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The Responsible Supply Chain Show is a must-hear podcast for insights and strategies on building ethics and sustainability into global supply chains. Each episode delves into the challenges and opportunities businesses face as they strive to create more responsible, transparent, and environmentally friendly supply chains. From innovative sourcing and trade disruptions to reducing carbon footprints and combating modern slavery, we explore the critical issues that define the future of global commerce.
Welcome to the responsible supply chain show where we explore the world of responsible sourcing and resilient supply chains. I'm your host, Justin Dillon. In each episode, we dive into real stories from some of the world's best business, government, and thought leaders protecting people, planet, and profits. Let's get it. Well, happy 2026.
Justin:What a year we had last week. We have just started off, and I'm I'm doing something different this year. You know, everyone does their goals, and they set their goals. And I'm not doing any goals this year. No personal goals at least.
Justin:I think they're great, but I'm feeling like I want something a little bit more high level kind of like a theme than goals. That's that's what I'm going so going for. So this year, I'm going for just a word. One word that captures what I want this year, and that word for me is multiply. That's very nondescript.
Justin:No one's gonna ask me if I achieve that the end of this next year. But no. And to be honest, in every area of my life, business, health, relationships, personal growth, mhmm, I want wherever I am at today to multiply. So check-in here this time next year and see if I multiply. In today's episode, I speak with Zanthi Sharf, an American writer and social entrepreneur, cofounder of the Fuller Project, which does investigative journalism into ethical issues connected to supply chains.
Justin:Relevant. She's also a managing director at Freedom Fund, a nonprofit organization, one of my favorites, that supports frontline projects promoting peace and justice. We'll be discussing her recent article, recent as in last year, in Time Magazine about the use of child labor in the battery industry. So I recorded this interview several months ago, and it's still relevant, but the article that we're gonna be referencing here today in Time Magazine came out late last year. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Justin:But I bring up the timing of when I recorded this because in the discussion or interview, I threw a question at Xanthi kinda towards the end that might sound like it's connected to recent events in Venezuela. I assure you that I did not see, that coming when I recorded this, and the question was really just designed to inspire some ideas. So little did I know something similar to what I brought up, in this, in this interview, just happened. So to be clear, it's not it's not anything political. It was just some creative thinking, but there you go.
Justin:That's the craziness of podcast. But this episode is about the power of storytelling to not just change the world, but to improve business. I'm not the only one interested in how storytelling changes business. Wall Street Journal, recently reported that the number of job listings on LinkedIn that included the title storyteller doubled over the year leading up to the end of last year. Meanwhile, the terms storyteller or storytelling were said 469 times on earnings call through the end of last year, up from 359 times during the year before.
Justin:What does that mean? It means that as human beings, we are more moved by stories than statistics. We connect to the stories of others. And the work that Xanthi and her organization does by surfacing stories connected to supply chains is incredibly important. So let's get into my discussion with Xanthi Sharf.
Justin:Xanthi, good to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining. Where am I finding you today?
Xanthe:I'm in DC. I'm glad to be on the podcast with you, Justin.
Justin:I've wanted to talk with you for a while. Ever since I met you in San Francisco and I kinda got to learn a little bit about your story, At that time, you had just helped put a story out. Remind me, what was the story?
Xanthe:Yeah, so Fuller Project is the newsroom that I co founded ten years ago now. It's all journalism focused on women, and we partner with large news outlets news outlets around the world. This was a story about sugarcane workers in India.
Justin:Yep.
Xanthe:It was published in the New York Times.
Justin:Yep.
Xanthe:And actually, it was a multi part series that won a bunch of awards, but more importantly, actually had a really big impact terms of getting sugar listed from certain areas in India as being known to be made with forced labor in US Government accounts. And basically it's a group of workers who the women are forced to get hysterectomies in order to be able to continue working in those sugar plantations. It was an issue that had been known, but this went into great detail, got it back on the radar, and there's been continued reporting on it on it since. Yeah.
