Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft appears to be well past the days when it was writing off unsold Surface tablets and struggling to match Sony in game console sales. The Windows developer reports that its Devices and Consumer group’s revenue grew 8 percent year over year in…

Over the past few years, we’ve heard a lot about the new rules that millennials are writing for work and communication, and many of us have admired their idealism, fresh thinking, entrepreneurialism and ability to shake things up.

Now there’s a new generation that’s equally exciting–Generation Z, as some have taken to calling young people born around or after the turn of the millennium. They don’t remember 9/11, yet its aftermath has been their lifelong reality. They never lived without the Internet, and smartphones were invented before they became old enough to care what they were. They were in elementary school when they saw the havoc wreaked by the global recession.

And yet they have the optimism and energy to make the world a better place. I was reminded of this as my agency, Havas PR, began work to help launch the action/2015 campaign, which is aimed at eliminating poverty and tackling climate change. It got under way recently as thousands of organizations and world leaders welcomed the initiative, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was joined by a group of 15-year-olds. The age 15 is no coincidence: action/2015, led by civil society, is unfolding at a time when the world is talking about a new set of global development goals, and these kids are the same age as the UN’s landmark Millennium Development Goals, which have helped lift millions from poverty.

Fifteen-year-olds are influential in so many ways. Now that we’ve collectively agreed to see 30 as the beginning of adulthood, 15 is halfway there. Smack in the middle of teenager-dom, 15-year-olds are the people writing the rules for life as a teenager circa 2015. And 2015 is itself a turning-point year: Suddenly it feels as if we’re far enough into this new century that we can look backward and forward.

It’s too easy to say that we’re just looking forward and that children are our future. It’s been said before: Children are not the future; they are the present. That’s why action/2015, along with other initiatives that advocate for, create and support a new development framework and climate agreement, is gathering a coalition of 15-year-olds around the globe. Their goal–and that of the thousands of organizations participating in action/2015 through an umbrella of subgroups–is no less ambitious than to end poverty by the time they become adults, in 2030.

It’s also easy to dismiss that dream as the idealism of young people who haven’t been exposed to the realities of working life. Don’t. Maher Nasser of the UN Department of Public Information recently said: “This coalition will help push forward sustainable habits. The goal is to protect the planet and provide dignity. It is going to be a slow process but will be able to make an impact.”

Social media is, of course, a key element in the coalition. Its tools will engage the public and allow everyone to rethink how the approach is measured. The organizations involved are able to share information through in-person meetings, task groups, PSAs and, significantly, a common Web platform. Who better to navigate these things than the generation who never knew life without them?

Action/2015 isn’t just summits and virtual and internal communications. It includes a stirring call to action to the public. The campaign will be driven through mass public mobilizations, creative products, events, films and concerts, all aimed at letting the world know about this critical moment in history. It doesn’t want to reinvent policy but amplify existing initiatives, helping to build a bigger, broader movement demanding decisive and ambitious action to tackle the root causes of inequality, poverty and climate change.

Young people will be at the forefront of the campaign, calling on world leaders to secure the future–not just because they have a big personal stake in it, but also because this generation is uniquely poised to inspire the rest of us.

When Head Start was launched in 1965, at its core was the idea that families and communities were integral to supporting children’s successful early learning and development. Fifty years later, Head Start continues to lead in two generational approaches, always emphasizing that parents — as their children’s first teachers — are a program’s most important partners.

Head Start and Early Head Start programs in diverse communities across the country have pioneered new and innovative designs for whole-family approaches that are tailored to their community’s distinct needs. Thanks to reliable federal funding that allows for local flexibility, Head Start programs have built partnerships with colleges, workforce agencies, banks, employers, foundations, hospitals, state agencies, and more, establishing a two-generation infrastructure for success in their communities.

