Energy Market in Ghana Start Safe School Program

Story-38-Vivo-Energy--680x365Vivo Energy Ghana is a part of Shell and their primary job is to market and distribute fuel and lubricants that are Shell brand. Now the company is doing more that just dispensing gas as they develop their Community Investment Initiatives. This time their efforts are going towards a school road safety empowerment program that has teamed up with the National Road Safety Commission and the Ghana Education Service. Together these organizations hope to make the roads to children’s schools safer through education.

The program has been named, “My Road Safety, My Life.” The program will encourage and educate children about being safe on the road through good behavior, civilized conduct, and understanding how pedestrians, passenger, and cyclists can work together. The students will learn through classroom work, outdoor and on road experiences and simulation exercises, and more traditional quizzes. As the program begins, they will start small with the most high-risk roads. The Minster for Transport began this program and is encouraged that a corporation is taking steps to help the public as part of their corporate social responsibilities. The Minster, Dzifa Attivor said, “It is for this reason that we shall continue to support in any way possible, any measure that has the potential to contribute to the reduction and prevention of road traffic crashes in the Country.” The Executive Director of the National Road Safety Commission, Ing. May Obiri Yeboah also weighed in on the corporation doing their part, praising Vivo Energy Ghana for helping to educate children to use more caution and smarts when frequenting motorways. Mr. Fred Osoro is the managing director of Vivo Energy Ghana and has publicly promised that the company is determined to stay committed to the project and that they will work with sponsoring stakeholders to keep the implementation moving through its various stages.

Conscious Business Needs Conscious Consumers

MC3-Conscious-Business-TenantsThere has been a marked rise in conscious business and now that needs support from conscious consumerism. It is wonderful that many more business are becoming socially responsible but there needs to be some acknowledgment of this from the wider corporate sector so that this can develop into something sustainable in the economy. There are 1,000 businesses around the world that are now classified as B Corporations that really promote sustainable, socially equitable and ethical behavior. They are very promising, but this trend cannot continue without the wider business community’s support. Right now the rest of the business community is stuck with conventional business models, which are not recognizing the huge, looming environment and social problems that await.

The things that these social enterprises or the B Corporations are helping on a micro scale, but cannot really be effective without support throughout the entire business community. Large scale change is the only thing that will address the crises that we are facing as a global community. However, it may not be the fault of those businesses that have not jumped on the B Corporations bandwagon yet. Really, business simply responds to consumer demands, so the real issues is getting consumers to be environmentally and socially conscious and demanding those products and services. It turns out that the Stanford Social Innovation review found that “consumers want to act green, but they expect businesses to lead the way.” So essentially, we have hit a chicken or egg situation. Who is going to act first? Business is waiting for consumer demand and consumers are waiting for business.

There are advantages for business like reducing pollution, waste and energy in order to be green. However, this requires some initial investment and it seems that many are not willing to take that leap. So really, this change overall must come from both the business and the consumer sectors. Someone must educate both consumers and enlighten the business community at the same time. There is mounting evidence that we need to change and a growing global consciousness of our human impact on the earth. Hopefully both consumers and businesses will realize that they need to change their ways before it is too late.