Justin:Well, that's a way to start a podcast. We're gonna get into that. The reason I asked you on the podcast is for for because of a recent article you just did in time that is connected to child mining, connected to minerals that are directly connected to clean energy and all the rest of us. We're gonna we're gonna talk about that because there's some timing, and I want our listeners to learn about the telling of stories and how journalists tell stories the way that they do and, more importantly, when they tell these stories. And there is just a strategy behind investigative journalism that I don't think a lot of people understand what's going on behind the scenes.
Justin:What got you into telling stories like the ones that you do at Fuller and and and now, what you're doing at Freedom Fund?
Xanthe:Thank you, Justin. I was living in Turkey and reporting on the Syrian border and in Istanbul back in 2014. And while I was there, spent a lot of time with the Turkish women who were fighting against the democratic overreaches of Erdogan Mhmm. Still ongoing, and the Syrian refugees who were two thirds women and children and were finding ways to build their lives and build community and that sort of thing. And so while I was there, I started the Fuller Project, which aimed to address the dearth in coverage about women, and at that time, especially coverage about women in war.
Xanthe:Because being in Turkey, with the war going on in Syria, going back into Iraq, it was so evident how much, when there's a big conflict, women get left out of the story. And it was more true ten years ago than today. Mhmm. There's been much more attention, especially after Me Too and major newsrooms really understanding that there needs to be a bigger focus and the reporters who wanna do that work getting more attention. It is still true, though.
Xanthe:Women are still really left out. And women, and then of course there's lots of intersecting layers, but the headline really is the more power you have, the more likely you are to be in the news. The less power you have, the less likely you are to be in the news. So it was meant to turn that on its head. That's how I got interested.
Xanthe:I wanted these stories. You know, it started out with a lot of war stories, then it became stories about health and stories about work and about climate, you know, all areas of our lives.
Justin:We remember stories far more than we remember statistics. Right? Are you thinking about who's gonna be listening to the story when you're writing the story or when you're chasing down the story? Are you already thinking about the audience and maybe what you're trying to achieve with the story?
Xanthe:Yes. In thinking for ten years about how to get stories into mainstream major outlets, we had to think about that question nonstop.
Justin:Yeah.
Xanthe:There are a million stories we wanna tell, but we have to make a decision about whether we wanna tell the story for reasons of heart or reasons of art or because we wanna be strategic. And so it has always been my interest to tell stories in at least a somewhat strategic way Mhmm. Because I wanna tell stories that are gonna make a difference. And to make a difference, I have to have some audience. Mhmm.
Xanthe:It can be an audience that cares. Right? It it doesn't have to be sort of gen pop. Right? But Right.
Xanthe:You know, we have to have some level of audience. Now so Fuller Project's model, I was I was running it, and it's been a year and a half since since I was the CEO. But I really wanted our stories to be in big, big outlets where a lot of people would read them and also sort of infiltrate those outfits. You know? So you would read that article and not think, oh, it's a story about women.
Xanthe:You would just think, oh, I'm reading the New York Times, and then you would learn about these issues. In order to do that, you have to put yourself into the mindset of The US audience. And news is dominated by an assumption of a US audience and UK audience to a lesser extent. Right? But the biggest you know, the New York Times, I mean, soon after comes the Guardian, but New York Times being the biggest, they're assuming a New York audience, right?
Xanthe:So that's where if we're going to report about supply chain issues from a strategic perspective, we have to connect it back to a consumer. That's how you get the story on the front page. Unfortunately there are a lot of issues that don't have anything to do with U. S. Consumers.
Xanthe:It's now, in today's world, almost impossible. If we don't have a connection to people's lives in some way or another, we can't make that connection. So hard today to go through the headlines.
Justin:Yeah. Zanthe, I I I think most people would be surprised to hear that your story in the New York Times and your following story in time wasn't written by people at the New York Times or Time Magazine, that there was some other layer behind it.
Xanthe:Yeah. Well, so let's go to that New York Times story since we gave that example already. That story, so we it was a it was a partnership, actually. So, Mega Rajiopalan is the New York Times reporter who was reporting that story, and she worked with a freelancer who worked with the Fuller Project, Kadri Insaman, and Matt Apusa, editor of the New York Times, our editor Maher Sattar. This was a big collaboration, and our editor in chief as well.