Two Generations Together, a report recently released by the National Head Start Association in partnerships with Ascend at the Aspen Institute, highlights the exceptional efforts of several Head Start programs in designing effective whole family approaches that address their community’s unique needs, while focusing on engaging both children and their parents. From the College Access and Success program in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the Live and Learn CDA Credentialing program in Phoenix, the programs featured in the report exemplify the transformative power of two-generation solutions that stabilize whole families for generations to come.

The Head Start programs detailed in the report include AVANCE-Houston; Educational Alliance in New York City; Pacific Clinics in Pasadena; Friends of Children of Mississippi in Jackson; Parents in Community Action (PICA) in Minneapolis; and Southwest Human Development in Phoenix. The case studies in this report reinforce the value of Head Start’s longstanding two-generational approach to achieving stability and success.

AVANCE-Houston Inc, for example, serves over 3,0000 children each day in northwest Harris County, Texas. Their two-generation vision is rooted in the Parent Child Education Program (PCEP) which has several interlocking components including early childhood through Head Start, adult education, computer literacy, marriage and parenting support, and a myriad of other resources supported by community partners. Research shows that over 40 years of implementation of the PCEP model, 90% of children have gone on to graduate high school and parents have improved their employment and increased home ownership.

Decades of research prove that children’s outcomes are deeply related to family context, which is why every Head Start and Early Head Start family works with an advocate who helps parents conduct a family needs assessment and create a partnership agreement that lays out goals for both children and parents. Whether they are immediate needs like safe housing and getting food on the table, or long-term aspirations for college degrees and fulfilling careers, these goals empower families to achieve educational success as well as economic security.

While Head Start has long recognized the importance of a whole child and whole family model, new national awareness has led to increased attention, funding, policy, and research around two-generation efforts. Americans across demographics and on both sides of the aisle overwhelmingly believe a two-generation approach to early learning is the most effective way to lift families out of poverty. According to a recent report released by the Aspen Institute, 84% of Americans agree that Head Start and Early Head Start should partner with organizations that help the parents of low-income children further their education and receive job training.

As Head Start celebrates its 50th anniversary year, we must continue to embrace policies that support the proven two-generation efforts that have been fundamental to the comprehensive Head Start model since its conception.

A Growing Threat

The world faces enormous human development and environmental challenges, from poverty and disease to food security and climate change. Significant progress has been made in the last two decades — extreme poverty has halved, hunger has reduced and over two billion people have improved access to drinking water.

But huge problems remain. Inequality has widened, one in eight people still go to bed hungry and climate change threatens everything we have achieved since the 1960s. Half a century of progress stands to be wiped out within a generation.

For too long business has sat on the sidelines, either unable or unwilling to be part of the solution to these systemic challenges. But this is now rapidly changing as the limitations of governments and international bodies to resolve them become ever more apparent, as consumers increasingly are demanding change, and as the cost of inaction starts to exceed the cost of action.

The cost of climate change is already high and increasing. The UN Secretary General has calculated that, since 2000, economic losses from natural disasters total around $2.5 trillion. The OECD predicts that, by 2050, over $45 trillion of assets could be at risk of flooding. Accenture has found that significant supply chain disruptions can cut the share price of companies by 7 percent, whilst KPMG estimates that the total profit of the food industry is at risk by 2030.

We are seeing the effect of climate change in our own business. Shipping routes cancelled because of hurricanes in the Philippines. Factories closing because of extreme cold weather in the United States. Distribution networks in disarray because of floods in the UK. Reduced productivity on our tea plantations in Kenya because of weather changes linked to deforestation of the Mau forest. We estimate that geo-political and climate related factors cost Unilever currently up to €300 million a year. This not only impacts our shareholders but with over five million in our supply chain and more than two billion consumers around the world, the repercussions ripple much wider.

As tackling these issues becomes not just a moral but a commercial imperative, a growing number of businesses are stepping up to the plate. Today, three-quarters of the largest companies have set themselves clear social and environmental goals, 4,000 now report on CO2 emissions, and 50 of the top 200 have set an internal price for carbon.

