• Rani Hong has gone from a slave to the CEO of a global organization, who speaks regularly at the United Nations.

• Moving from a victim to a leader, she is leading an international awareness campaign on human trafficking to help stamp it out.

• She believes that many companies might support child labor without even realizing it.

• Hong and her husband have developed the Freedom Seal – a qualification awarded to companies that have examined their supply chains and found them free of slave labor.

At age seven, Rani Hong was taken from her mother by a kindly neighbor who promised to give her an education, something her poverty-stricken family could never afford. After a few months, Hong disappeared, sold into slavery by her supposed caregivers, who were actually a front for a child slavery syndicate. It would be 21 years before Hong would see her mother again.

Worldwide it’s estimated that between 21 and 30 million people are victims of human trafficking. And it’s not something restricted to poor countries either, at least 127 countries have active human trafficking networks, with recruitment often carried out by nationals of the same country as the victims. In the United States more than 100,000 children are trafficked every year.

Hong is one of the lucky ones. After being shipped out of slavery in India to Canada, she eventually found freedom, but didn’t wallow in victimhood for long. Instead, she decided to devote the rest of her life to raising awareness around human trafficking and slavery. She founded the Tronie Foundation with her husband Trong Hong, and together they have set out to make companies aware of their role in the slave trade.

“I tell my story because there are millions of children just like the little girl that I was – enslaved, imprisoned, beaten and not able to speak. I speak for them, to give them a voice,” says Hong.

While there are thousands of dedicated people and organizations around the world fighting human trafficking and helping victims, the Tronie Foundation is the only one founded by two former victims. They are working to include a “survivor voice” in the solution to this global scourge. While most are shocked by the statistics and scale of modern-day slavery, people have responded most strongly to their firsthand account of what happened to them.

While 79 percent of human trafficking is made up of girls and women who are sexually exploited, the remaining 21 percent are forced labor. “That’s around 21 million people,” says Hong. “Another 19 million victims are exploited by private individuals and enterprises.”

Many CEOs will condemn slavery without realizing that their company might be part of the problem. Unknown to them, forced labor might be part of a supply chain that produces their goods.

“You’ll find children in the agricultural industry, in the chocolate industry, forced labour within our supply chains,” says Hong. Private individuals and enterprises are exploiting million of victims, and we need to bring this to the attention of CEOs around the world. It can destroy reputations and damage brands among consumers,” she explains. The abuse sometimes happens in a third world country, out of sight to Western corporations, where a child might carry bricks for construction, or pick cocoa beans that we eventually eat as chocolate.

“I don’t know how much I was sold for, but today we know of children being sold for as little as US$90,” says Hong. Human trafficking is a massive industry worth an estimated US$150 billion, yet the price that trafficked children pay is incalculable, their lives are ruined and they rarely return to any semblance of normality. “ If they’re lucky and break free of slavery, the trauma, physical and psychological damage is for life,” says Hong.

While Hong was a wreck at first from her ordeal, it took the support and encouragement of a woman in Washington to help her believe in herself again and to help get her voice heard. “Someone like her, a mentor, has really helped,” says Hong. “Love and care from others has helped me heal.”

Hong served as a UN special advisor for a global initiative to fight human trafficking. She has presented several UN general assembly speeches, one of which saw her lead a global plan of action in 190 countries. Not bad for someone who was once kept in a cage and traumatized to the point that her captors considered her worthless. Hong also initiated the first World Day Against Trafficking and Persons, which is now marked on July 30^th every year.

The increased awareness is welcome, but there’s still a long way to go. Some countries impose $500 fines on companies caught exploiting children. “That’s just a slap on the wrist,” says Hong. Convictions are rising, but in most countries conviction rates rarely exceed 1.5 per 100,000. This is even below the conviction rate for kidnapping in Europe, with 2007-08 statistics showing that two out of every five countries globally had not recorded a single conviction for human trafficking.

