Treating People Like People
โ๐ง๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ผ๐ฝ๐น๐ฒ ๐น๐ถ๐ธ๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ผ๐ฝ๐น๐ฒ.โ
Last week we kicked off the StartSomeGood Network event program for the year with a live call with Jeff Rotmeyer, founder of ImpactHK and Love 21 Foundation in Hong Kong.
Jeff is driven to lift up the less fortunate in Hong Kong and, incredibly, founded two successful organisations at the same time five years ago which together now have more than 40 staff and deliver services to thousands of people each week.
His mission is to build the best homeless services organisation in the world, and he expressed the core principle that guides this work this way: โjust treat people like people.โ
Such a simple but profound concept.
But something that is too often lost or forgotten.
When we see companies charging fees for services not rendered, wrecking the mental health of their users for profit, working to prevent their staff from unionizing or firing team members of twenty years with an email and selling toxic products that clog our environment and wreck our health, itโs clear that business as usual has lost this instinct.
Instead, humans become clients become users become the raw material for extractive capitalism. Just numbers on a spreadsheet.
This is why social enterprise, businesses that are guided by a purpose, not just profit, is so important.
At the end of the day, this what the social enterprise movement is all about: creating enterprises, and ultimately an entire economy, that treats people like people.
Even if they donโt have the resources.
Even when life has thrown challenges in their way.
Especially when life has thrown challenges in their way.
A society that values everyone and that works for everyone means treating everyone like the valuable member of our community they are. Like we want to be treated. Like a person, not a number. Someone deserving of dignity and love.
Thank you Jeff for sharing this lesson with us.
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If youโre inspired by this vision and have an idea for a company that treats people like people, our next Good Hustle social enterprise design course starts in March.
You are also invited to join the StartSomeGood Network. Members get invited to five events with inspiring changemakers like Jeff each month, have access to our online community, and more.
