Citizens, Organizations, and Business Unite to Redefine Our Community
January 27, 2012
Emerging Leaders believes in the power of Citizens, Organizations, and Business to redefine our community. Glen Pearson posted this charter on his website today and we as Emerging Leaders endorse it. We ask you, Businesses, Organizations, and Individuals, to sign as well. Read the document and then, if you agree with the statements made, add your name , organization, or your business below. We promise that Emerging Leaders will follow up and move these ideas and your input forward. Let us continue together to build the community we believe in.
Sean Quigley
Executive Director
Emerging Leaders
As Citizens
We recognize the need for business investment – small, medium, large – in our midst and would seek to involve them in the ongoing deliberations of how we proceed as communities, as well as endeavouring to create a profitable investment climate by promoting healthy, smart and sustainable ventures. It is clear to us that a free market, private sector is necessary to wealth creation. We acknowledge that lasting prosperity is only possible in a community where business interests excel and produce quality products in partnership with empowered workers.
As Businesses
Seeking a prosperous market with production capacities, we acknowledge the importance of a vital community life to our overall success. We acknowledge that the ultimate arbiters of any community are its citizens and that their prosperity is also our prosperity. It is clear to us that an active and resourced public space, couple with an active and responsible private sector, is necessary for a community to flourish.
Recognizing these declarations to be valid, we in the public and the private sectors, affirm that what brings us together is community. Ultimately, it is our one common denominator, and from it we will seek to produce sustainable wealth and an engaged citizenry.
We hereby agree that we will approach employment as a function of economic efficiency but also as a clear social commitment, recognizing that work is not only fundamental to wealth creation but also the human dignity and personal empowerment.
We hereby agree that healthy competition among wealth creators is a more agreeable and progressive model than the blind support of monopolies and that our products will be of higher quality as we challenge one another towards excellence. As consumers, we will purchase with more diligent selection.
We hereby agree that since work is essential to human respect and dignity that workers should be paid on the basis of their commitment to excellence – in the workplace and in the community. Healthy wages are as important to the overall community as dedicated citizenship is to the private sector.
We hereby agree that neither citizens nor their productive capacities have any prosperous future unless sustainability is built within our communities at all levels. There is a price to pay for production and consumption and we agree to develop new technologies and personal responsibilities that will bring us in line with the world around us.
We hereby agree to spread the cost of better communities and productive capacities equitably across all sectors of society. We acknowledge that various challenges remain obstacles to many of the marginalized in our communities and that we can never enjoy abundant prosperity unless we both – the private and public sector – bring those on the margins into their full capacities among us.
We hereby agree that where certain governments and corporate sectors are slow to bring about a new partnership between business and citizens, that we will work constructively together to press them towards more complementary and sustainable policies.