The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan

Our own response is set out in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, which has set stretching goals to reduce our environmental footprint and increase our social impact as we grow our business. We are making progress. All of the electricity for our sites in North America and Europe now comes from certified, renewable sources. In absolute terms, CO2 emissions from energy in manufacturing are nearly a third below 2008 levels, water abstraction is down 29 percent and total waste sent for disposal is down two-thirds — all achieved while increasing production volume. It is making us a more efficient organisation and saving us money — over €300 million in cumulative avoided supply chain costs since 2008.

However, as combating climate change becomes more urgent, the time has come to look beyond incremental reductions in environmental impacts and increases in social impacts, important though these are. Business can and must make a bigger difference to global challenges by leveraging its scale, influence, expertise and resources to drive transformational change at a systemic level.

This is crucial because the economic system we all live and work within, drive our behaviours and choices, and without changing them we cannot hope to achieve the structural shifts that have to be made. Business is responsible for more than half the world’s GDP, so unless we make change happen, we will not see the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) the world needs.

The Better Growth, Better Climate Report, published in 2014 by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, of which I was a member, identified three key systems of the economy where there is huge potential to invest in structural and technological change: Cities, which generate around 80 percent of global output and 70 percent of global energy use and related GHG emissions; energy systems, where renewables and energy efficiency offer significant investment opportunities; and land use. Food production can be increased and land use emissions cut through more sustainable agricultural practices and by protecting forests from further destruction.

Over half of Unilever’s raw materials come from farms and forests. That is why we have committed to work with others and to champion sustainable agriculture in areas where we have most influence, to help smallholder farmers to improve their farming practices and livelihoods, and to eliminate deforestation from supply chains.

We also make and market some of the world’s leading personal hygiene and household cleaning products, so we have also committed to help provide good hygiene, safe drinking water and better sanitation for the millions of people around the world who are still denied these basic human rights. All three commitments are directly relevant to our business. All three respond to pressing societal needs.

This is not about mitigation. It is about opportunity and aligning our purpose in business with this opportunity. This is the message the World Business Council for Sustainable Development is championing with its Action 2020 roadmap, which sets out the business agenda for action. It is also one of the key findings of the Better Growth, Better Climate Report, which argues that traditional macroeconomic objectives are now best achieved through a decisive shift to a new climate economy, with inclusive, high quality, climate-resilient growth. Although the shift will not be easy, it provides all business sectors with new opportunities to grow.

This is certainly our experience at Unilever. Looking at the world through a sustainability lens not only helps us ‘future proof’ our supply chain, it also fuels innovation and drives brand growth. Half our agricultural raw materials now come from sustainable sources and we are on track to make that 100 percent by 2020. Our brands with a strong social purpose, such as Pureit water purifiers, Domestos toilet cleaner and Lifebuoy soap, are not only improving millions of lives by helping to tackle the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) agenda. All three achieved double-digit sales growth on average over the past three years. This shows that there doesn’t have to be a trade-off between doing well and doing good. On the contrary, purpose driven brands are growing ahead of the market.

The same is true of brands that reduce environmental impacts. A laundry fabric conditioner that reduces the water needed to rinse clothes by two-thirds, dry shampoos that reduce CO2 by around 90 percent compared to washing hair with heated water, ice creams that stay frozen at higher temperatures, and compressed deodorant aerosol sprays with half the propellant gas and 25 percent less aluminium, are just some of the sustainability-inspired innovations that are growing our business.

These do not just come about because our brand managers have built sustainability into their brand development strategies or our R&D scientists have inserted it into their innovation processes. Everyone who works at Unilever is aware of our Sustainable Living Plan goals and understands the importance of this agenda. This is about bringing the challenges of the outside world into the business, making our employees more conscious of the issues and trends that affect our business, and being more open to ideas that push the boundaries of what we do or come from less conventional sources.

Making 2015 A Year Of Change

2015 can be a pivotal year for human development and climate change. In September leaders gather in New York to agree the Sustainable Development Goals that will replace the Millennium Development Goals.

