The Live & Inspire Weekend, which will feature a series of inspirational speakers who have each lived outstanding lives, including Patch Adams, Edwina Chiu, Dr. Karriem Ali, and Masami Sato will take place on 24 October 2009. Voize meets up with Masami Sato, the founder of Buy1GIVE1, to talk about her own motivations and reasons for setting up this sustainable development effort.
Masami talks about the philosophy behind Buy1GIVE1: “We should determine our own happiness rather than depend on external conditions. The common thing among happy people is the fact that they are sharing and giving and caring and the more they’re giving out, actually that’s enhancing the level of happiness they have.”
Masami, who has travelled through many countries all the way from Asia to Europe, also tells her life story, specifically about her travels: “There are people who don’t know if they can eat next week, who gave me food, and they’re really happy, while there are people who have a lot of things, but still think they don’t have enough and live in a sense of insecurity. Having that in mind, I started to create home businesses 8 to 9 years ago. I thought, when I started a business and living in one country after finishing travelling around – would I just run a business and do it for the sake of making a living, or would I want to do something beyond the business I run?”
“Naturally I took the other side, and so we had a social mission of having a company which has a benefit to its customers, beyond the direct trade. So we always envisioned that we wanted to share the profit we make through the business, and because I came from a food background, we started a food business, with the big vision of feeding and educating street children. Especially in countries like India, because that’s where we travelled, and in Asia. The beginning was very challenging, had lots of ups and downs, and the business started to expand. And then as we expanded, I discovered that the more we expanded, the more cost we had. We had to employ more people, we had to buy new equipment, we had to move, so continuously as a start up, for a number of years since we started, we realised that if we had the intention of doing something big, then we kind of had to try to get there and on the journey eventually a lot of hard things happen which make things more and more difficult. And I thought, well because our intention is to make contributions all the time through what we do, so how can we not make it simple and easy? So what happened was the shift towards Buy1GIVE1.”
BuyIGIVE1 is based on the concept of transaction-based giving, where the concept is about “sharing the joy of giving”. It is a global movement bringing together businesses, charities, and consumers in a completely new system. Founded in Australia, it is now headquartered in Singapore.
Every time someone buys something from a business which is part of Buy1GIVE1, there is a specific contribution made to a worthy cause, selected by the business itself, automatically.
Masami is also the author of two motivational books, namely “JOY – The Gift of Acceptance, Trust and Love” and “One – Sharing the Joy of Giving.” She also made a short movie called “ONE – Finding What We Are Looking For.”.
Voize.my is a partner of the Live & Inspire Weekend.
