Corporate Social Responsibility

There are many places in the world that have regular “load shedding,” or rolling blackouts. It’s a fact of daily life.

When I travel with my wife and in-laws to India, we stay in a small townhouse in Nashik, Maharashtra. Load shedding is as much a part of our daily planning as what we need to get at market. It effects shower schedules (water is heated by an individual, portable “geyser” that runs on electricity), which cascades into breakfast schedules, which cascades into when we can leave the house, which cascades into when we’ll be able to meet with a visiting relative, which cascades into where we need to be for lunch (the main meal of the day), which inevitably bumps into the next scheduled load shedding.

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PR blunders are almost always due to a bad decision upstream, not the reaction to them. You could say DPS’s recent decision to offer a southern style lunch of fried chicken and collard greens in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad decision. You could say a lot worse.

They said it was well intentioned so let’s give them that. Looking at this with a light most favorable, how do you think it possibly could have gone down? Maybe I’m naive, but I’m having a hard time imagining there wasn’t at least one person who raised a concern.

Don’t you think that someone – anyone – just had to have wondered aloud “I wonder if this might come across as stereotyping?” Why didn’t anyone listen to this voice?

The mother who brought the menu to our attention called this “a teaching moment.” Indeed. As a starting place, before DPS tackles cultural sensitivity issues which at this point seem depressingly out of their reach, I suggest DPS should learn a basic public relations principle:

When in doubt – when there’s a sliver of a doubt – don’t do it. Just don’t.

Did DPS even weigh an alternative? If they did, what were they afraid of? Bad press as a result of not offering a special menu in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

We were waiting in a Newmont conference room on site at the Ahafo mine. On the agenda: a briefing from Newmont’s General Manager in Ahafo Jay Bastian. He’s going to try and tell us what it’s like to run a place like this. The pressure for profitable production amid the wildly unpredictability that is Africa.

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It’s a strange concept to get your head around. What could a mining company—a gold mining company—possibly teach anyone about sustainability?

If you want some gold today, you don’t settle in a quaint mountain town in the Rockies filled with scrappy boot strappers singing Colorado My Home Sweet Home in hopes of discovering a nice little vein you can claim.

Too many people have done that already.
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Riding the bus from the “before” site in Akeym toward the working mine in Ahafo. After meeting, hugging, and looking in the eyes of the people in the surrounding villages, there’s a lot of reflection. There are human beings here. Students are sharing experiences and stories about them.

We have new relationships, and that changes things. Discussions have shifted from theories about relocation operations to relocating people. People we now know.

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We’d just spent a day in the hot and humid forest and small villages in and around Akyem, Ghana. It’s the “before” site: Newmont is going through their stage-gate process of due diligence to determine if its worth opening a mine here.

The task is ungraspable. Items on an endless to-do list: Energy needs. Relocating multiple villages, maybe 10,000 people. Roads and access concerns. NGO buy-in. Still not sure if local Chiefs will give their approval (despite not having de facto governance, politicians and enterprises must have their buy-in). Locations of sustainable farm training facilities. Evaluation of available and competent labor. Evaluation of available and competent ex-pat labor.

Oh — and is there enough gold in the ore samples to be profitable.

What also struck me was the water needs. One Newmont engineer told me he’s struggling with a solution to re-routing rivers and streams for the water supply. You need a lot of water to mine gold. A fresh and plentiful water supply for two lakes: a clean one for the water needs of the processing operations, and another to mix with the used cyanide and sulfur dioxide in the destruction process.

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He’s a big guy. Smart. Ghanaian friendliness exemplified. A presence barefaced in its proclamation: “Challenge me? Sure. But you better bring it.” Kwasi Boateng, Social Investment Manager at the project in Akyem.

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