INSIGHT MAGAZINE: EARTH ANGELS
Insight Magazine featured Masami Sato, Founder of B1G1 for their "Earth Angels" October 2012 issue, which recognises ordinary people who do so much more for others.
Read the full article below:
Ghandi said ‘you must be the change you wish to see’ and it becomes evident when first hearing of Masami Sato and the social enterprise that she founded in 2007. Here is one woman who has taken Ghandi’s words to heart, coming up with the concept of transactional giving that has become B1G1.
As Paul Dunn, Chairman of B1G1 tells it
I met Masami during a business mentoring event when she showed me the packaging that she and her business partner David Anttony were using for their food production company. I noticed a little sticker on the side of the box that said Buy One Meal and Give One Free to a Child in Need. I just said, I’ve heard of Buy1 Get 1 but this is ‘Buy one, give one’ and continued on with speaking to the group. It was a few weeks later that Masami came to me and told me about how my words had impacted her and she showed me what she had created since then, I was just blown away.
Having become enamoured of the idea that they could contribute through their food production company, and ralising they could not give on the scale they wanted to all by themselves, Masami and David decided to launch a business specially designed to have a larger impact.
The Buy1GIVE1 concept invites transactional based giving that you can act on straight away without concern about how large or small your contribution and whether you are an individual, a small busines or a large corporation in any business sector. All are making a positive difference and contributing to the transformation of our World.
Masami says that the B1G1 concept is not just about making donations and giving to solve the World’s problems, rather it is about encouraging everyone to do those little actions of expressing gratitude so that the quality of our lives and others improve. Entrepreneurs and businesses around the World have taken thair giving to a whole new level while also having fun with the concept of making changes in the World and serving their customers.
When I made the decision to start my own entrepreneurial endeavour around helping conscious entrepreneurs to be the change they wish to lead, I had also made the decision to find a charity that I could support that would enable my clients and myself to contribute to the World change that I often write about in this magazine. I had been looking at the traditional charities and had even found some newer different types of giving opportunities but had not yet found one that felt right for me. I was looking for something that would allow me to contribute as much or as or as little as I could, whenever I could, as I started to build my client base.
B1G1 allows me to do that, while also letting me choose what I want to contribute to on any given day. One day I might like to provide clean water to 200 people in Ethiopia and yet another day it might feel good to provide a counselling session, for a young Thai women who has been rescued from prostitution. The choice is mine and thanks to Masami, they are all together in one place so I do not have to deal with more than one charity at a time or tie all my funds into just one cause. And thanks to Masami and Buy1GIVE1, businesses around the World are changing lives and getting thair customers involved in the giving, thus spreading the good further and wider.
Masami Sato is one Earth Angel who really is changing the world, one person, one customer, one business at a time while also allowing those people, those customers and those businesses to be part of the giving and to make their own difference in the World.
If you are inspired to become a part of B1G1, or want to learn more, go to b1g1.com.