Your Voice at the UN --Why are we here?

Drawing from my experiences and conversations with you, community entrepreneurs, over the past 3 years that I have worked at MBD, I will be busy here trying to make UN recommendations for national policies better for the underserved (at the UN called the “vulnerable,”) specifically addressing environmental, social and economic justice.

But before this conference starts I want to document what I know. What I know now is that our lives are shaped by policy. So are our businesses. Economic opportunity, education, our environment, security, justice, freedom of speech and the right to self-determination, everything. And I know that our economies are fundamentally shaped by the economies of other countries. Outsourcing, the rise and fall of our currencies, the price of gas, the costs of pollution, war. Just like you are not ever in business alone, none of us are on this planet alone.

If you understand peace to be a prerequisite of sustainability in our world (which, no matter what your definition, we all largely want to be present and healthy in the future), it follows that we must work for peace. World history has shownt hat peace not possible without justice. So, we need justice and we need to work together as one society of humans to achieve it—these are things I can hold to! That seems to be the purpose of the Commission here at the UN… so I think I’m in the right place. Thoughts?

Personally, most of my energy right now goes towards working against poverty through microenterprise, a form of systemic injustice that is more and more understood by the "international community" (another buzz word that gets thrown around that just means our collective consciousness as governments and active citizens) to be unacceptable and not merely undesirable. All of you, us, involved in this movement in the US, we have much to learn and so much to share!