving the energy performance of the financed objectives or the implementation of energy production capacities from renewable sources.

Just last year (NR: in 2022) we signed a financing with IFC (part of the World Bank), which represents a pioneer in Romania and in Central and Eastern Europe in terms of blue economy projects.

This is a new area of interest for us, supporting Romania’s alignment with EU water management requirements and standards, as well as increasing the efficiency of water use in all sectors.

3. What are the most important ESG objectives of the bank for the coming years?

One of these is to strengthen the portfolio of green financing (grant at least 3.5 billion lei for green projects), maintain the 20% financing of green mortgages, contribute to financial inclusion and continue investing in the bank’s digital transformation. We also aim to reduce the intensity of our carbon footprint by increasing the use of renewable energy sources, as well as water, plastic and paper consumption and waste generation.

When it comes to our own team, our goals are to continue to closely monitor the balance of gender, age, and the net salary ratio between men and women with a focus on closing the gap. At the same time, we assume the role of the employer who facilitates learning, investing in periodic up-skilling courses and training.

4. What are the key ingredients of a bank that wants to be a leader in sustainability?

It is essential to prioritize the management of social and environmental risks by identifying, assessing and monitoring them. Also, corporate responsibility is a crucial ingredient.

5. Support for entrepreneurs is a basic pillar for Banca Transilvania. What are the best results you have had following the development of programs dedicated to entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is part of our DNA, therefore supporting it through dedicated programs and projects is part of our core business. An example is Stup, the BT space dedicated to the entrepreneurial community in Romania. Currently, the community has gathered a number of more than 9,000 members.

We are supporters of Romanian start-ups through BT Mic, the microfinance company of the BT Group. With a portfolio that has a weight of approximately 20% start-ups, BT Mic is also the first financier for over 70% of customers.

Interview with Adina Teleucă: TOBORO PROJECT.  Startup from Romania accepted in the Founders Program in Paris

1. The Toboro project, initially a platform dedicated to the lending of objects between individuals, was designated in November 2021 as the winner of the Future Makers international incubator, organized by Social Innovation Solutions. How did you arrive at solutions for companies today, for the valorization of electronic waste (e-waste)?

Indeed, Toboro was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 2021, along with our participation in the Future Makers program. The entire experience of the founders in this project was somewhat atypical. Less than a year later, we decided to launch the mobile application directly in France, along with relocating part of our team there. From there began a new phase of learning and development through trial and error, as is typical for many startups.

For our project, the challenges were even greater since we chose to operate in a market where we had no previous experience. This entire process helped us better understand the problem we were trying to solve, as well as our customers’ needs. This led us to pivot from a C2C business model to a B2B model, addressing the same challenge – overconsumption that generates huge amounts of waste – to organizations.

2. Why did you choose France for Toboro development?

In the last year, we realized how important it is to be present in an ecosystem where people are familiar with the problems you are trying to address and who are aware of the impact of climate change on the economy. This topic is present here in the academic environment, in the public space, in the startup ecosystem, and also at the political level, which is reflected in dedicated programs that provide resources to those who want to innovate in this field.

Moreover, France is an important hub for entrepreneurs and is distinguished by its diversity and a significant international community that has chosen to develop their products and services here, especially in Paris. There is support from both the private and public sectors (La French Tech, BPI France), making France an attractive place for startups.

Although we would have liked Romania to be the country where we launched, even though we did not do so, we hope to see it ready to support entrepreneurs more. But beyond that, personally, I believe that today, more than ever, you can launch a business from any corner of the world. What characterizes an entrepreneur is determination and the ability to find solutions, regardless of challenges or the environment they come from. We can see, even in Romania, more and more entrepreneurs who are having a major impact, including internationally.

3. Unlike government programs and recommendations from environmental organizations, with Toboro you provide companies involved in the recovery of e-waste with immediate feedback of their actions, through statistics and data on the reduction of carbon emissions, the amount of raw materials saved or the financial value of their actions, as is the case with donations. How much does this data matter in motivating managers of organizations to engage in sustainability actions?

