Awesome Women: Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia

The Awesome Women of the Day are the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, a shareholder-activist order of Catholic nuns that deliberately invests its pension funds in corporations that need a good talking to. Thus entrance is gained for team members of the order's Corporate Responsibility committee to shareholder meetings and executive offices to protest unfair and greedy practices.

The New York Times recently featured the sisters in a Business section article:

Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Sisters of St. Francis were quietly staging an occupation of their own. In recent years, this Roman Catholic order of 540 or so nuns has become one of the most surprising groups of corporate activists around.

The nuns have gone toe-to-toe with Kroger, the grocery store chain, over farm worker rights; with McDonald’s, over childhood obesity; and with Wells Fargo, over lending practices. They have tried, with mixed success, to exert some moral suasion over Fortune 500 executives, a group not always known for its piety.

... The Sisters of St. Francis are an unusual example of the shareholder activism that has ripped through corporate America since the 1980s. Public pension funds led the way, flexing their financial muscles on issues from investment returns to workplace violence. Then, mutual fund managers charged in, followed by rabble-rousing hedge fund managers who tried to shame companies into replacing their C.E.O.’s, shaking up their boards — anything to bolster the value of their investments.

The nuns have something else in mind: using the investments in their retirement fund to become Wall Street’s moral minority.

The order is comprised of about 540 women who engage in a variety of ministries -- including education, health care, shelter and foreign aid in Africa and Haiti. They own a community farm on one of the last undeveloped tracts of land in Delaware County, PA, on which they grow food for 130 CSA members and the sisters themselves, in keeping with their dedication to sustainability. They have published reports on the SEC's recently issued requirements that energy companies seeking investment for fracking operations disclose all the risks involved, and another two reports on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the need for BP to be held responsible.

A page on the order's website answers, for those who might be contemplating joining the order, "Who Will I Be?"

As a Sister of St. Francis of Philadelphia, you possess a heartfelt determination to make a difference in the world. You are prepared to live as Jesus did, with a clear vision of God’s care for all creation, loving every man, woman, child, and creature as brother, sister, mother, father, and friend.

 To paraphrase my friend Betty Fokker -- Mammon wept. Jesus smiled.

Awesome Woman: Nina Smith

The Awesome Woman for Today is Nina Smith, founder and executive director of Goodweave (http://goodweave.org/). Goodweave encourages handmade rug-weaving shops in South Asia to refrain from using child labor. Goodweave obtains a contractual agreement from shop owners to:
- Adhere to the no-child-labor standard and not employ any person under age 14
- Allow unannounced random inspections by local inspectors
- Endeavor to pay fair wages to adult workers, and
- Pay a licensing fee that helps support GoodWeave’s monitoring, inspections and education programs.

Exported Goodweave-certified rugs then carry the Goodweave label so that you know your rug purchase does not support exploitation of children. Non-Goodweave certified rugs might be made by children who kept locked inside dark shops, are not educated nor fed well, and some of whom are slaves who are not even paid. x

Goodweave also rescues children who have been sold into rug-making slavery, out of desperation, by their parents for amounts as small as $2.50. The rescued children are given refuge in a rehabilitation center where they also receive education, training and love.

A fair trade advocate and marketing professional for over 15 years, Nina won the 2005 Skoll award for Social Entrepreneurship, acknowledging her work to employ market strategies for social change. Nina was formerly the executive director of The Crafts Center (1995–1999), a nonprofit organization providing marketing and technical assistance to indigenous artisans around the world and publisher of Crafts News. As president of the Fair Trade Federation (FTF) from 1996 to 1998, Nina raised funds for and launched FTF’s first consumer education campaign. Nina’s overseas experience includes a crafts export consultancy to the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in Dharamsala, India from 1994 to 1996, where she oversaw the development of new market-driven product lines, quality control mechanisms, and artisan training programs. Nina’s broad expertise includes nonprofit management, writing and publishing, marketing, public relations and small business development.

The Goodweave program has won The Best in America Seal, that is awarded to less than 1 percent of U.S. charities, and only after rigorous independent review has determined that the highest standards of public accountability, program effectiveness and cost effectiveness are met.

Full disclosure: Nina Smith also happens to be my super awesome first cousin.