It launched 6 months to the day after losing my stepfather to a sudden and devastating terminal cancer diagnosis. After he’d gone (just a month later), life didn’t, couldn’t, return to normal – which was working as a travel journalist for anyone that would pay me.
Workplaces where people are happy and satisfied are simply better. They’re more fun for the people working in them, and from a business side of things, they tend to be more productive. But how do you get to this point? How do you build a work environment that people want to be in? It is, after all, work. Well, one way is to work to build a company culture centered on gratitude.
And there we were, on the balcony staring out at the golden sands and endless blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean. With our two young children in tow we had arrived at Currumbin, Queensland in Australia. Home to us for the next 6 weeks as a working/ family/recharging vacation, if that is at all possible? Alexandra, my wife, had had her mind set on going to Australia since we started Yuhme.
I am Anitha and wanted to share the story of The Open Road, a social enterprise my sister started and I have carried on. Our journey really began a long time ago. At that time, we were five years old when we left our country and journeyed to Papua New Guinea by way of Thailand. Spending our childhood in the South Pacific was a bit of an idyllic tropical paradise – it is a beautiful and spectacular place where we learnt about caring for the planet, grew a tropical rainforest in our school, and journeyed on the Great Barrier Reef learning about marine conservation and protecting the world’s oceans.
Three years ago, you’d find me in my favourite fast fashion retailers hunting for clothes in the sale section. Now, I haven’t been inside one for over a year, and I haven't purchased anything from them for over two years.
What would we see? What would we feel? What would we know?
Because I think that deep inside we know. We know what’s right in this world and we know what our heart truly wants. We know what would make us truly happy and how we can live our lives in the most beautiful and impactful ways, going to bed at night in peace knowing we’ve done the best we can. Not just for others, but for ourselves too.
While I’ve spoken about this through conversation, I’ve never really sat down and written about my past and ongoing experience with sustainability. It’s been an incredibly long journey, and one I’m constantly making minor changes to because of growth and education. I truly believe in the baby steps, and not overwhelming oneself with many changes at once. I’m also not perfect, and make many mistakes along the way!
If each family in the world could do 3 things in terms of sustainable living what would they be?
1. Eat and drink in the place that your supposed to eat and drink in. In Croatia, there’s no take away anything. There’s no concept of bringing food to places that aren’t specifically for food. If more people enjoyed food and drink in the places designed for that, then we wouldn’t need single use plastic. Such a simple thing creates a huge change.
Hello, my name is Kevin Sofen from Chicago. I work for a water treatment company called W.S Darley & Company that brings safe water solutions to the disaster response and humanitarian markets. After working in the water industry for 6 years, I have seen the wide range of opportunities and inequalities that exist in the water industry. I noticed that in the developing world, the people who need the technology the most cannot afford it. Therefore, they spend up to ½ their income on bottled water or are forced to drink contaminated water that makes them perpetually ill. The questions in my head started to unfold: How is it possible that nearly 2 billion people do not have access to safe water and hygiene? Why does the majority of the developing world spend up to half their income on bottled water? Does it have to be this way?
It starts with a dream. You feel that purpose, you find your calling and you start a journey towards a defined goal. We often hear about dreams and we see people crossing the finish line. What about the inbetween? It’s called game plan.
Dreams are the beginning to most journeys. You set your goal and make a plan.But how do we stick to that game plan?How do we follow through to reach our goals? Because dreaming, setting goals and making plans are the easy part. Action and following through can be the biggest challenge of them all.
It was a perfect sunny winter day in Bend, Oregon and my family was headed to the mountain to ski. The memory is as fresh as powder because it was the day a dream was planted in my heart and would begin a two-year journey of faith that has forever changed my life.
The dream was this: Raise 40K for my 40th birthday for clean-water wells.
I am currently sitting in a very cute cafe in Canggu, Bali on a hot, sunshiny Sunday afternoon sipping on my tasty, fresh beetroot juice across the table from my lovely husband Luke. For the past two years we’ve had a running joke between us that one day, when we sell our stuff and take off we will know we have made it when we get to Bali, the creative nomad paradise. We even had a hashtag we used when we were dreaming or excited about the idea #beatittobali. Despite having not ‘arrived’ on any major level in this lifestyle, we are here, in Bali!
