Sustainable Business Practices: How We Do Business

The North Carolina Business Council (NCBC) is a statewide nonprofit business association that connects, empowers, and influences local business leaders. Their mission is to bring companies together to build a vibrant economy that sustains our communities, protects our natural resources, and benefits all North Carolinians. 

Each year, NCBC holds a luncheon to award leaders in business sustainability. This year, Participate Learning joined other trailblazing business leaders to celebrate our achievements and the collective steps made toward transforming business for good.

This luncheon allowed businesses to network with other innovative leaders who are working toward the common goal of creating a more equitable economy that benefits all North Carolinians. Connecting with other businesses gave everyone the opportunity to learn about sustainable business practices that helped them become successful while also enhancing the communities around them.

NCBC’s mission consists of four main pillars that support them in their goal of creating sustainable business practices statewide. Here are the ways we at Participate Learning work toward achieving this mission:

Economic Development

We leverage both our resources and community partnerships to stimulate economic growth directly and cooperatively with other organizations by promoting awareness of the triple-bottom-line business practice of people, planet, and prosperity.

One way we do this is by partnering with local businesses to support them and promote their missions, while also giving back to our employees through offering healthy food options, ensuring all employees earn a living wage, and providing ergonomic workspaces to support well-being. We also work directly with sustainable suppliers and vendors to help protect the environment.

One example of this is our partnership with Cupanion, a fellow B Corporation that tracks our personal environmental impact through reusable water bottles and donates many to a global clean water initiative as a result. To learn more about this, check out this blog post about our Cupanion launch that began at our annual meeting this past October.

Education

Education is at the very heart of what we do. We strive to be a force for good that connects teachers and students through global education programs to foster human understanding and create peace around the world. Not only do we strive to support students in their learning and understanding of the world, but we want to spread the message of the importance of global education to the communities around us.

Uniting our world through global learning, our comprehensive programs are focused on expanding young minds, opening our world, and working together for a more peaceful tomorrow. We work to educate the public about the benefits of our programs by attending seminars, workshops, and conferences, as well as visiting schools directly to show just how vital global education really is.

Public Influence

We work to amplify our message to the public through many different channels to have as large of an influence on our local community as possible. We host summits throughout the year that highlight our expertise in global education and bring the public together to learn with one another.

We also have a good relationship with many local news outlets like Chapel Hill Magazine, Durham Magazine, Education Matters, and Univision, who support us in spreading our message to the public. In regard to governmental relations, we are a designated Department of State organization that provides visas for our ambassador teachers.

Connecting

We believe that connection is essential to changing the way we do business by collaborating with other businesses so that we can constantly improve our own practices. By sharing a common focus of people, planet, and profit, we stand to make a real change that benefits direct stakeholders as well as the surrounding community.

We connect with other businesses in the area through attending local B Corporation meet-ups and awards luncheons to facilitate meaningful relationships. With the general public, we use our social media platforms to create a tight-knit community among global educators from around the world.

Participate Learning strives to do well by doing good. To learn more about our journey as a B Corporation and commitment to sustainable business practices, read this blog post.