Data are extremely important in supporting the actions that companies undertake, and from the numerous discussions we have had with organization representatives, we have noticed that they also represent a great challenge. On the one hand, this need is accentuated as the deadline approaches for the new European directive on corporate sustainability reporting (CSRD) to come into force. On the other hand, the increasing pressure also comes from consumers and investors. According to the most recent study by PwC, 94% of investors believe that corporate sustainability reports contain statements that are not supported by accurate data.

Moreover, their interest in the impact of companies on the environment and society is also growing, 15% more than the previous year Last but not least, the lack of data makes it difficult, if not impossible, for companies to measure the impact of their actions and sustainability projects, with an impact in business (attracting talent, investments, etc.), not just at the image level.

Identifying all these problems, we have developed, together with one of the doctoral graduates in mathematics from MIT, our own calculation algorithm, which allows for greater accuracy than the estimates we can find on the market.

For this, we have built our own database, which integrates information about the emissions generated by each product, from different brands, from the production stage to commercialization. We complete this calculation with data collected from companies, about the duration and usage in the product’s life cycle within the organization.

4. What results have you recorded in the few months since the launch of the platform? Can you give us some names of companies and the impact of their actions on the environment?

We began developing our product based on feedback received from organizations we interviewed even before defining the final solution. This allowed us to collect useful insights about their problems and needs. However, we didn’t limit ourselves to just companies. The issue of e-waste cannot be solved without a holistic approach. Each party involved in a product’s lifecycle bears some responsibility.

We identified that, in the manufacturing and distribution stage, producers are not yet providing enough transparency regarding data that shows a product’s carbon footprint. We need this data to perform precise calculations and generate accurate results useful for sustainability reports. Continuing, existing databases (such as ADEME) offer a range of useful information, but even here, some of it is based on estimates. We continue to operate with a lot of approximate data and we believe it is also the role of legislation to impose more transparency and rigor in data transmission.

We have also expanded our study to the area of NGOs or partners (example: recyclers), as well as suppliers, thereby laying the foundations for what we want to be an ecosystem for the management of e-waste. In this ecosystem, we currently integrate actors from the corporate, non-profit, and public environments – who are usually the partners that take over electronic equipment to extend its life. At this moment, we have a pilot program – focused especially on laptop donations – in which companies from industries such as retail and banking participate, both from France and Romania.

On average, an organization that chooses to donate 100 laptops instead of sending them to the landfill can reduce its CO2 emissions by approximately 7,800 kg in the year of donation, and the calculation can also be extended to raw materials, water consumption, or the financial value of donations with an impact on the community.

For those interested in a personalized calculation, we invite them to www.toboro.io, where they can request such a report.

5. In your work, you also addressed the other side of sustainability, social responsibility, specifically diversity and inclusion (D&I). How is the Accessi+ project received by companies, through which you offer audits and solutions to improve the accessibility of website content for individuals with disabilities?

Web accessibility allows all individuals, not just those with disabilities, to navigate and interact with the internet. With the pandemic and the increased time spent online, this has become even more important. Fortunately, there is a legislative framework that ensures everyone’s equal access to information and communication technologies, which we can simply interpret as access to internet content.

These directives, as we know, are interpreted differently from one country to another. In France, for example, we already have an implementation methodology for the European standard EN301 549, which public institutions, public law entities, and companies with a turnover of over 250 million euros are required to follow. There is also a standard in Romania.

However, what motivates organizations to make their websites or mobile applications accessible is not just the fines for non-compliance, but also the opportunities they lose due to lack of accessibility: access to a larger customer base, the positive impact on CSR strategy, especially in the Diversity and Inclusion pillar, and even at the image level, showing care and empathy towards a disadvantaged population segment when it comes to navigating the internet.

6. You are preparing to enter the Romanian market. What are the expectations regarding the development of the two projects in the domestic business environment? What obstacles do you think you will encounter?

We are entrepreneurs, so we choose to have an optimistic approach. We believe it is very important for Romania to keep pace with global development and align with international standards. Even though progress is slower in certain sectors here than in other regions of the world, we observe a considerable openness from some organizations towards innovation, inclusion, and sustainability-related themes. Our businesses are based on a European and international legislative framework, which particularly helps us in discussions with organizations that are part of complex, international structures where sustainability is already integrated into the business strategy.

