Repainting poverty in Convivial Yellow
John Elkington
October 2, 2008
Flew to Fort Myers, Florida, via Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday, to speak at a Novo Nordisk session here in Naples yesterday. Nice to catch up with, among others, Flemming Junker, who I had met in our early years of doing stakeholder engagement work in with Novo Nordisk in Denmark. He was celebrating his thirtieth year with the company, having many moons ago been the first worker-appointed Director of Nordisk, I think.
Novo is one of the most spectacular examples of a company that has embraced the triple bottom line and attempted to integrate the mindset and apporach into pretty much everything they do. And it was typical of the company that after the day’s fairly intensive work was over yesterday, we were offered different ways to contribute to the local community. My choice (although I didn’t realise it would involve a one-hour bus ride either way) was to be part of a team repainting a sheltered housing complex for the homeless, in Immokalee.
Founded in 1987 by Sister Marie McFadden, the project was spurred by a realisation that many men, women and children in the area, many of them immigrants, had nowhere to sleep at night. Today, Immokalee Friendship House, in Greater Collier County, pretty much always operates at capacity, full of abused women and children, migrant farm workers, convalescents, people fighting addiction and so ever on.
In addition to contributing financially, Novo Nordisk last night fielded about 50 of those attending the conference in Naples (which could hardly be further to the other end of the wealth-poverty spectrum, boasting two Ritz-Carlton hotels, one of which we have been staying in), to help give the shelter a face-lift. Several colours of paint were used, including (if memory serves) Queen Anne’s Lace and Paddy Rice, but I busied myself with painting corners, wall-ceiling joins and various light fittings in Convivial Yellow. Don’t know what it will do for the residents, but it certainly cheered me up. And it had various members of the team variously humming Donovan’s Mellow Yellow and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, which put me right at home.
Novo Nordisk had also given conference participants a water bottle for tap water, to avoid everyone using bottled water, which really seems to be taking a publicity battering at the moment. I thought the water tasted a bit strange when I took a swig as we finally climbed back on the bus to return to Naples. Turns out that I hadn’t taken a sheet of instructions out before filling it. No doubt I will get used to this brave new world in time.
Apart from affording me the opportunity to see more herons and giant egrets than I have seen in a very long time, the trip not only reminded me of what a privileged bubble many of us in the sustainability world live in, but also what a significant contribution corporate volunteering can make if well targeted and organised, as I believe what will live on in my memory as the Immokalee Expedition was. It also had me thinking about an email I had received earlier in the day from Bill Drayton of Ashoka, noting that the Great Depression had spawned many of today’s most important social institutions – and wondering whether we aren’t about to go through that cycle again.
