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Reading the heartfelt lament by Josh Ellis today on "The More Beaufiful World " - a Facebook group dedicated to Charles Eisenstien I could easily relate to my own recent struggles. Even more so, to those of a friend whose life ended 3 years ago this month.

He left this world alone and homeless with a message of hope.   .

Both he and Josh Ellis have been advocates for the disadvantaged and marginalised, in rather different ways.

I wonder if they know what people-centric organisations have been doing to challenge free market capitalism?

"Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings.  Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.

I ask this question from the perspective of a supplier and a social enterprise.to an organsation supported by public funds

In February 2008 we were operational in Ukraine when our late founder made a direct approach to USAID with our 'Marshall Plan' proposal which included plans for a national social enterprise development centre    

USAID were dismissive, informing us there was no budget for the group of "retarded  children" described in our letter.

It can be one of the most difficult aspect of dealing with chronic illness and not finding the right place and time can amplify the slightest inclination toward low self esteem beyond all proportions:   ,

I woke last night from a bad dream where I relived an experience starting 5 years ago. I got up and wrote a note which would never be read. I guess a kind of message in a bottle:

A new report from this Conservative think tank asserts that the purpose of business is to serve the common good. That's something I can't disagree with, since it was where we started with a people-centered approach to economic development, by saying:

In some ways, the recent revelations about cronyism under Bigf Society are reassuring in that they might well have gone a lot further. I wrote recently about plans to spend another £60 million to help us prepare for social investment. .Social networks cannot be established without infrastructure and we had warned of the inferior service to rural communities for years to come. We'd also warned about global uprisongs:

The fools in this case being we the taxpayers.

Several years ago, while our founder was still alive, we wrote of our strategy when dealing with corruption. I hadn't imagined at the time, that we'd be facing the same kind of obstacles in the UK. As The Independent reveals, Big Society has been exposed for misuse of funding.  

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

 

In an interesting article for the Forest and Wye Review, environmentalist  Jonathan Porritt calls for an alternative approach to economic development, a Plan B for the Forest of Dean:

“We know that in the Forest of Dean and Cinderford the need for economic development is critical and local people who stand up and argue passionately for economic development in their community have every right to do so.

Writing for Huffington Post on Where Our Moral Compass Meets the Bottom Line, Unilever CEO Paul Polman said this about the need for business to be contributing to society:

"When people talk about new forms of capitalism, this is what I have in mind: companies that show, in all transparency, that they are contributing to society, now and for many generations to come. Not taking from it.