Locally, we already see a growing number of companies voluntarily making sustainability reports, as well as those engaging in actions with a positive impact on the environment and society. For us, this is an indicator that things are moving in a positive direction.

7. How do you see the role of technology in promoting sustainability?

I believe that technology is an important catalyst in promoting sustainability and provides us with tools that enable the measurement, analysis, and improvement of our impact on the environment. Therefore, we should transition to a stage where data accuracy, through traceability and transparency, becomes a reality. For instance, artificial intelligence and data analysis solutions allow us to more accurately assess carbon emissions and identify areas where we can reduce resource consumption.

Equally important is the fact that today, more than ever, technology plays a vital role in increasing public awareness and engagement. Online platforms and social networks enable us to disseminate information about sustainable practices and create a global community united around sustainability values. However, there is equally a risk of greenwashing when it comes to online platforms.

I am convinced that technology will be more than a facilitator and will enable us to address current climate challenges in smarter and more efficient ways.

„Good Day – Little Volunteer Day on Via Transilvanica!”: Training the new generation of volunteers

Volunteering in rural areas can have a significant impact on fostering behaviors that contribute to environmental protection and the development of a sense of unity within the community. Through the „Good Day – Little Volunteer Day on Via Transilvanica” project, Tășuleasa Social Association, in partnership with Coca-Cola HBC Romania demonstrate that when key elements such as community, national projects, and strategic partnerships are coming together, the results translate into thriving and sustainable communities.

The project began as a Christmas philanthropic initiative for vulnerable children and evolved into a systemic intervention that combines actions for education and the promotion of environmental responsibility. Four key elements laid the foundation for this year’s edition: the communities along Via Transilvanica needed opportunities to connect, Via Transilvanica trail – the largest project that put Romania on the map as a top destination in ecotourism, with a continuous need for conservation, and a strong partnership with Coca-Cola HBC, whose commitment to creating a better world „After Us” became a common goal. In addition, data from studies confirmed the need for education and the creation of opportunities: 70% of teachers believe that rural schools do not equip students with the necessary knowledge to understand climate change and take individual measures.

The „Good Day – Little Volunteer Day on Via Transilvanica” took place over a period of 6 months of preparations and actions focused on three strategic steps:

SYSTEMIC PARTNERSHIPS: Over 100 educational units and 3 local authorities were invited to join the project and spread educational content in schools.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF VOLUNTEERS: Groups of VOLUNTEERS from Via Transilvanica were formed by selecting them from over 35 rural schools that later participated in environmental education sessions.

ACTION AND CELEBRATION: The largest simultaneous clean-up action took place in 110 localities along the Via Transilvanica route in the counties of Mureș, Suceava, and Bistrița. Over 1000 km of the route were cleaned with the help of 3000 volunteers.

The results of 2023 confirmed once again that the power of systemic partnerships can contribute to shaping the new generation of environmental volunteers in rural areas: 3000 volunteers, 3 counties, over 1000 km cleaned, 25,000 kg of waste collected, 2 landfills eliminated; 260,000 indirect beneficiaries.

Good Day – Little Volunteer Day on Via Transilvanica was awarded with the Gold Award for Excellence in the Environmental Communication category and the Silver Award for Excellence in the CSR category, at the PR Awards 2023 Gala.

Via Transilvanica, the project of the Tășuleasa Social Association initiated in 2018, represents a 1,400 km tourist and pilgrimage route that starts from Bucovina, from Putna, crosses Transylvania and ends at Drobeta-Turnu Severin. The aim of the project is to highlight the cultural-historical and natural riches of Romania, both at national and international level.

Via Transilvanica passes through ten counties, areas of great cultural, historical, and natural importance, being at the same time a real catalyst for the cultures that have coexisted for centuries in our country.

The Azores has launched Community Index Magazine 2023, a yearbook now in its fifth edition, the most important bilingual publication dedicated to the field of CSR in Romania

>>> Community Index Magazine is the only Romanian-English bilingual publication in Romania dedicated to the field of CSR, available in both flip view and print formats. The yearbook includes the results of the Community Index 2023 ranking, exclusive national and international interviews, case studies and sustainability articles.

