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The news can seem overwhelming​​ right now, but there is light—a resurgence of kindness

November 12, 2020
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The news can seem overwhelmingly bad right now, but amongst it all, there is light–a resurgence of kindness.

Over and over again, we are proving that we can be kind and want to help each other. We are finding creative ways to connect and show that we don't want to let others suffer. If Members of Parliament (MP) vote against giving free school meals, we mobilize to feed children who would go hungry. If the Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) needs PPE, we get together and make it happen. If our neighbors need help, we jump into action and organize ourselves into teams to get things done.

Our desire to be kind is part of our very DNA as a species. We are healthier and happier when we can be kind. Kindness makes us physically healthier. Kindness induces a shedload of chemicals that we really need to combat ill-health and the effects of stress and aging.

Experiencing kindness and giving kindness, both release oxytocin – the compassion hormone. Oxytocin reduces inflammation in the cardiovascular system. Kindness also mops up free radicals that lead to oxidative stress while turning down the amygdala – our fight or flight center, calming anxiety.

It's also needed to help stem cells to regenerate. Kindness helps us heal physically and psychologically.

Kindness leads to increases in dopamine and serotonin – these are messengers for positive emotions – that help reduce anxiety and combat depression. It also releases endorphins – a natural high. It's healthy for us to be kind and healthy for those we are kind to.

Kindness can improve our mental and physical health and bring us together, especially in lockdown. When we appear to be more divided than ever, kindness can help us find common ground because it is universal. Kindness exists in every culture, every faith, and every language.

In South Africa, kindness is 'ubuntu', a philosophy made famous by Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, but it's much older than they are. Ubuntu is an idea that's common to many of the cultures of southern Africa (in Zimbabwe, it's called 'unhu', and in Malawi, it's 'umunthu'). It translates as 'I am because we are'. It is a philosophy that encourages the sharing of resources and taking care of each other.

In Japan, Omotenashi is often poorly translated as hospitality, but it's more than that. It means anticipating the needs of others.

Last year, I went to Naples, where kindness is culturally embedded through 'caffe sospeso'… the suspended coffee. If you go into a coffee shop, you can buy a sospeso, which can then be 'claimed' later in the day by someone who needs it. This 'pay it forward' culture is growing, with many businesses offering customers the opportunity to pay for someone else to receive – to give to someone they have never met.

To be kind.

Kindness is what connected us into tribes and helped us to build societies. It's even in our word for children – kinder, and family, kin and those like us, kindred. We might try and intellectualize it by using words such as 'compassion' and 'empathy,' but there is nothing quite as simple and easily understood as kindness. It's not cute and soft; it is powerful and transformative.

We love it so much that we are finding ways to use the tools at our fingertips to generate kindness.

Despite the toxicity that exists within social media, we are finding new ways to get together and be kind online. We have mobilized to help each other, we have raised money to help others, we have provided physical and mental health support to each other, we have reached out and shared stories. We have shown our humanity online.

People want to make their lives kinder worldwide, be kinder to themselves and others, build kinder communities, kinder workplaces, and have more kindness in public life. They are finding new ways to use the power of the internet and social media to help them to do so. Kind actions go viral fast – as Captain Tom and Marcus Rashford have shown us.

Kindness can be a powerfully positive 'contagion'.

This moment led a group of volunteers at Teamkind to create an online kindness festival, #kindfest2020, from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. GMT. Most of the team have never met in person. They have only seen each other on video calls. Many have used their skills, their networks, social media, and online platforms to build a festival of kindness for world kindness day and play their part in a "kindness revolution" by exploring how we can build kinder lives, kinder workplaces, kinder politics, and build kindness into our research and teaching.

Taking place online on International Day of Kindness Nov.13, over 100 of the world's leading thinkers, inspirational speakers, and performers are donating their time for free to celebrate and discuss personal, professional, and political kindness and offer practical solutions to put kindness at the core of building back a better and fairer post-pandemic world. People such as Captain Sir Tom Moore, Baroness Warsi, Billy Bragg, Prof Alice Roberts, Dr. Radha Modgil, Jimmy Wales, Julia Bradbury, Luciana Berger, Suley raPoet, Frank Turner, Stuart Lawrence, Saba Salman and many more.

So when the news feels dark and depressing, and we feel angry and hopeless, we can choose to muster and direct our energy into being kinder to ourselves, to those around us and, using the power of online connections – to those we may never meet.

100% of the profits go straight to The Blurt Foundation, Young Minds, and The Captain Tom Foundation.

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Can tech help female entrepreneurs break the bias?

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.