Xanthe:So there were a lot of people involved in this. New York Times, obviously, you know, Floor Project is a small, very small entity compared to New York Times.
Justin:And it's a nonprofit. Correct?
Xanthe:Yeah. It's not small nonprofit. So New York Times had many times more resources going into this when you think about, like, the publishing, the platforming, the photograph, all of that. But even at the New York Times, they are also story hunters. They are looking for stories.
Xanthe:They want the best stories. And so a small investigative nonprofit, if it's proven itself in terms of quality and methods, If it has a story if you have a story, the story is king. People ask all the time, and I'm happy to talk a little bit more, how do I get my issue?
Justin:Right. That's what
Xanthe:usually wanna know. Okay. Great. How do I get into these outfits? And I'm happy to talk a little bit more about that because I think that's important.
Justin:What I think for the audiences listening here, a lot of the roles that exist today around responsible sourcing exist because of stories that have surfaced over the last fifteen years that have started with nonprofits bringing them to and really just bringing these realities and these truths to life. And it starts to create a responsibility. And the companies that we work with every day are working very, very hard to reverse engineer transparency in their supply chains where it never existed before for because it didn't need to. So we're in a very exciting time in the world where the stories that are surfacing from the world is creating this awareness. Sometimes it's slow.
Justin:Sometimes it's it's it's fast. And we're seeing, you know, some some real, real revolutionary type of transparency that's happening in businesses. But I think the role of media today is very, very different, than it was ten years ago. Getting a story out ten years ago, CNN meant something ten years ago. I think there's more people listening to and watching an average TikTok that a teenager at my son's school is putting out than is watching Anderson Cooper.
Justin:Like, it is very, very hard to get. Now the level of attention and all the rest of it, I get it's just I'll I'll never forget being at an event at the Mercedes Dome with a CNN person, there, and they're like, more people are in this dome than is watching CNN right now. Like, that was him saying it. He's the one. I'm like, I'm not throwing you his point being, the world's changing.
Justin:Right? Like and CNN's been trying to play and that's just CNN. You pick any pick any news outlet. Like, how do you get these important stories out today? And are you seeing any new ways to get stories out?
Xanthe:This is how, you know, you said your time and movements, people think strategically. Right? So who is the audience? What do you want them to do? What do you want them to hear?
Xanthe:So if that's how you're thinking, it doesn't matter how big the audience is necessarily, but it matters who they are. And, you know, I think there there are still huge audiences reading these mainstay news outlets. And there are also important and influential audiences reading more niche outlets too. Right? It could be that you want to be in an industry news outlet where you know that that's going to reach scientists or whoever it is that you're trying to reach.
Xanthe:So, you know, I think TikTok and other places where we can reach more viral audiences or more social audiences, that's more important for if you care about issues from a social or grassroots sort of an outrage kind of idea. But if you want to reach policymakers, the New York Times still reaches policymakers. Think there's the other layer, the other more unspoken layer of how partisan news is now. News enjoys much less trust, and also, more people are avoiding news. When we say policymakers are reading the New York Times, it's less likely that policymakers across the aisle are going to read it and leave it.
Xanthe:Is now, you know, there's a question about everything being politicized. The question of what people are going to do with it in a policy environment is much trickier than it used to be. I think, still, there's a consumer space. So there is still the space where you know this, I I can turn this question back to you. You know, companies care about their reputation.
Xanthe:Negative press is still an issue. Right? Mhmm. So if something is exposed in a supply chain, companies are still going to respond. And I think that's that is one of the important things that journalists are counting on.
Xanthe:Right?
Justin:Yes.
Xanthe:That if I expose this company, they're gonna have to do something because, you know, their customers are gonna demand it at a certain point.
Justin:I used to think that. I actually think that companies care far more than they're given credit to. Ben Skinner, who was a guest on this show, he would say this to companies. Whether or not you're interested in transparency, transparency is interested in you, which is kind of like a gotcha coming at you, gonna get you type of thing. I I think companies are very interested in transparency, especially now for lots of reasons.
Justin:I I've yet to meet a CEO or c suite that is okay with any of the things that have been talked about in any of your articles or Ben's articles or Sarathcar's.