>>> Readers can enjoy exclusive articles and interviews that highlight the perspectives of recognized leaders from BCR, University of Wisconsin, Kaufland Romania, The Slow Movement or Seeds of Wisdom.

>>> The publication promotes and encourages the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to support Romania in its efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda.

Community Index Magazine: a source of quality know-how for any professional with a sustainable mindset

The bilingual Community Index Magazine yearbook, now in its fifth edition, contains the results of the Community Index 2023 ranking, exclusive interviews with renowned international professionals, articles and interviews with local professionals in the fields of sustainability and CSR, and numerous case studies of some companies that are considered benchmarks for their community projects.

The publication is particularly useful not only for professionals in the field but also for companies, CEOs, Marketing professionals, community members, NGOs, universities, PR agencies and authorities.

The publication in flip view format is available for free at the following link: https://communityindex.ro/community-index-magazine-2023/

What type of content do readers find in Community Index Magazine?

1. Exclusive interviews with globally recognized sustainability experts:

  • Riane Eisler, The Real Wealth of Nations
  • Wakanyi Hoffman, Seeds of Wisdom
  • Jessica Leclair, University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Nursing
  • Carl Honoré, The Slow Movement

2. Articles and interviews with nationally recognized professionals:

  • Ilinka Kajgana, BCR
  • Katharina Scheidereiter, Kaufland Romania
  • Gabriel Ivan, CHEP
  • Adina Teleucă, TOBORO

3. National and international case studies:

  • “Good Day – Little Volunteer Day on Via Transilvanica!”, Coca-Cola HBC Romania & Tășuleasa Social Association
  • The Giant T-shirt, Kaufland Romania & 11even Association
  • Phasing out plastic, Apple
  • The Money School, BCR, FabLab & Edupedu Association
  • Personal Sustainability Program (PSP), Auchan Romania
  • Our Garden, Carrefour Romania
  • Life Savers Program, Groupama Romania & The Foundation for SMURD
  • Kokoro Sports Project
  • Jobs for veterans, Starbucks
  • Microsoft’s New BING

What is Community Index?

Community Index is the first and only ranking of programs and projects carried out by companies in Romania to invest in communities, launched in 2019. The ranking is the largest database of CSR projects in Romania and represents a useful analysis tool for companies, authorities and communities when making investment decisions.

It is a component of the ranking Romania CST Index (previously Romania CSR Index), the most important analysis of the level of performance and transparency from the perspective of corporate sustainability, in our country, launched in 2016.

There is a wide variety of initiatives and projects on the market, and a well-structured overview provides relevant information to help decision-makers create a strategy well adapted to the local and national context.

In order to establish the projects that were included in the Community Index 2023, more than 800 initiatives, projects or programs that took place in Romania between January 2022 and December 2023 were analyzed. The scorecard on the basis of which the evaluation was made had, in total, 6 categories and 46 indicators aligned with the most important international standards or references in the field of investments in communities.

What new findings did the 2023 analysis reveal?

The investment and donation market in support of communities has grown in recent years and amounts to over 80 million euros annually, mainly for Education projects for students (9.4%, a slight increase of 1% compared to 2022), Health (6%, down from last year) or Disadvantaged environments (23%, up 5% from 2022). Another area of interest for companies is Art/Culture, 10% of projects being developed in this direction, increasing compared to 9.2% in 2022. However, 4% of the projects carried out by companies in Romania are intended to combat Climate change, decreasing by 1% versus 2022, and 1.5% of the projects are in the direction of Sustainable cities, down from 4.4% in 2022.

Among the main trends highlighted following the analysis, we mention an increase in the level of transparency regarding the results and impact of CSR projects or programs. Also, companies are beginning to better align the Sustainability / CSR strategy with the specifics of the industry and the business strategy. As for the employees, they are more eager to help communities and appreciate companies that offer them the opportunity to volunteer for projects. Another observed trend is the fact that there is an increased interest in long-term goals: companies put more emphasis on generating impact over several years and avoid creating a dependency of the community – they focus on developing skills or an infrastructure that will remain in the community even after a company redirects its investment to other projects.

