Conscious. Purpose-Driven. Mission-Driven. Impact-Focused. All terms have not historically been associated with mission-driven outsourcing, or with private sector work in general. Yet after back-to-back global recessions sparked by irrational exuberance (tech, real estate, and banking), the past decade-plus has seen a rise in people wanting to do meaningful work. Millennials spent a large percentage of their pre-professional lives in recession, more so than any generation in almost 100 years. As a result, they started asking simple questions. Right questions. Fundamental questions.
“Why?”
We’re now at a point where 9 out of 10 people are willing to earn less money in return for doing more meaningful work.
At Boldr, we’ve built our Company atop this philosophy of conscious, purpose-driven work. When we evaluate our performance, we think in terms of 3 Cs: our Clients, our Company, and our Community. With our primary location in the Philippines, and with our Clients scattered globally around the world, it’s a rare moment when those three Cs meet a fourth, and Converge. In the aftermath of powerful typhoons striking the Philippines in Q4 of 2019, Convergence with purpose is exactly what happened.
On December 3rd, 2019, Typhoon Kammuri struck the Philippines, and by the next day, Northern Samar experienced massive destruction affecting almost 225,000 people and over 30,000 houses. As aid made its way into all affected areas, some were still without support and aid two weeks after the Typhoon had hit. Las Navas was one of those towns.
After the Typhoon, Boldr’s Philippines Country Director, Erlend Johannesen (who has 15 years experience running a non-profit focused on education empowerment in Samar) started coordinating a relief effort. One that was about to receive an unexpected infusion of support sparked by a serendipitous conversation in Support Driven’s customer experience focused Slack community in early 2019.
#chit-chat: “Can someone help with some taxation questions in the Philippines”
It started with a simple post by Justin Grenier, Senior Director of Client Services for Articulate (and also, a wonderful human) who posed an open question asking about advice on operating in the Philippines. Boldr CEO David Sudolsky responded, and a business relationship quickly formed and, over the course of 2019, evolved more expansively into a strong partnership and friendship between the companies and teams. Today, Articulate is the Learning and Development platform Boldr uses to onboard and train representatives on client services, while Boldr is continuing to help Articulate build, staff, and grow its own operations in the Philippines via a new product line Boldr is pioneering, “Open Source Outsourcing” which helps teams build their own teams and infrastructure in remote locations.
Nobody could have foreseen a Slack conversation setting the stage for the collaboration and impact that followed.
Related Read: Building a Global, Purpose-Driven Outsourcing Organization
In late December 2019, Justin was making his way through the Philippines and stopped in to spend time with the Boldr team in Manila just as Erlend was coordinating relief efforts. As soon as Justin heard about the work Erlend was coordinating with Boldr’s partners for relief in Samar, he quickly sprung into action; working with Articulate President and CEO to make a donation to relief efforts was an incredible support to Erlend and the team on the laborious trek from Manila to Samar and led to a powerful outcome.
The work done by Articulate, Nordic Mission, Streetlight Philippines, and Boldr directly helped over 1,000 families and over 6,000 individuals. It’s just the beginning of our commitment and efforts to support the people of Samar. We’re humbled that our work together was captured in this video, which was graciously created and shared back with us by community members from Northern Samar.
We believe 2020 is the decade we will see the greatest convergence across sectors and stakeholders. It’s for the most optimistic of reasons. We — all of us — have never been more connected as a world. We’ve never been more equipped to make an impact.
Most importantly, we have never been so focused on working with purpose and making an impact.
Want to learn more about how YOU can drive social impact in this industry? Interested in making a change with us? Drop us a line and let us know!