Xanthe:Of course. Right. Yeah.
Justin:It's where where they where companies struggle is how do I fix it? That is the number one challenge that companies connect with is how is that connected to our business? Right. How do I how do I I have immense compassion. Not just compassion, but, like, a a practical compassion so much so that I started a business to try to fix it of how do we reverse engineer connecting all of our humanity so that these people that are running the supply chains can fix the things that are at the bottom of the supply chains?
Xanthe:Right.
Justin:And it because there's a lot that's broken. And and so I think there's enormous care that happens out there. And sometimes you do need the bully pulpit of the media, and you do need what government can do from a regulatory standpoint. And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. I believe we probably have enough regulation around supply chains.
Justin:It needs to be a little bit more clear. It that it does need to have we've had lots of people on here talking about supply chain regulations. It does need enforcement, but companies have they understand. They know what they need to do. And trust me, there are some companies that are just gonna do the minimum, and you're just that's you're not gonna change.
Justin:They'll they're followers, not leaders, but there's plenty of companies that are leading by example. I just I don't know where I don't know how to better help them other than helping them dig deeper into their supply chains and getting them that kind of intelligence. You're talking about an issue that I actually do believe is is is purple because you can write about it in time, and you can talk about it in New York Times, and Siddharth Kara can talk about it on Joe Rogan, and it'd be one of the highest performing Joe Rogan episodes, which is the the mining of minerals that go into batteries. So maybe you can tell us, just for the audience, a little bit more about the problem that Yeah. You wrote about in in time.
Xanthe:Yeah. The article is about children working in mines that are producing minerals like cobalt, which are going into the batteries that we're using in electric vehicles. So it generally, more broadly than children, right, there's this huge demand for the minerals that are being used for the transition to renewable and clean energy. Right? Yeah.
Xanthe:Whether it's electric vehicles or solar panels. Right? And in that chain of supply, there's forced labor and there's also child labor.
Justin:Mhmm.
Xanthe:And it's the pace, it's the pressure that is driving more activity and I would assume with so much pressure and pace that incentives and efforts to do good may fall to the wayside more so because there's also a huge incentive to produce more and produce it So this article draws attention to the children in particular. And the reason why I focus on the children, although the data is not great, and although the number of people who are not children in forced labor is much more than the children, is because to your point, everybody cares about children. So it is a way to bring some attention to the issue broadly, with a focus on children, saying also. It's actually It's more than the thing is that the children are connected to the adults, because when the adults have decent wage, the children don't work. When moms and dads can work, they do not want their kids next to them in the mine.
Xanthe:They want their kids in the school just like every other parent everywhere. Right? We want our kids in school, happy, fed, clothed. Like, we don't want them scraping away at rocks. That's that's not what it means to be a parent.
Xanthe:So this article talks about kids, and largely focuses on the DRC
Justin:Yeah.
Xanthe:Where at least half of the world's cobalt is coming out of the DRC. Right? And that issue of kids is documented, although the numbers are not super clear. So maybe it's 25,000, maybe it's 40,000, maybe it's much more. It's really hard to know.
Xanthe:We have a little bit better clarity that there are a million kids around the world working in Minds inquiries. We have a little bit more clarity that this is happening in the DRC in ASM, artisanal and small And minds, those minds produce the lion's share of the jobs. That's where the kids are, that's where most of the women are
Justin:Smaller mines, not the big publicly Yes. Traded Yeah, these
Xanthe:smaller mines. So it's really, you know, there are issues in the larger mines that may be producing more of the material that's going to the global supply chain. Maybe. There are issues there as well with forced labor and with the other labor violations that kind of fall along a spectrum. Right?
Xanthe:So there are issues there too. But it's in these smaller mines where there are kids in DRC. I also talked about in the article Madagascar where kids are mining for mica. In Nigeria, there are kids mining, and it's really unclear how many kids. And just anecdotally, one of the things I heard is it's really dangerous in these areas.
Xanthe:It's really hard to get reports
Justin:Yeah.
Xanthe:Because it's
Justin:a I've been in these areas. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I think most companies, most governments are aware of this of this problem there.