Among the projects that obtained Gold Recognition, we mention the Lifelab Educational Project developed by BCR, FabLab & Edupedu Association, in the Financial Education category – by participating in this program, students learn financial education concepts and practice planning and teamwork. In the Employee Involvement category, Auchan’s Personal Sustainability Program (PSP) was built as an effort to mobilize employees to get actively involved in projects supporting local communities. In the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle category – Banca Transilvania and Ateliere Fără Frontiere developed the Remesh project and fight for the social and professional insertion of vulnerable and marginalized people. Together in the Service of Good, a project developed by Secom Healthcare Group through which several initiatives in the field of health were supported, also received Gold Recognition in the Health category.

The year 2023 comes with a new Community Index distinction: for each individual category, we propose The One to Watch distinction – a special recognition to highlight the originality and innovation of projects that set an important trend for the coming years, in their field. Among the projects mentioned in this category were YOXO Forest – The first digital forest that became a reality, 100 business ideas for Romania – PENNY Romania or Self-confidence is learned in school – Oxygen.

Where are the ranking results published?

The 2023 results can be found both in the flip view and print Community Index Magazine yearbook, as well as online: https://communityindex.ro/rezultate-community-index-2023/

What are the objectives of the Community Index ranking?

The mission of the Community Index is to highlight CSR projects with high performance that place more emphasis on aspects such as dialogue with stakeholders, project sustainability and measurement of medium and long-term impact. In addition, the index aims to highlight those projects that can be considered Best Practices in their category and that can be used as an example in establishing the strategy of a new project.

The Community Index Magazine yearbook is the contribution of The Azores Sustainability & CSR Services agency to the development of the field of Community investments in Romania.

In addition to know-how and authentic content, this publication concretely contributes to the popularization of the concept of sustainability in the business environment: a part of the printed yearbooks will be offered, free of charge, to companies with over 500 employees (>750 companies). In addition, the flip view version will be available for free, to popularize the domain and contribute to its development.

FSC® certified paper from sustainable sources was used for printing the publication. The yearbook provides both valuable information and an authentic visual experience in itself. The cover of the publication is created by Ovidiu Solcan (collage artist), being a sustainable collage from recycled magazines, representing the Masterpiece “The Kiss”, made by the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși in 1907.

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About The Azores Sustainability & CSR Services

Consulting agency, established in 2013, with the aim of supporting Romanian companies regarding the integration of corporate sustainability in the business strategy, The Azores Sustainability & CSR Services has an approach focused on long-term results, the use of IT technology for a high level of accuracy of sustainability indicators and analysis/research to support decision-makers in companies in defining the corporate sustainability strategy.

The most important and complex project of the agency is Romania CST Index, previously called Romania CSR Index, a ranking launched in 2016 and which is the only one in Romania that evaluates the sustainability indicators of companies: information on sustainability management, economic, environmental and social impact. The index is launched every year during the Best Practices in Corporate Sustainability conference. The results together with Sustainability Profiles of Romanian companies are presented every year in Sustainability Index Magazine, a bilingual yearbook dedicated to sustainability & ESG in Romania.

In 2019, the agency launched Community Index, the most comprehensive ranking of corporate investment projects in communities and a centralizer of the best CSR campaigns carried out every year by Romanian companies.  The results of the ranking, together with case studies and interviews of national and international experts, are presented every year in Community Index Magazine, the only bilingual yearbook dedicated to investments in communities carried out by Romanian companies.

A sustainable manifesto for The Slow Movement

A sustainable manifesto for The Slow Movement

Living too fast can turn life into a blur, but Carl Honoré is here to wake us up. Carl is a bestselling author, TED speaker, broadcaster and the global voice of the Slow Movement. He travels the world to deliver powerful keynotes that put time and tempo in a whole new light. By using stories and research from across the globe, Carl teaches us how to unleash “the inner tortoise”. His book, “In Praise of Slow”, chronicles the international trend towards putting on the brakes in everything we do – from work to relationships, travel, food or parenting.