The Tronie Foundation has created a more proactive way of fighting this scourge. Called the Freedom Seal, the goal is to help businesses become more active in identifying and fighting human trafficking. The Freedom Seal is designed as a visual marker that businesses can use to clearly communicate to consumers that they have due diligence mechanisms in place and are actively taking steps to prevent forced labor and human trafficking in their practices. Company’s love boasting about awards and accolades and this is one that Hong hopes CEOs will want to add to their trophy cabinets.

It’s not enough for only companies to get involved, countries need to legislate too. South Africa recently banned children travelling through its borders without parents presenting unabridged birth certificates. The U.K. passed the Modern Slavery Act in March, an act closely modeled on the California Transparency Act, that requires companies to report how they are eliminate forced labour within supply chains.

“Research shows that if criminal syndicates and gangs are involved in human trafficking, there is a high likelihood that they’re also involved in drug smuggling, the trade of endangered species and illegal weapons,” says Hong.

“When we fight human trafficking, we are also preventing other illegal activities. Businesses and consumers can really make a positive difference by taking action,” she says. If Rani Hong can do it, then so can we.

8 signs of possible modern day slavery

1. Deception in the recruitment process and/or false promises about the terms and conditions of employment.
2. Excessive recruitment fees charged to workers.
3. Confiscated or withheld identity documents or other valuable personal possessions.
4. Withheld or unpaid wages.
5. Unexplained or excessive deductions from wages resulting in induced indebtedness.
6. Imprisonment or physical confinement in the workplace or related premises such as employer-operated residences.
7. Deprivation of food, shelter or other necessities.
8. Physical or sexual abuse, harassment or psychological intimidation.

Learn more about the Tronie Foundation or apply for the Freedom Seal here

 

• The CEO of a luxury jewelery company joins an ocean conservation organization and realizes that business should have a social conscience.

• She creates a yearly award for luxury goods manufacturers that practice sustainability, in the hope that it will influence the entire industry.

• While luxury has always been associated with wealth, it’s discernment that is actually more important today.

• Maria Eugenia Girón devises clever marketing ideas to raise awareness around the environment and to get consumers to change bad habits.

“I didn’t start my business to just make money for myself, I started it to change the world.” These are the words that inspire Maria Eugenia Girón of Madrid, the co-founder of the IE Award for Sustainability, an annual event that honors entrepreneurs who produce premium and luxury goods with a conscience. She was told this by one of the award winners many years ago, and it’s proof that she’s on the right track.

After running a premium global jewelery company for seven years and focusing solely on growth and making it more valuable she sold the company and was invited to join the board of Oceana, a global organization dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans. It was a turning point in her life. Through her work at Oceana, Girón began to see how things could be changed for the better, especially through science, regulation and by making the consumer more aware. Ironically, the environmental lessons she learnt turned her right back to a sector she’d just left behind – luxury goods.

“My business experience as executive and CEO, my expertise in building global brands and my current involvement with several companies as a board member, provided the best platform to drive change. Sustainability, business and brand value reinforce each other within luxury. The sustainable use of resources and social responsibility have become the new competitive advantage in building long term value,” she says.

The luxury industry typically conjures up images of opulence and wasteful extravagance, but each year Girón has found a handful of brands that are proving otherwise, and not delivering short on their promise of luxury either.

“The more information consumers have about the impact their purchases are having on the planet, the more discerning and aware they’ll become about making choices,” she says. The awards that she and co-founder Miguel Angel Gardetti hand out every year aim to show how luxury brands are making progress with sustainability, in the hope that it will inspire others into action.

Girón feels that true luxury has certain criteria, that lend itself well to sustainability. “Historically, products were made to last forever, by people who were dignified because they were craftsmen,” she explains. “They saw their work through from beginning to end and were respectful to the raw materials they used.”

The great news for luxury is that there’s a renewed interest in how a product is made and where it’s from, something that has pointed many consumers towards luxury goods. The rise of technology has also allowed us to personalise products, much like our grandparents did, and thanks to the internet, we now have one-to-one service – just like the old days.

“The reality of luxury is keeping the supply chain, waste and labor very austere internally when producing the goods, while portraying an image of abundance and playfulness when building an image on the outside,” says Girón.