Justin:But but part of what I think that the the for lack of a better term, the shine or the perspective that you put on it is Mhmm. Hey. We're making a lot of batteries. There's this this is this ship has left like we are we are a battery centric economy now. Yeah.
Justin:And this isn't we haven't fixed this problem. We've known about it for well over fifteen years, if not more if not more. It's been a you know, for for most people. It doesn't seem like we've made a lot of we, the collective, have made a lot of progress on.
Xanthe:Yeah. I mean, I I think, you know, you headed this off with the idea of solutions, and I like where you're coming from. Right? It was there what's the point of just pointing all of this out if we don't have solutions to point towards? And what the article talks about is that engaging with women is a solution.
Xanthe:It's engaging, talking to, listening to women is a solution that has been overlooked. So that I think there is some learning around that and PACT is a nonprofit that works communities, where there's mining works in Madagascar, etcetera. And they do work with women and they do have some experience with this. It sounds really obvious, but it doesn't mean that it's happening. So one of the things that, you know, I talk to women, I talk to a woman who calls herself Ameri's boss.
Xanthe:Her name is Annie Mugay. She's in the DRC, and she has a movement which is women buying mines and then creating financing for other women so they can also buy mines so that they can create conditions in which women can come to work safely. So what tends to happen is that the women have less safe jobs and lower paying jobs, they can experience sexual harassment or other issues at work. But according to Annie, when the women have good jobs and even better if they can own the mine themselves, they're gonna have the money. They're gonna keep the kids in school.
Xanthe:Yeah. So, you know, her perspective is, hey, these mines are a blessing. I mean, not everyone feels the way about mines. I think there are communities that would just like to send the mining companies packing. But in her case, she's saying, you know, we want these mines, but we're not having these kids in the mines.
Xanthe:We do not want the kids in mines. We wanna work with the companies. We wanna we wanna have control. We wanna make sure women have safe conditions. And there's a way you know, that there's ways to do that.
Justin:Yeah. That is a solution or that is a path that I that resonates with me. I don't know how it works for companies, but I've I've I've been to GOMA, and I've spent time interviewing these women, many of whom have faced systemic rape and are living in displaced persons camps and literally living on hell on earth. Like, living on top of lava rock. That's their home with a and and they are just badasses.
Justin:I mean, they could run any company and just crush returns. I'm not kidding. They could crush it. Their focus, this just I I they showed me their business. Like, I'm you wanna like, when you say invest in women and, that, I don't know what how to make that more resounding, like, yes.
Justin:But, like, I I've I've seen it's palpable. I don't know. I think when people hear that, they go, oh, yeah. More charity. But it's important that people understand that this is this is not about this is about something beyond charity and giving money.
Justin:I don't think people get that when they hear that, Santhi.
Xanthe:Yeah. No.
Justin:How I think that's do we make people understand that?
Xanthe:Yeah. I mean, we could have mountains of evidence. Oh, we do have mountains of evidence.
Justin:Oh, yeah. Okay.
Xanthe:So, no. I I think, again, it is obvious, but it doesn't mean that it's happening. So, again, in, Nigeria, I talked to the woman named Imabong Sunuzi, who is the head of an association of women against trafficking of children in mines. So one of the things she said is just so obvious. She's like, look, the mining industry is dominated by men, trade unions led by men, right?
Xanthe:The trade unions for the formal sector, etcetera. And so if there are required consultations with the community, which let's hope that there are, right? That's obviously a best practice. So assuming the trade union and the company sit down and maybe they bring in an elder from the community, that's probably a man, okay? Not obvious that the women are going to be consulted.
Xanthe:So what would you miss if you're not consulting the women? You know, engagement. This requires continued conversation and sort of joint ownership so that everybody can prosper. Mhmm. Things can get better over time.
Xanthe:You know, we can have these kinds of relationships. Yeah.
Justin:If you could have waved a wand when you wrote your Time article about clean energy and child labor, if if something could happen in the world could've happened in the world or can still happen in the world because of that article, what would it be?