Slowness is key to sustainability. It means being conscious, present, responsible, and putting quality before quantity. In order to thrive in a fast world, we have to slow down. Discover how by reading Carl’s insights in this exclusive interview for Community Index Magazine!

The interview was initially published in the bilingual yearbook Community Index Magazine no. 5. You can flip through it here: https://communityindex.ro/community-index-magazine-2023/

1.You’re the internationally acclaimed voice of the Slow Movement. It seems we need to slow down if we want to age well. What is it about slowness that turns it into a superpower?

When you get stuck in fast forward, when every moment of your life is a race against the clock, you pay a heavy price. You wear out your body and mind. You struggle to think, work, and enjoy the moment. Your creativity falls off a cliff. You make more mistakes and are less efficient. You make bad decisions. Your relationships suffer. Slowing down to the right speed makes you calmer, healthier, happier, more focused, more accurate, more efficient and productive, more creative, and more present. You start living your life instead of racing through it.

2.In a world of busyness, speed and living life on fast-forward, what are the biggest gains of slowing down? What is the connection to sustainable living? Do you find that individuals are ready and willing to get in tune with taking it slow or is it hard to cut through the noise and expand the slow movement?

When you live “slow”, you tread more lightly on the planet. You consume less and more wisely. You stop obsessing about your to-do lists. That is when you truly start contemplating the big picture and thinking long-term. I noticed that most people yearn to slow down, but many find it hard. Because of the powerful taboo against slowness, even just thinking about slowing down makes us feel afraid, guilty or ashamed. Speed is often an instrument of denial, a way of avoiding deeper problems or being alone with ourselves. Rather than facing up to what is going wrong in our lives, we find it easier to speed up, to lose ourselves in busyness, to focus on the trivial stuff. Living a fast life is, often, a way of running away from yourself!

3.You believe that “ageism is a self-fulfilling prophecy”. What made you decide to start championing and celebrating the advantages of growing old?

For me, it all started with discovering that I was the oldest player at a hockey tournament! It may sound trivial, I know, but it sure didn’t feel that way! Picture the scene: I was 48 at the time! I had just propelled my team into the semi-finals by scoring a dramatic goal. I was walking on air! Then came the news, straight from a tournament official.

He told me: “Mate, there are 240 players here, and you’re older than every one of them!” In the blink of an eye, I went from goal scorer to grandad. Even though I’d been playing well and having fun, the questions crowded in: “Do I look out of place here? Are people laughing at me? Should I take up a more age-appropriate pastime? Bingo, perhaps?”

My wobble got me thinking about how we are all in thrall to the cult of youth. To the idea that younger is always better and that ageing is a terrible and shameful thing. Once I opened my eyes and began doing some research, I realized that there is a much better story to tell about growing older – and I wanted to share that with the world!

4.How can we escape the cult of youth and become free to enjoy whatever phase of life we are in?

First, check your language. Stop using phrases like “senior moment”, “showing my age” or “the wrong side of 40” that reinforce the idea that ageing is all about decline. Second, be honest. Lying about your age gives the number a power it does not deserve. It locks you into the old ageist script. Being honest about how old you are and owning your age lets you define what your life will be at every stage. To embrace ageing as an adventure rather than an affliction, a process of opening, rather than closing doors. Third, find inspiring role models for ageing, on social media or beyond. Fourth, join multigenerational groups with people older than you. Befriending older people is a great way to build a more optimistic view of what the future holds for you.

5.What would be the top three steps anyone can take in order to set free “the inner tortoise” and cultivate a more meaningful and conscious lifestyle that’s in line with what they value most in life?

Do less. Buy less. Consume less. Drive less. Unplug more. Walk more. Listen more. Sleep more. Stop multitasking and do one thing at a time. Embed slow moments and rituals into your schedule. Embrace your inner tortoise!

Riane Eisler: A Caring Economy based on Partnerism

Riane Eisler: A Caring Economy based on Partnerism

Riane Eisler is a walking story. A social systems scientist, cultural historian, and futurist, whose research, writing, and speaking and groundbreaking contributions have transformed the lives of many worldwide. Riane is the recipient of many honours, such as the Distinguished Peace Leadership Award earlier given to the Dalai Lama, and is included in the Great Peacemakers books as one of 20 leaders for world peace, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King.

