Collaborating to empower one million displaced people by 2021
At Box.org, our vision is to power how the world does more good together. This vision fueled our inspired participation in the 2019 Laudato sì Challenge in Rome and the Vatican City on December 3rd and 4th.
On behalf of Box | Box.org, I attended the Laudauto Si Challenge Summit with 67 peer humanitarian leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, faith leaders and corporate executives. Our summit was held at The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in west Rome near the Vatican City where, “your joy is to bring people to fully realize what they were created to be.”
According to one of our meeting’s hosts, Cardinal Turkson, head of Integral Human Development for the Catholic faith, “Pope Francis’ hope is to see the challenges of Laudato sì taken up in credible initiatives and actions. The Laudato sì CHALLENGE is one such bold response!”
Taking up the challenges of Laudato sì, the 2019 Laudato sì Challenge’s vision is to address forced displacement by empowering one million people by 2021 -- supportingthe vision of the Sustainable Development Goals of “being a human dignity narrative that leaves no one behind.”
In pursuit of that mission, our three clearly-defined targets for our summit in Rome were:
- Commitments: Accelerate 20 new, specific, measurable and accountable “Commitments to Impact” that contribute to our goal of empowering one million vulnerable people. Each participant was called to support these commitments in bold, concrete ways.
- Community: Develop at least 30 new public-private-faith sector partnerships that concretely advance the urgent cause of addressing forced displacement.
- Co-Creation: Drive 100% participation—of time, treasure and/or talent—towards the vision.
Our diverse group came together in a spirit of unity—and we believe because of this, we met, and exceeded, those three targets: with 20 Commitments made, 33 new public-private-faith sector partnerships in process and 100% participation achieved.
With the support of The Laudato si Challenge ecosystem, by 2021 Box.org’scommitment is to empower, through technology and other Box assets, 100 for-profit and NGO's working to prevent forced displacement and the people it burdens. Together we'll “build a world that leaves no one behind.”
We’re excited to work with more organizations (NGO and for-profit) in the way that we’ve partnered with the International Rescue Committee for many years. More detail about how Box | Box.org works with the IRC can be found here. In summary, all IRC staff globally use Box at a heavily reduced rate. We have also educated our employees and customers extensively about their work. The Box Community has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for their mission. Here’s a quick video that offers more insight into how Box technology enables IRC to serve refugees and increase their program funding by using Box Cloud Content Management. Our technology, skills and networks are robust and our philanthropic financial capacity will continue to expand in the future.
The Laudato si ecosytem’s first strategic objective for 2020 is to ensure all 20 commitments are fulfilled—or at least well along towards fulfillment—since this is where all of the impact happens. To that end, our next step is to convene the 20 commitment makers, and supporters, in early January, in California, to build individual plans that will be managed and collaborated on using the Box platform for fulfilling those commitments. We will also track the impact of each commitment and report that progress to you throughout the year to LSC leadership and the general public.
As His Holiness, Pope Francis, has said: “We need to strengthen the convictions that we are one single human family. There are no frontiers or barriers behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalization of indifference."
I will forever feel a sense of gratitude for the Laudato si Challenge organizers for allowing me to bring my wife, sister and mom to this convening. Getting to share my work with them in this way is something I’ll never forget.
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