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 On the weekend I picked up a book from our local library, 'The Secrets of CEOs'. Sir Richard Branson sets the tone in the foreword of the book. "When all businesses puts sustainability at the heart of what they do, we will see a radically positive change in the impact we have on our planet. I believe that day is not too far away," he says.
And that's precisely what Hong Kong-based Green Army is doing every day. CEO Michael Hung has sustainability right at the heart of what Green Army does, supplying packaging products and containers to manufacturers and retailers right around the world. And green Army's products are produced with recycled, biodegradable, organic and other sustainable materials.
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 Mother of two Melissa Clark-Reynolds is creating minimonos, a values-based virtual world, so that our children have a place of their own on the Internet – a place that allows them to explore and develop without the constant pressure to buy stuff. minimonos is a compelling world that captures the imagination of children and a world that encourages sustainable behaviour just by its essence. Melissa puts it this way: "We've told kids, 'it's your world, it's yours to take care of. You can keep the water clean. You can make it a beautiful place to live."
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 All too often, we act through life on our own. We try to do things on our own without realising the joy of sharing via great partnerships.
Affinity Maker™, a Melbourne-based international consultancy, makes partnerships work. They're enormously inspired by B1G1 and we've been the beneficiary of Affinity Maker's expertise. Even more importantly perhaps, we've been the beneficiary of their outright caring and professionalism.
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 Reading books can be one of the most important habits we can have to improve our lives. But not only is this additive to our own life, reading now can also be a giving activity!
Let us introduce you to some of the first Buy1GIVE1 books from the B1G1 Book store. You can visit the store and purchase these books to also add important value to someone else's life today while enjoying the great insights, knowledge and inspiration these authors share. Visit the Global Giving Village to start making a difference.
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 More and more, we're all realising the impact of water on our planet. We see it in so many ways – in drought we see its lack, in floods we see its destructive capacity, and in health we see how essential it is for us all.
To help us 'get' that, Prof. Arjen Hoekstra at UNESCO-IHE and scientists at the University of Twente in the Netherlands developed the concept of the 'water footprint' (you can see more at www.waterfootprint.org).
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 Responding to the twinge
It is certainly not so nice to feel the twinge in our stomach when the
financial market is shaking as well as our bank account. We want to
make sure that we have the certainty and security for our future. We
actually do so many things to create this 'peace of mind'. Working hard
for money, saving and investing wisely, buying property, getting life
insurance, even having the cup of coffee and chocolate can be pretty
much for the 'peace of mind'.
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Giving from head or heart
 Ken Hawkins owns one of the Internationally renowned Kip McGrath Education Centre franchises in Australia.
When Ken first saw the power of Buy1GIVE1, he tried very hard to figure
out the most effective giving for his business. And then, as he puts it,
"I just let go and chose a WorthyCause Partner from your list - a small
school in a slum in India. I wanted nothing in return. I just wanted to
see what would happen if I let go of needing to 'make sense' with my
giving."
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 New Zealand based Buy1GIVE1 Member Wendy Barker has had an
amazing week. She recently decided to support the feeding of children
through Midday Meals in Mumbai, India from the sale of each of her
amazing Figure 8 Body Chains.
"As you lose, they gain," says Wendy who has been so excited by the media response.
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 Nicole is a passionate blind lady who works for one of the B1G1 Worthy
Cause Partners called St Nicholas' Home for the Blind (www.snh.org.my )
in Penang, Malaysia.
Did you find it strange that we said “who works for”, not “who is supported by”?
The Most Surprising Job Application
Mr Ooi, who is the director of this organisation, told us this story when we were visiting the centre.
“One day, we put an advertisement for the position to teach blind
children music as we started music classes at our centre. Soon we
received an application which really attracted us because we saw the
broad experience and passion of this particular applicant.
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 Often in life, it is so easy to postpone things we want to do. Can
you think of anything you have been meaning to do for a while and
haven't done yet?
We would like to introduce you to this person who didn't postpone it
and made a massive difference in just 9 months. His name is Alan Hewitt.
Finding the 'Right Fit'
Alan runs a company called Earth Star Publishing (www.meditate.com.au ).
One of his company's major products is this very innovative meditation
CD set that helps us get into deeper meditative states to effectively
help release stress coming from many of the inner issues we have. He
talks about his journey of finally finding the right match through
Buy1GIVE1 in the interview we did earlier this year.
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 The very first ‘Buy1GIVE1’ magazine just started contributing and
giving back through the new Buy1GIVE1 online mechanism last month.
The Power of Sharing
Many thanks and congratulations to Bev Ryan, the editor of Honestly
Woman magazine for making it happen (and for making a difference).
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 As a part of the special privilege of being part of the Buy1GIVE1
community, we always get to meet and speak with some incredible people.
One of this month’s special gifts for us was meeting the Vice-President
of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) - the company that dominates the news
industry in Singapore.
We had a thirty-minute meeting scheduled which ended up becoming a
two-and-a-half-hour meeting as he decided to cancel everything in the
afternoon to spend more time with us to share his passion for giving.
His name is Peter Khoo. He’s humble, inspirational and enormously
insightful.
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 It is great to see more and more people joining Buy1GIVE1 everyday. And
everyday there are moments that really take our breath away. We come
across unbelievable outcomes we never even imagined when we started.
There was also this one moment this week that really got us all feeling deep gratitude.
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 When something like a natural disaster happens, we talk about it a lot.
The media reports the news with incredibly shocking or moving
photographs and stories. The whole world starts taking action to
support the ones in need. However, as the time passes, even though the
story still continues, we forget. The media is no longer interested in
it because there is other news they want to feature.
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 Zabrina A. Bakar is a wonderfully talented author and one of our latest
B1G1 BUSINESS members. She's totally radiant and simply delightful to
spend time with.
Zabrina took all of 3 seconds to make her Buy1GIVE1 giving happen.
Zabrina got to know of Buy1GIVE1 just a few weeks before the launch of
her second book. She always believed in giving back and has supported a
number of charities in the past. However, encountering Buy1GIVE1 was a
real eye-opener to a new world of giving for her. She even came up with
the cause she wanted to support locally and suggested this cause to
come on board with B1G1.
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 In the last few months alone, several companies decided to come on
board with Buy1Build1™ giving. Every time someone buys a house from
these companies, the customer gets to build a home for one person! WOW!
And of course, this is not a small contribution. It is a MASSIVE
contribution from each transaction. And this is happening NOW.
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