The MDGs have made progress in a number of areas but many challenges remain. As Oxfam’s report Wealth: Having it all and wanting more has highlighted, levels of inequality are greater than they have ever been, extreme poverty and hunger still afflict more than 800 million people, and pressures on the planet’s resources continue to grow.

The SDGs include ending poverty and hunger, reducing inequality and combating climate change as core goals, achievable by 2030. The SDGs are an agenda for everyone, not just the development community, and will require collaboration across all actors in society. The decision by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to invite me to represent the business community on his High Level Panel to advise on the post-2015 development framework is a mark of the importance the UN attaches to the role of the private sector in co-delivering this agenda.

Then in December, the COP 21 Climate Change Conference in Paris holds out the very real prospect of a global agreement on curbing carbon emissions and the promise of a more stable and sustainable future.

Although run as separate agendas, these two issues – climate and development – are entirely interdependent. We cannot eliminate poverty without enabling developing countries to engage more people in economic activity that use natural resources, and we cannot resolve runaway climate change without creating wealth in a more equitable and less carbon intensive way. Left unchecked, climate change risks not only making the poorest poorer, but pulling the emerging middle classes back into poverty too.

Therefore, 2015 is a critical year. As Lord Stern has said, this year will shape the next 20 years and the next 20 years will shape the century. Whatever governments agree to in New York and Paris, and however high or low their level of ambition proves to be, the reality is that these agreements will succeed or fail by how they are implemented by business on the ground. Business as usual is not an option. We have to find new ways of working and new ways of collaborating to bring about real and lasting change.

Partnerships And Collaboration Will Be Key

These new approaches require business leaders with different mindsets and capabilities — men and women who can successfully build cross-sector coalitions, who are as familiar dealing with NGOs and policymakers as they are with customers and suppliers, and who are comfortable operating in a more volatile and complex environment. There are no blueprints for how to do this or roadmaps on how to navigate our way towards this brave new world. There is a role management education must play in preparing the business world for a more collaborative future.

I believe the solution is in bringing together the few key players that can make the biggest difference to create the market conditions that can lead to tipping points. It only takes a handful of companies to change together to trigger others to follow and transform whole markets.

This has been the thinking behind Unilever’s commitment to play a leading role in helping to end deforestation linked to supply chains. According to the IPCC, deforestation accounts for up to 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it a one of the largest contributors to climate change. More than 1.6 billion people worldwide depend directly on forests for food, medicines and fuel, including 60 million indigenous people who are almost entirely dependent on forests for their lives and livelihoods.

Palm oil, a key cause of deforestation, is an important and versatile ingredient found in 50 percent of all consumer goods. Multinational companies account for around 20 percent of all palm oil purchases. That is why, in 2010, all 400 members of the global Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) pledged to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020. The CGF includes all the world’s major consumer goods companies, representing about 5 percent of global GDP. This has accelerated the number of companies committed to buying 100 percent sustainable palm oil by 2020 or sooner.

This led us to launch the Tropical Forest Alliance at Rio+20 in 2012, a partnership between the CGF and six governments, including Indonesia, a major producer of palm oil, the US and the UK. This in turn led to the New York Declaration on Forests, which took centre stage at the UN Climate Change Conference in September 2014, at which over 170 entities signed up to halving deforestation by 2020 and ending it by 2030.

This new pledge was the first time in history that a critical mass of developed and developing country world leaders partnered around such a goal, which also includes a commitment to restore hundreds of millions of hectares of forest land. Today, with pledges from all the major palm oil producers and most of the world’s big manufacturers and retailers, over 70 percent of the world’s globally traded palm oil is now committed to be sustainably sourced. Plantations under commitments cover an area the size of Portugal and the resulting savings to the planet is an estimated reduction of 400-450 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2020.

While these organizations still have to deliver on their commitments — so far only 18 percent of palm oil produced is certified sustainable – this shows what companies, governments and civil society can achieve if we align our efforts behind common goals to achieve transformative change.