She is the author of many books, including “The Chalice and the Blade”, “The Real Wealth of Nations”, and “Nurturing Our Humanity”, which focus on her innovative whole-systems research that offers new perspectives and practical tools for constructing a less violent, more egalitarian, gender-balanced, and sustainable future. Riane is the President of the Center for Partnership Systems, which provides practical applications of her work, and editor-in-chief of the online Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies published at the University of Minnesota.

In this exclusive interview for Community Index Magazine, Riane discusses the key role women play in a nation’s quality of life and the economic value of caring for people and for nature.

1.Your work and books, including the internationally acclaimed “The Real Wealth of Nations”, have inspired and transformed the lives of many worldwide. You are championing the “Partnership System”, focused on building a more equitable, sustainable, and less violent world based on Partnership rather than Domination. Can you briefly describe what this concept means and why domination systems are “trauma factories”?

We are all familiar with domination in our own lives: top-down relations backed up by fear of pain, whether it’s physical, economic, or emotional pain. What we may not yet be familiar with is the family, social, and economic configuration of systems based on domination, or that this configuration heavily depends on what is internalized by us as normal, even divinely ordained, in our intimate family and gender relations.

Our conventional social categories such as right/left, religious/secular, Eastern/Western, capitalist/socialist (all of which we inherited from times when domination in families, economics, and all social institutions was generally accepted) do not let us see this configuration. Nor do they make it possible to see that there is an alternative to domination-oriented societies: the partnership configuration.

Only as we start connecting the dots, which requires including the majority of humanity – women and children – and the millennia of our prehistory, does all this become evident. Why? To begin with, neuroscience shows that what happens in children’s first five years impacts nothing less than how our brains develop, and with this how we think, feel, and act – including how we vote. This means that the nature of family relations, which are marginalized in conventional social studies and categories, are key elements of the interactive, mutually supporting configurations of either a partnership or domination-oriented system.

Our siloed, fragmented education makes it hard to see all this, so it is easier to understand it from a visual that shows these contrasting configurations.

All of which takes me to your second question: why domination systems are trauma factories? Through the lens of the partnership/domination social scale, we see that traumas start in domination-oriented families. These are families that are authoritarian and highly punitive, where male dominance is the ideal norm. Consider that Putin enacted a new law that lowered the penalty for family violence in Russia so that if you hurt or kill a child or other member of your family your penalty is lower than if you hurt or kill a stranger! Putin recognized the connection between families that use violence or the threat of violence as a means of control and a state that does the same. These are not coincidences, they are patterns!

Other institutions in domination-oriented systems also create trauma. For example, physical punishment of children in schools, such as caning, used to be the norm in the West and still is in much of our world, including some southern US states. This causes trauma, as does domination, top-down economics, which create artificial scarcities for most of the population – not to speak of the waste and destruction of resources through war and the failure to adequately support the “women’s work” of caring for children.

2.Gender equality is a key component of the partnership configuration. What alternatives are out there to injustice, cruelty and suffering?

In much of the West, in Canada, Europe, and the US, as well as in bits and pieces all over the world, there is a growing recognition of the importance of how the roles and relations of females and males (and everyone in between) are socially constructed. This recognition is basic to my research, which deviates from earlier methods that marginalize or leave out women and children. What my multidisciplinary, cross-cultural, trans-historical research shows is that how gender roles and relations are constructed is not, as we are still often told, “just a women’s issue” – in other words, a secondary matter. Actually, this is a key family, economic, and social organizing principle. So if we are to successfully build a future that is more just, sustainable, and humane, we must pay special attention to gender!

If we look around us, this is evident. In fact, those today trying to push us back to more rigid domination times pay special attention to gender, whether they are religious or secular, Eastern or Western, and so on. Consider religious societies like the Eastern Muslim Taliban or the Western Christian fundamentalists, where the subordination of women is clearly visible. Consider both fascist Hitler’s Germany and socialist Stalin’s USSR, where women and the “feminine” were culturally subordinated. Consider that these are all domination systems characterized by dehumanizing out-groups, whether “infidels” or Jews or people of colour.