Xanthe:Whether it's, you know, The US or countries in Europe, it's really important. These minerals are really important for our economy. So I think I would like for people in positions of power, whether it's governments or companies
Justin:Or both.
Xanthe:To yeah. Or both together and and unions themselves. Like, let's better let's better listen to and use women to come up with solutions.
Justin:Mhmm. Really out there question for you. These are great stories. They're important stories, and they resonate with every human being. Have you guys tried taking these stories to the Trump administration?
Xanthe:So that is that's not my role or the role of freedom fund.
Justin:I know. I Here's here's where I'm going. Here's where I'm going. You don't have to answer that. You don't have to.
Justin:I'm just throwing it out there. Here's what I'm saying. There's lot of deals going around right now. I mean, we're in we're in a deal era. Okay?
Justin:Between cut there's mineral deals. There's a look. If there's ever a time for there to be pressure on the DRC to get their shit together, this is it. Because this is like, this goes back a hundred plus years. Like, this is this is companies are going in.
Justin:There's middlemen. There's I mean, there there's it it's a you just read Siddharth Carr's book. Like, this all the work we're doing to investigative journalism and nonprofits, it's incredibly important work, but something needs to happen systemic to make this stop. And I've been I've seen it. Like, the gangs, all of it.
Justin:And I'm just saying, stranger things have happened to get these stories in front and to push on that. I mean, I I I get it, but I'm like, you know, somebody, you know, in DC, you know a lot of people, y'all should get some stories over there, you know, just down on Pennsylvania Avenue and see if you can get something going because stranger things have happened, you know?
Xanthe:Well, I will say, like, in place like TIME, the benefit of which is that it can be read by a general audience. I do think, you know, in in our world, there are a lot of organizations, each one playing a role. So the role of Freedom Fund is to mainly what we do is fund frontline actors. So in countries with high prevalence of forced labor, we are getting we're raising as much as we can and getting as much as we can to an ecosystem of actors. One of the things with this article that I did have the opportunity to do was to highlight one of our grantees, RAID, which is a corporate watchdog in the DRC.
Xanthe:I was able to speak with Anike Wodenberg, who informed me more about this issue and CAJJ, which is a legal aid group. Together they brought a handful of cases in Congolese court, so five cases actually. Using the laws of the DRC, including the right to unionize, so where people have been blocked from unionizing, just decent conditions, healthcare, paid leave, proper pay, basic safety, things like that. I do think there are a lot of ways to make change. All of these are important.
Xanthe:But I think a lot of this is happening on the front lines too, so it's all And
Justin:it is an ecosystem, like, just as you were saying that, you're funding frontline groups in DRC to use to use local laws to take out local bad actors is actually doing a favor to upstream larger companies that they can't do themselves. Like, you're doing them a favor by by through nonprofits and local actors are removing risk from supply chains. And I think that's incredibly important for people to hear is that they shouldn't think companies shouldn't just think of nonprofits and groups like this as just out there to reveal or to out. And sometimes this is a great example, and Freedom Fund is one of my favorite organizations where because it's all about agency. It's all about it always has been.
Justin:And so the agency of the practitioners, right? It's always it's always been about cutting out the middleman. I I I I love it. But but it's just something I've never really thought of before of, like I work with companies every day, and sometimes you just think, well, government's over there, nonprofit's over there, and media's over here, and the people that run businesses are over here. But I'm always interested in that Venn, that area where everyone is working a little bit together and kind of doing each other's job for them.
Justin:And this is this is one of those examples. But speaking of stories and we'll close with this, we are living in a repeating story. You think of Congo, but we can even go DRC Congo, you go further back. There's there's always been the story of the commodity of its day, whether it was, you know, cotton and the cotton gin in eighteenth century or rubber and the automobile of the nineteenth century. And, you know, now we've got cobalt and the battery of the twenty first like, there's always been a commodity funding a new innovation or technology and exploitation tied to it.
Xanthe:Mhmm.
Justin:Same story. And we're just we're just repeating it, and we're living at such an amazing time where all these things are coming together. My hope is with the work that you're doing, the work that Freedom Fund's doing, the work that Freedom, our company's doing, and the work with the company so that we can work a little bit closer together and start to see some synergy because I've I've worked on every side of this, and I I've never seen us all closer to I've never seen there wouldn't be a podcast like this if there wasn't people working on these issues inside of companies. And that is huge progress.
