Gandhi's life changing moment came when he found his profession (law) worse than useless -in fact at war - with his rcae in the apartheid system that legislated its way into South Africa at the start of the 2oth Century. Professor Yunus found that the textbooks in his profession - economics - were absolutely useless as a million people starved in a Bangladeshi famine of the 1970s. The Economist was founded to change market rules that had been lobbied into parliamentary codes - eg Repealing the Corn laws.

What is The State of The Professional Wolrd in C21? Which professions could serve humanity 10 time better?

Professions and professional people enjoy unique privileges and monopolies in society. So we cold hope that 21st C professions would be leading the way towards long-term sustainability of humanity and the true and fair integration of every locality into a global world. The evidence is largely to the contrary. Most have failed to revisit what has changed since the historic certainties their rules were founded in. For example accountants still follow industrial age rules that book all machines in as investments and all spending o people (including training, experiential knowledge development etc) as costs to cut. In many sectors the global race seems to have be concerned solely with maximing their separate business cases in ways that have rewarded speculators and the big get bigger. They have destroyed communal trust and integration from local diversity up just when peoples everywhere -and nature - needed this most. For example, which professions are helping t make the business cases for sustainability that Corporate Chairman Ray Anderson begs big business world to come and join him in innovating.

Ray Anderson references: Mount Sustainability talk at Royal Society of Arts  video interface website search *externalisation quotes:"Every living system - every life support system - er together make up the biosphere. They are all in decline and it is the externalisation of costs that's allowing that to happen: the trashing of the biosphere."

The good news and the bad news is that transparent  transformation of professions could bring sustainability back within our grasp - but being 24 years late in starting to change eg economics is not a truly hopeful signal

 

1 Where's the greenest retailer debate?

Where does one bookmark to see how  leaders of Marks & Spencer define sustainability? There's the same question about Wal-Mart which now claims its demanding its supply chain get green but when you actually approach their executives about their own goals, the silence is deafening... in parallel, we had a very peculiar wal-mart representative at be the change 2006 in london who claimed to be interested in the greenest warehouses ever built but wasn't the slightest when ordinary people tried to speak to him; basically I dont yet wholly believe in any of these CEOs, otherwise they would have joined Ray Anderson in USA and Sir John Banham UK and other true sustainability investment modellers long ago

 before the day after tomorrow:  there is a gigantic game of snap to be played, which is integral to the Yunus idea of emerging a social business entreprise stockmarket

 Between

A) sustainability network leaders the ones we can map at http://up200.tv or equivalent travel guide sites

 B) and all the execs who go to clintong global or be the change and presumably are candidates for what their global sectors will compound up or down; these people need to be identified and then put in a league table of whether they actually walk their talk; its the biggest world citizen game ever....

  IT people need to work out how this game's discussions can be converged and edited into one transparent space; perhaps all those supporters of ecology could do this if they called this the ecology game or sustainability game or the game of mirror mirror whose the greenest collaborator of us all; perhaps we first need to understand who are the 10 greenest people in the world everyone can trust and then get them to sit down and unitil they have workled out how to make this fantasy snap with green league game a reality everyone and every public media joins in playing

 From debates I have watched, browsed etc I suggest the emerging league table footnoted which we may as well parade at http://crisisclimate.tv until someone does better

Passports to Sustainability:  persumably if London is hosting 24 days of virtual chats on green reaching a million people, this voting game on 10 people most worth trusting earth's green future to is something that could be held as a quiz if we could simplify the question

http://crisisclimate.tv Vote for 10 Greenest Collaboration Entrepreneurs for the Planet (High is best) - you can vote in new entrants or ask for a score to be upped or downed

The Grameen Bank has played a vital role in helping to achieve the goal of reaching 100 million of the world's poorest people with microcredit by 2005. Indeed, as of May 2006, the Grameen Bank reached more than 6.61 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women. When the borrower’s family members are included, more than 33 million people in Bangladesh have been impacted by the Grameen Bank. With 2,226 branches, they provide services in 71,371 villages throughout Bangladesh.

Please mail info@grameen.tv if you know of a network which been a key collaborator with Yunus. Examples:

1 RESULTS, Muhammad Yunus and Microcredit

Founded in 1980, RESULTS is a U.S.-based grassroots advocacy organization, with affiliates in six other countries, focused on ending poverty. RESULTS was an early supporter of microcredit — working with the media and Congress to build awareness and expand funding for this remarkable tool. RESULTS has been honored to have Muhammad Yunus on its board for the past 18 years. In 1997 Sam Daley-Harris, founder of RESULTS,established the Microcredit Summit Campaign and together with key allies launched the Summit goal of reaching 100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families with credit by the year 2005. publication Nov 2006; by Sam Daley-Harris, Anna Awimbo (Editor)Overview of Contents
1 - Achieving the Microcredit Summit and Millennium Development Goals of Reducing Extreme Poverty: What is the Cutting Edge on Cost-Effectively Measuring Movement across the $1/Day Threshold?
2 - Factors That Contribute To Exponential Growth: Case Studies For Massive Outreach To The Poor And Poorest
3 - Commercialization: Overcoming The Obstacles To Accessing Commercial Funds While Maintaining A Commitment To Reaching the Poorest
4 - Building Country-Level Financial Systems that Work for the Majority.

RESULTS introduced Professor Yunus and the issue of microcredit for the very poor to the U.S. Congress, and helped bring success stories about the Grameen Bank and other microcredit programs to the attention of policymakers. As leaders like Professor Yunus and RESULTS activists together educated representatives and senators about this cost-effective, sustainable approach to helping people lift themselves out of poverty, they found a receptive audience among both Democrats and Republicans. By the late 1980s, microcredit programs were receiving funding through U.S. foreign assistance. That funding has steadily risen, and is now $225 million annually. Because of the continued work of RESULTS citizen activists and congressional champions, a 2004 U.S. law now requires that at least 50 percent of U.S. microcredit funding be directed to the very poor — those struggling to survive on one dollar a day or less. Our foreign aid agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was supposed to have certified poverty measurement tools by October 1, 2006, to make this possible. But USAID has not yet delivered on this important congressional mandate.

Launch of 2006 Summit Report and Global Microcredit Summit

On November 1 at 11 am ET, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and long-time RESULTS/RESULTS Educational Fund board member Muhammad Yunus will join Sam Daley-Harris to launch the 2006 State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign report with the very latest data on progress made towards achieving the 2005 goal of reaching 100 million of the poorest people with microcredit.