The Center for Partnership Studies’ Caring Economy Campaign (CEC) is delighted to share exciting news with you,

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Infographic from Think Progress 

Did you know that in Australia, the economic value of unpaid care work is 50% of their reported GDP? Or that when children attend high quality early childhood education programs, they’re less likely to commit crime or abuse drugs, they earn more as adults, and are more likely to have a savings account? Or that the US is one of only two countries in the world (the other being Papua New Guinea) that does not mandate paid maternity leave?

Yet none of this vital information is included in GDP or even most alternative metrics now being proposed. It is time to show the enormous return from investing in caring for people, starting in early childhood.

The Caring Economy Campaign’s Social Wealth Economic Indicators (SWEIs) bring together data demonstrating the financial and social ROI from the work of care primarily performed by women for low wages in the market and no remuneration in families — a devaluation that largely accounts for women’s and children’s disproportionate poverty.  

THE CARING ECONOMY STORY SHARING PROJECT 

YOUR STORY

1. What is real wealth to you?  What are the top 3 things that bring the greatest sense of value or well-being to your life?
2. Where does your passion for a caring economy come from?  Tell us your story.
3. How are you translating that passion into action?  Share some examples of how you are working for a caring economy through your life and work.  (Include weblinks to the organizations and projects you are working with.)

YOUR PHOTO

We’re also seeking original images for our web content. Please submit your original photo depicting one or many of the following topic areas:

1.      What does a Caring Economy look like?

2.      Topic areas might include: family, early childcare, maternity/mothers/fathers, elder care, volunteering, social justice, care for the earth, family – employment balance

To share your caring economy story or photo, contact Ann Amberg at annamberg.cps@gmail.com for a packet with submission guidelines and samples to spark your imagination.  

Fall is a wonderfully busy season for our Leadership and Learning Programs!  Please join us for one or more of these great opportunities to enhance your leadership for caring economics, cultural transformation and the partnership way.

Over 190 organizations and leaders representing 16 million people so far have joined the CEC coalition, including most recently the Institute for Policy Studies and Great Work Cultures (see interview below). Other partners include women’s, children’s, civil and human rights, and mothers’ organizations, socially responsible businesses, and faith-based, think tanks, labor, and environmental groups. Please join the CEC coalition today to collaborate and have your work featured in this newsletter and our websites and social media! 

Every issue we interview a leader from one of the member organizations of our coalition. For this issue, CPS president Riane Eisler had the pleasure of interviewing Joan Blades, co-founder of MomsRising,  about her new organization, Great Work Cultures — which has also joined the CEC Coalition. 

Riane Eisler: You are a founder of Great Work Cultures and a leader in the movement to move workplace cultures to a new norm of respect for people’s responsibilities both at work and outside work, which also gives value to the work of care. What brought you to this work?

Joan Blades: As a co-founder of MomsRising.org one key thing I worked on was promoting work practices that are good for people that have care taking responsibilities outside of work.   It became clear to me that all the work practices that are good for mothers are good for everyone, including businesses.  And at the heart of good work practices is respect for all workers.

RE: When was Great Work Cultures founded, and what is your mission?

JB: Great Work Cultures was founded last year and the first version of our website went up in April. The Great Work Cultures mission is to bring together individuals, organizations, and networks to co-create a new norm for work cultures that optimizes worker effectiveness and human happiness.  Highlighting respectful work culture practices, sparking vital conversations around critical workplace challenges, and building a dynamic platform for sharing diverse workplace practices based on respect, we are drawing on the power of collective intelligence. We have created a model of distributed leadership, welcoming everyone to participate in the design and implementation of our current and future projects.

RE: Why did Great Work Cultures become involved as a member of the Caring Economy Coalition?

JB: CEC is an organization that shares our passion for creating a new norm of workplaces that respect workers’ needs to meet their responsibilities both at work and outside of work.

RE: How will Great Work Cultures use the CEC’s new Social Wealth Economic Indicators to help meet these challenges?

JB: We look forward to sharing CEC’s SWEIs with our growing list of champions and including CEC leadership in our collaborative work to change work culture norms.

RE: What advice do you have for our other Caring Economy Coalition members on how to most effectively use the internet to promote our common goals?

JB: Success stories are a powerful way to help us all envision the opportunities that great work cultures create.  Blogs, video and relationship building amplify our collective efforts.

RE: What are some of your activities CEC coalition should know about?

JB: The GWC Hollywood Project  – Popularizing new visions of reality is what Hollywood is good at. We are reaching out to writers and producers to get them to portray the workplace as it could be. Documentaries, reality shows (Workplace Makeover), scripted shows – The Office is a humorous dark side portrayal of work. Can we help some screenwriters begin to envision and portray the kind of work environments we are talking about? Companies that people would love to work for and companies in the process of change? Think of what Modern Family did for the gay rights movement. We can give Hollywood new material that carries the seeds of this transformation of work norms!

The GWC Business School Project –  Ensure that business schools and undergraduate business professors teach all their students about a broad spectrum of respect based management practices that are optimal for the modern workforce.

Each newsletter features a Q&A with a CEC member organization. If you would like to suggest an organization to be featured in an upcoming issue, please email nataliecox.cps@gmail.com

THANK YOU CEC SUPPORTERS 

The mission of the Center for Partnership Studies (CPS) is to accelerate movement to partnership systems of human rights and nonviolence, gender and racial equity, economic prosperity, and a sustainable environment through research, education, grassroots empowerment, and policy initiatives.