{"id":4225,"date":"2004-03-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=4225"},"modified":"2013-11-07T22:38:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T06:38:31","slug":"talking-kindness-with-anita-roddick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=4225","title":{"rendered":"Talking Kindness with Anita Roddick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"anita-roddick\"<\/a>A walking billboard for her belief that, “enthusiasm can’t be taught, it must be caught,” Dame Anita Roddick<\/a> recently delivered a lecture on “Kindness as a Key to Humanity’s Future” to a crowd of about 200 UCSB students and people from the community.<\/p>\n

“Kindness doesn’t have to be random … It can and should be practiced tenaciously, “said the founder of The Body Shop, who is a frequent speaker on corporate responsibility and social justice issues. Certainly a practitioner of kindness herself, Roddick said she believes that “We need to measure progress by human development, not GNP.” And she has walked the talk at The Body Shop for more than 28 years while spawning 1,980 stores and 77 million customers around the world, according to her website.<\/p>\n

“I’m here not in the guise of a successful business person but as an activist for peace, said Roddick, a part-time Montecito resident who serves as a trustee for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation<\/a>, sponsor of the event.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, she’s managed to intertwine her business with her personal values in a way that few corporate leaders have. “We have to put human rights at the very, very center of every trade relationship. Gender balance is also essential. We need to involve women at all levels on an equal basis as men,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Businesses must show more developed emotions than fear and greed. If business comes with no moral sympathy or honorable code of behavior, God help us all,” said Roddick.<\/p>\n

She challenged the audience to imagine a world where institutions such as religion, the media and the legal system were required to be kind, in turn generating dialogue from the audience about the dynamic between truth and forgiveness, aggressive kindness and the role of the media in modernizing youth around the world.<\/p>\n

Originally published in South Coast Beacon<\/a><\/h6>\n

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