The reality is that rigid male-superior, female-inferior gender stereotypes equate difference with dominating or being dominated, with being served or serving. This ranking of male and “masculine” over female and what is viewed as “feminine” is a template for in-group versus out-group thinking, and with it, as we see all around us, dehumanization and violence.

3.Based on your work findings, the Nordic nations seem to be more oriented towards a partnership system. How can a country like Romania bridge the gap between the willingness to implement the partnership framework and the reality on-site?

Yes, Nordic nations have more caring policies because they do not subscribe to the dominator norm of devaluing women and caring, which in domination systems is labelled feminine, whether in women or what are considered “effeminate” or “girlie” men. Romania has people who recognize that cultural systems and the values they normalize are human creations, and therefore can – and have been – changed.

Perhaps one way Romanians who want to move to a more just and sustainable world can start is by exposing that what we have been taught about our past is false.

”In reality, Balkan countries like Romania have a long prehistory of orienting more to the partnership rather than the domination side of the partnership-domination social scale.

This means spreading findings from archaeology, mythology, and even recent DNA studies, about our Western partnership prehistory. You can find much of that information in books such as “The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future”, now in 56 US printing and about 30 foreign editions. It is not yet published in Romania, though when it was recently republished in Spain, there were interviews and stories about it in all the major Spanish media.

4.How do you define the Caring Economy and what are the steps towards nurturing and caring for our planet and all the living systems on it?

As you noted, my book “The Real Wealth of Nations” details not only the problems with current economic operating systems, whether capitalist or socialist, but also proposes a caring economics of Partnerism.

Consider that both capitalism and socialism came out of early industrial times in the seventies and eighteen hundred – and we are today in the 21st century post-industrial knowledge-service age. So our current economic operating systems would be antiquated on that count alone. But the problem is deeper: both the “fathers” of capitalism and socialism perpetuated a gendered system of values: a system in which caring is coded “feminine” and hence out of bounds for the “real men” in charge. There is nothing in Smith’s or Marx’s writings about caring for nature, which both viewed as only there to be exploited. As for caring for people – for children, the sick, the elderly, for everyone – for both men and their economic theories, this work was to be done for free by a woman in a male-controlled household. Even in the mid eighteen hundreds, when Marx wrote, a wife could not sue for injuries negligently inflicted on her; only her husband could, for loss of her services! Not surprisingly both Marx and Smith called caring for people, starting at birth, and caring for nature, just “reproductive” rather than “productive” work – which is still taught in business and economics schools.

 It is also reflected in currently used metrics like GNP and GDP, where, for example, trees on which we depend to breathe, are only included when they are dead: as logs. Not only that, the work of care in households has only recently been valued through government policies like paid parental leave, pioneered by Nordic nations, and it is still available only in a few US states, rather than nationally, This devaluation of care work continues worldwide, even though a recent Australian study showed that if the unpaid work of care in households, still primarily performed by women for free, were included, it would be 50 per cent of the reported Australian GDP!

”So the first step is recognizing this fundamental problem. We need new metrics that show the enormous economic value of caring for people, starting at birth, and caring for our natural environment. Women and children are the mass of the world’s poor and the poorest of the poor, so shifting to a caring economics of partnerism that adequately rewards care work is essential if we are to reduce poverty.

So the first step is recognizing this fundamental problem. We need new metrics that show the enormous economic value of caring for people, starting at birth, and caring for our natural environment. Women and children are the mass of the world’s poor and the poorest of the poor, so shifting to a caring economics of partnerism that adequately rewards care work is essential if we are to reduce poverty.

It all starts with changes in consciousness. Let’s remember that all our gains in shifting from domination to partnership, from abolishing child labour and women getting the vote to even the idea that there is such a thing as human rights and that these must also be applied to protect the majority of humanity (women and children), all these gains were due to a small, in their time unpopular, dedicated group of women and men who were persistent and did not give up. We can each make a difference!

The interview was initially published in the bilingual yearbook Community Index Magazine no. 5. You can flip through it here: https://communityindex.ro/community-index-magazine-2023/