You don’t have to be wealthy to enjoy luxury either, according to Girón.

“Discernment is more important,” she says. “This will allow you to enjoy a well made product, good service and an appreciation of the history behind it, with knowledge about the craftsmen who made it or the precious materials that were used.”

 

The world seems to be divided on luxury. Many emerging economies have rising middle classes who want to flaunt their new wealth with obvious adornments that they have “arrived.” The “old money,” that have enjoyed generations of financial wealth don’t feel the need to show off quite as much, and prefer to buy goods that give them personal enjoyment. One country that’s flaunting its new money right now is China. Yet, Girón feels that nearby Japan will influence China towards a deeper and more sustainable view on luxury. “After the tsunami and nuclear crisis we’ve seen a definite move by Japanese consumers towards brands that are more healthy and traceable,” she says. “Japans luxury goods sector is expected to grow by five percent in 2015, mostly from Chinese tourism. Japan’s new values will definitely have an influence on Chinese visitors, and help align consumer attitudes in a more responsible way.

Every year, Girón measures ten things that have the biggest impact on the luxury goods industry – according to CEOs, investors and analysts. Last year the key word to emerge was “experience.” It’s a tough ingredient to capture, but the data has shown that some of the experiences include personalization, human touch and a “wow factor.” Millennials especially, are looking a product that delivers the unexpected. This trend favors businesses with social impact because these types of companies always have great stories around how their products are made and are meaningful.

One example of experience marketing is a Spanish jewellery company that has collaborated with a museum to explain their gems to tourists using works of art.

Another is restaurants and chefs that have teamed up with an opera house to create experiential dining experiences around a theatrical production. Owning a product is not enough any more. People crave a meaningful experience that goes beyond the expected.

As a board member of Oceana, Girón has a vision to help generate enough protein from seafood to feed the expected 9 billion people on planet earth by 2050. Rather than trying to change billions of people’s eating habits, Girón inspired Oceana’s team to chose a more focused route. Realizing the power of role models, they brought together 20 of the world’s leading chefs at the Basque Culinary Center in San Sebastian where they pledged to become ambassadors and leaders for sustainable seafood cooking.

“This is an example of how luxury cuisine is going beyond the normal delivery of good food,” says Girón. “It gives a new meaning to luxury goods: sustainable, healthy and responsible.”

Read more about the Luxury Awards here

• A family decides to invest in a rainforest in Ecuador, believing they can preserve it for future generations.

• Rather than hide it away, a sustainable business model is drawn up that sees it become a highly visible a tourist lodge.

• Miguel Sevilla believes that rarity is a powerful marketing tool and that different conservation practices should apply to large and small destinations.

• Conservation is a problem we should all take seriously, regardless of where we live. After all, we all breathe the same air.

Most people who seek investment opportunities with decent returns will put their money into real estate, jewellery, art, shares, bonds or a promising Silicon Valley startup. Miguel Sevilla’s family decided instead to buy a patch of rainforest in Northwest Ecuador. The land is untouched, a pristine piece of earth made up of primary jungle, or virgin forest, as we like to call it in the West. Secondary jungle, that has seen human intervention exists alongside, and while still beautiful, is less rare.

Clearing the land for cattle ranching, farming or logging might deliver fast, short-term profits, but the Sevilla’s think it’s a much better investment left untouched. They also decided to create a unique hotel to give people from around the world an opportunity to appreciate its beauty and better understand why rainforests are important.

Every hour, 6,000 acres of rainforest are cut down. That’s the equivalent of 4,000 football fields. Trees are not just nice to look at; they form an important part of our ecosystem and are crucial in sucking carbon monoxide from the air. When we exhale, trees inhale. Besides keeping the air clear, the rainforests of the world cover eight percent of the world’s land surface and are home to more than half the earth’s animals and plant species.

After securing their investment in nature, the Sevilla family began to formulate a sustainability plan. “Our first idea was to preserve it for the sake of preservation,” recalls Sevilla. “It turned out to be a weak defence against the threats it faced from future logging or poaching, so we decided to make it more visible, instead of hiding it or protecting it like a trophy in a museum.”