If the consumer goods sector can do this with deforestation, just think of the difference that could be made if other sectors convene similar coalitions to drive sustainable practices in other commodity supply chains and with other sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

I am optimistic. Momentum is building. Progress is being made. By changing the way we do business, by seeing the transformation to a low-carbon economy as an opportunity to be seized, not a risk to be managed, by looking beyond our own impacts to systemic areas where we can make a transformational difference, and by working with others to achieve shared goals, business can play a much bigger role in helping to create a better future.

But there’s no time to lose. The time to act is now.

Whenever a friend asks me for any type of parenting advice, I can’t help but stare back blankly for a moment. Me?! I’m only three years into this parenting gig. What the hell do I know? On the rare occasion that I start feeling pretty confident that I can handle anything my girls throw at me, I am presented with a new situation, problem, illness or question that reminds me I am absolutely still at the novice level.

It took having kids for me to understand just how challenging and intricate parenting really is. It takes an entire childhood for parents to really get educated about their role, but by then, of course, the child is grown and moves out. What a cruel joke Mother Nature plays on us! So, as a newer mom with only three years of experience, I have a few questions for you older moms with grown children who finally know what you’re doing.

1. How can I best cherish these young years? I’ve heard that it “goes so fast” so often — strangers have even stopped me in the grocery store to say something nice about my young daughters before adding, “Cherish it now. It goes so fast.” I try; I really do. I have the privilege of being home with my girls, who are not yet in school all day, so I get far more time with them than the average parent in our society. I promise I do not take that granted. Still, these past three years have passed so quickly that it scares me. I can’t seem to slow down time, so how can I best cherish these young years with my girls?

2. What do you wish you had done less or more? Since becoming a parent, I have marveled at the fact that my mom raised three kids and still kept a clean house. When I ask her how she did it, she answers honestly, “I probably spent too much time cleaning. If I could do it again, I wouldn’t care so much if my house was a little messy. Those were minutes I could have just been sitting and playing with you.” For the record, my mom was/is an amazing mom, and I have no memories of longing for her to play with me; I feel she spent a ton of quality time with me. The point is, however, she feels she missed out on a few more precious moments. I often think about that while I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen floor.

3. Will I ever sleep well again? I do not support the cry-it-out method and, therefore, have spent a lot of nights going in and out of my daughters’ rooms. My 3-year-old sleeps through the night without issues, and my 1-year-old usually makes it. However, I’m still up a couple times most nights to check on them, move the covers back up or getting up way before the sun to work so I won’t be distracted by a work to-do list when my kids are awake. I daydream about the days when I’ll sleep through the night too, waking each day fully rested, but then I imagine them as teenagers and don’t see myself getting any more sleep. I think about them growing up and eventually moving out, and I actually imagine getting less sleep, as I won’t be able to quietly peek in on them at night and see that they are okay. Tell me, experienced moms, does sleep ever become familiar again?

4. What do you really remember about these young years of motherhood? Each day with my girls is an adventure. There is laughter, excitement and drama throughout the day, and I always think to myself, I will never forget this. However, it’s already become apparent to me that I will forget a great deal of it, and it makes me so sad. Of course I can’t remember every moment, every story, every conversation, hug and snuggle we experience. But I want to. I want to hang on to every instant of it forever. I write down as much as I can and take plenty of pictures, but I know those aren’t the same. So, experienced moms, what do you really remember about the first few years with your children? Which moments are embedded deep in your memory, available for your recall whenever you want?

5. What do your children tell you now? We’ll always have our own thoughts about what we did right and wrong as parents, but as our children age, they can share their thoughts on it. What do your kids, now adults, thank you for? What do they ask you for advice on? What do they think you did so well and plan to (or already do) with their own children? The answers to those questions reveals more about your parenting successes or failures than anything else.

Parents — experienced and new — all have one thing in common; we love our kids and we’re trying to do right by them. To the moms of grown children reading this: your own children are off living their adult lives, but your acquired parental knowledge will still be appreciated by the next generation. I implore you – please share.