Xanthe:Right.
Justin:Is there anything from where you sit and from where you work, is there any advice or guidance that you can give people who are working on supply chains inside of some of the biggest companies in the world?
Xanthe:There's so much benefit to being on the front leading edge as opposed to getting called out and being on the back foot. Right? Like, there are news reports, for example, 2019, there was a big expose, Apple, Dell, three other companies as well, where they found child labor in the supply chain that was coming into these companies. And then each of the companies is interviewed and they all say, Oh, we cut ties. We cut ties with all of these.
Xanthe:We no longer work with that supplier. There are no more children. And there was a court case. And then so these companies were in court litigating for at least five years. The other hand, is another way to do this, right?
Xanthe:And there are some examples, like there was a project that I read about, the Matusi Project in DRC, that New York University and University of did a report on. And they talked about how PACT, the NGO, worked with Congolese companies and international companies, mining and refinery and commodity companies. And altogether, they worked on a project to help formalize and regularize some of these artisanal mines. In the point that we can't separate all these things. Actually, the material from formal and informal get melded together
Justin:American tag. Yeah.
Xanthe:Knows what you're getting. Right? If you want to be on the right side of it, you can be out there helping to make these places more safe. Help it make it a safer place for women. One of the things they cited was open pit instead of tunnels.
Xanthe:Make these places safer, get the adults working, expand the number of proper work offerings for adults. Then you're on the front end and also you're expanding the market, right? You're expanding how much you can get in a proper way, in a sustainable way, in a long term way with trust. And at the same time, you're de risking, right? So I think that's what you're all about, right, Justin?
Xanthe:And I just, I think the people you talk to are advocates. Probably not everybody in the company is an advocate. Right? Not everybody's gonna be fighting for these kind of solutions. Right?
Xanthe:There are some people who who are fighting for them and some people who may be
Justin:They just don't understand yet. They just don't understand yet.
Xanthe:But having more ammunition that right. Like, this is actually a solution for everybody for everything. Being in relationship long term in a sustainable way for the community, for for the earth, that's where we wanna be.
Justin:Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. Keep keep telling stories and, bringing them here, we'll keep sharing them. Thank you so much, Sandy.
Xanthe:Thank you so much. Thanks. Take care, Justin.
Justin:This is the one thing, the part of our show where we dig into a question or a theme from the interview. One of the topics Santhi and I covered in our discussion was the idea of collaboration. Collaboration at its best is when two or more parties with very different goals come together and do something they could never do apart. And in a time of intense partisanship and might makes right and godlike claims about AI filling our feeds, it's important to remember that almost everything that has ever mattered in the world was done with collaboration, usually with two parties who don't necessarily have the exact same goals or philosophies in the world. Xanthi tells stories for government and business audiences.
Justin:Speaking truth to power is a time worn trope that sometimes produces results. But choosing to speak truth with power, with a collaboration mindset has proven results over and over. One of my favorite collaboration happened in the early two thousands between Bono, singer for one of the biggest rock and roll bands in history, U2, an outspoken activist, and then president of The United States, George W. Bush, who at the time was a wartime president. Bono was always known for speaking truth to power, but at this time, he was beginning to develop his collaboration muscle, so to speak.
Justin:Bono brought the plight of the AIDS crisis in Africa to President Bush, a man who was clearly preoccupied with a post nine eleven America and so called weapons of mass destruction. Africa did not remotely fit on his agenda or priority list, But it was Bono's gift of storytelling that eventually compelled the president to create PEPFAR, the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief. The two parties and the timing of that collaboration made absolutely no sense, but it went on to save over twenty five million lives and remains a large part of the president's legacy. The moral of the story is that activists, government, media, and business leaders are the perfect collaborators to build responsible supply chains that proactively protect people and planet. It's actually their differences that create the power to create change.
Justin:Thank you for listening. If you like what we're doing here, please, please, please hit subscribe. We'd appreciate it.