The Kindness Economy
The Kindness Economy is about making business better and making people and the planet as important as profit - Mary Portas.
At Believe In Kind (BIK), we truly do believe in the power of, well, being kind! Whether it be small acts or big ones, whether it be paying it forward in your local coffee shop, or fundraising for a hospital, we’ve all felt that warm buzz when doing something genuinely kind for another.
However, for too long kindness and business have felt to be almost mutually exclusive.
But why is this?.....
Why can’t you be decent and still make money?
Why isn’t kindness regarded as a matter for serious business people?
Why is empathy or compassion or expression of care seen as some sort of weakness?
Why aren’t those things recognised at board level?
Thankfully we are seeing that people are far more inclined to buy from businesses based in good ethics; we are buying into a brand experience, a story, not just a label.
Our goal at BIK is to help create a sense of community worldwide in contributing to the building of the kindness economy and in doing so, enabling a group of talented, impoverished women in the Bwindi rainforest of Uganda to make enough money to put food on their children’s plates. It is about empowering this group of women challenged with:
Extreme levels of poverty
Lack of education
Lack of skills - often times the only work women do other than looking after children is digging in the fields
Loss of husbands and health through HIV
Domestic violence and resistance to women pursuing their own path to earning a wage
These women are a complete inspiration and some of the strongest, most loyal and positive people. They are resilient, determined, hard working, supportive to eachother, embracing of new opportunities, focused on improving their lives and those of their children.
It’s time to do something, to take action. Never before has this value set been so vital to progress. The world is realising the damage that has been caused by inequality, greed, and waste. People are searching for businesses they can trust to embrace the compassion and community the world has to offer. Kindness is not a ‘soft value’ or a luxury, it is a necessity to be able to both survive and to thrive.
“Kindness is not a ‘soft value’, it is a necessity to be able to both survive and to thrive”
Building a company on the premise of fair pay, equal rights for all, ethical standards, and safe and happy working environments is vital to us at BIK. We want to create something that will help buyers around the world feel a part of something good and positive; that their purchase has enabled today’s Ugandan women to grow personally and professionally.
So what makes our organisation kind?
For a start, all the women who participate in handcrafting these products are treated equally and are paid fairly for their work.
There’s nobody in the middle cutting in and taking a chunk of the profits for themselves, nor any major overheads to account for. The safety, health, and happiness of those behind the craftsmanship is our greatest concern and as such is precisely what we think of first when considering our philosophy of kindness.
We are also being kind to the planet.
We are striving to be as ecologically friendly as we can. During the setup of BIK, we have taken steps to source ethically sound, sustainable, biodegradable (where possible) and, most importantly, good ethical businesses and people to partner with,
“We are realists and are striving to be as ecologically friendly as we possibly can be…”
Additionally, we are proud to say we are partnering with One Tree Planted, an organisation enabling ethical businesses and consumers to support the planting of trees all over the world with every purchase they make.
Most importantly though, we are simply honoured to be working with and supporting a talented set of female artisans working tirelessly in Uganda and driving the Kindness Economy all by themselves and help pull them through these incredibly tough times.
Let’s challenge what it means to be successful in business.
Let’s make kindness vital to success and a non-negotiable part of our lives, starting right here, right now.