 

Creating a legal and commercial entity for their investment helped with their concern that future owners or generations might be tempted to do something else with the land. Turning the lodge into a successful business venture was insurance against this.

The idea of Mashpi Lodge was to keep the rainforest in the public eye in the hope that visitors would spread the message of conservation. The first challenge was how to build a structure of concrete, glass and metal in an area that was going to market itself as “untouched.” Luckily, in an area of secondary jungle that formed part of the purchase, a Spanish logging company had cleared a small patch of jungle decades earlier for its operations. It was the perfect location for the lodge and a short walk from the unspoilt forest that was to become the main drawcard for guests. Ironically, the Spanish logging company had gone bankrupt because of the diversity of trees in the area; they couldn’t find enough of the same to type to make their business viable. When people speak of nature fighting back, this might be one good example.

“To avoid clearing a path from a road seven miles away to install electricity poles, we created our own, small hydro electric plant on the premises,” says Sevilla. “To take sustainability seriously, you sometimes need to consider solutions that are not necessarily profitable at first. You also need to acknowledge issues that are larger than the people involved,” he muses.

Guests to Mashpi Lodge sleep in rooms with glass walls, surrounded by jungle, giving an impression they are living in nature, and maximizing the full beauty of their surroundings. Arial bicycles, suspended on steel cables, transport guests through virgin forests, ensuring that even footprints are not left behind.

Keeping the lodge and its surrounding rare is a marketing strategy that Sevilla embraces wholeheartedly. “Mass tourism, like you see in Ecuador’s capital Quito, has a different type of effect on the environment and needs different conservation methods,” he says. “Large and small destinations alike should introduce unique eco-friendly measures that take advantage of their size. The Galapagos Islands, for example, have quotas that restrict the number of tourists per year due to environmental sensitivities.”

Sevilla believes the rarity of their investment at Mashpi will help ensure they are fully booked throughout the year, rather than seasonal highs and lows. Restricting customers might seem unintuitive to running a healthy business, but in Sevilla’s case it works.

The social pressure for short-term benefits at the expense of the environment, especially in poverty-stricken nations, is very strong. It’s usually ignored by many people in the developed world and viewed as being someone else’s problem. However, this is a global issue that affects rich and poor, a collective problem we all should help resolve.

“Rainforests being destroyed in Ecuador will effect the oxygen levels in Germany – we all breath the same air,” says Sevilla. He feels that rationalizing the concept of time to people is important in understanding conservation. “When you try and explain to guests that a tree is 1,000 years old, it’s unbelievable to most. Putting facts such as these into a rational perspective, that people can understand in their everyday life is crucial for conservation,” he says.

Mashpi Lodge doesn’t only welcome tourist wanting to experience the rainforest first-hand. American universities have used the lodge to study birds and an important research program is underway to reintroduce an almost-extinct spider monkey back into the region. One of the guides is a former poacher, who now has the means to earn a living through legal means. “Our staff, who are drawn from local communities, are excellent examples of how changing someone’s circumstances can make them great ambassadors for sustainability,” he says.

“As a human being it’s impossible not effect our planet environmentally,” says Sevilla. “Even our breath leaves a footprint. What we need to learn is how to manage this footprint better.”

Mashpi Lodge is a recent winner of an IE Award for Sustainability (Premium and Luxury Sectors) www.ie.edu/ie–luxury–awards

 

• A woman turns a tree planting movement into a pro-democracy movement that demands human rights from an African regime.

• Despite gender discrimination and physical threats to her life she stands up to a dictator, abusive husband and the military and shows people around the world that determination can result in change.

• Wangari Maathai showed that science and conservation should be in the service of humankind, and not exist to merely understand the world.

• Regardless of cultural norms, women can break sexist barriers by ignoring obstacles and acting in a manner that suggests ‘rightful living.’

When Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, questions were raised regarding her choice. “Why should an environmentalist receive a prize that is identified with peace and human rights?” people asked. Maathai had become famous for starting the Green Belt Movement in Kenya in the 1970s that had encouraged the planting of trees, but few saw the positive social change she created behind the scenes. She died in 2011, yet her non-compromising attitude towards conservation and democracy remains an inspiration to this day.

Raised in a rural village in the central highlands of Kenya, Maathai ‘s love of the earth began with rolling up her sleeves and getting her hands dirty. While many see this as a chore, Maathai’s experience bordered on the spiritual. “Nothing is more beautiful than cultivating the land at dusk,” she said. “As you remove the weeds and press the earth around the crops you feel content, and wish the light would last longer so you could cultivate more. Earth and water, air and the waning fire of the sun combine to form the essential elements of life and reveal to me my kinship with the soil.”

The majority of Africans must perform this daily task out of necessity to survive, but Maathai saw it as an opportunity to galvanize people for social change. In 1974 her husband campaigned for a seat in the Kenyan Parliament, promising much needed jobs. Maathai saw this as an opportunity to connect her ideas of environmental restoration with jobs for the unemployed. It led to the founding of Envirocare, a business that involved ordinary people planting trees.

The venture failed, but raised enough interest within the United Nations Environment Programme to get her invited to attend the first UN conference on human settlements, known as Habitat. It was from this global platform that Maathai realized the power of eco-politics and her Green Belt Movement was born.

It was a movement to plant millions of trees, but she was not merely an environmentalist who loved trees. She got people to plant trees as a way of healing a devastated landscape. She asked how a poor rural family in Africa is ever supposed to rise out of poverty if a woman must walk hours each day to get firewood from forests that recede farther and farther away each year. “The situation of a woman cutting down the last tree to cook her last meal is one we must avoid,” she said. It’s no wonder Maathai got the Nobel Peace Prize when viewed against this social impact. Science and conservation, at its best, should be in the service of humankind, and not exist to merely understand the world.

Emboldened by the success of rallying people around trees, Maathai turned the Green Belt Movement into a pro-democracy movement and confronted the regime of Daniel Arap Moi. For this, she faced both traditional prejudice as a woman and political oppression. During a heated debate around the development of a green area in the capital of Nairobi, President Moi suggested Maathai be a proper woman in the African tradition, respect men and be quiet. But she didn’t. “I knew that we could not live with a political system that killed creativity, nurtured corruption, and produced people who were afraid of their own leaders,” she said. Part of this fear was the threat of physical violence, something Maathai personally experienced many times while protecting public forests that the regime had earmarked for its supporters.

Her husband filed for divorce in 1977, citing Maathai as “too strong-minded for a woman” and that he was “unable to control her.” After the divorce he demanded through his lawyers that she drop his surname – Mathai. She chose instead to add an extra “a” and became Maathai. She creating a new name for herself and obeyed the law, yet showed in a clever way that she was still firmly in control.

Maathai was certainly not afraid of confrontation. During a standoff with soldiers and thugs in a contested forest she was trying to protect, she stood facing rifles and machetes holding a watering can. Stubborn characteristics such as these can spell danger in a tyrant, but Maathai demonstrated that peace is not something to be viewed as weak.

Many people will support a cause monetarily, but to risk one’s life for an important humanitarian or environmental cause takes far more courage as a leader. It went beyond dying for a tree, Maathai was demonstrating the principles of democracy and giving the downtrodden a voice.

Education was a key concern for her and she dispelled the idea that education meant less attachment to the environment. “Education should not take people away from land, but instill in them even more respect for it,” she said. “Educated people are in a position to understand what is being lost. The future of the planet concerns all of us, and we should do what we can to protect it. You don’t need a diploma to plant a tree.”

Maathai taught us how determination can eventually create change if we have enough patience and belief in our cause. She did a lot more than organize groups of local women to plant trees. She also planted seeds of hope for democracy to replace a corrupt, greedy government. She was a leader others wanted to follow, for they saw that she knew instinctively how to get results.

For those who still ask: “What can one person do to make a difference?” here’s a hint: It can be as simple as trees, self-reliance and human endurance.