Ecojust Managing Unit

Managing a program in a professional way requires transparency, probity and accountability, qualities which cannot be fulfilled without a diligent staff and the support of experts. This is why programs require funding to retain and reward financially those who work for LCEJ and to cover other expenses. If cost-effective management were the mandate dictating its operational decisions, LCEJ could not function effectively to achieve its goals. This is why one of the major tasks of the Ecojust Managing Unit is fundraising.

Program implementation requires listening to low-income families and consulting with the staff and associates in order to develop focused projects. Projects aim at sustainability, however, in their initial phase, they will require seed money to be viable. If, after two years, a project does not show signs of sustainability, the project will be terminated. 

LCEJ projects do not promote leadership or empowerment but coaching and team work. Coaching is a key component for the management of projects. One of the insights of LCEJ is that low-income families must be involved in the process of generating solutions to the environmental crisis. Coaching is the best approach to bring out the best and the worst of low-income families: it is a self-discovery process for those families. Coaching is a patient listening and observing, at times critical and at times supportive, so that low-income families discover their strengths but also their limitations. Coaching is a learning experience, often a disorienting one, a discovery that in what appears to be unstructured or even counter-intuitive lies an unimagined solution. Coaching goes hand in hand with enhancing team work in societies where consumerism slowly isolates members of the community. 

The greatest obstacle to real transformations in the lifestyle of communities is emotional intelligence. Coaches must be very attentive to emotions, as emotional intelligence regulates behaviours and structure relationships. Coaches can guide and suggest solutions, but as long as low-income families do not use their emotions to promote and facilitate problem solving and creativity, solutions will not be effective. Those emotional transformations are very slow and powerful processes that must be dealt with the utmost care and attention.

Besides fundraising and developing projects, the Ecojust Managing Unit is involved with logistics. The management of projects requires effective procedures to reduce costs and enhance effectiveness. For low-income families, LCEJ must be a reliable partner who can be trusted, delivering what has been promised on time and anticipating needs. To achieve that goal, LCEJ must have excellent logistics, accurate inventory, improvising skills, and accurate awareness of its environment. 

Ecojust Managing Unit maintains a network of associates who provide the basic items LCEJ needs to perform its activities. LCEJ also runs its own centres to produce Eco-items such as Eco-Fashion Bags, Eco-Planting Bags, Eco-buttons and Eco-sponges to name the most important ones. The Mutur Eco-Sewing Centre was the first Centre managed by LCEJ, and new Centres are being created to respond to the demand for Eco-items. Those Centres must become sustainable in the future. However, LCEJ does not aim at transforming those centres into market-oriented business. And this is mainly for two reasons that will be summarized in the following way. First, low-income families are often the victims of neo-liberal capitalism and it would be paradoxical to transform our Centres into tools of discrimination and marginalization. Second, Eco-items are not produced to meet the needs or wants of customers. On the contrary, they are produced and given for free to affect the emotional intelligence of the users. This is why LCEJ is searching for an alternative to neo-liberal globalization, a form of globalization that emotionally values life-enhancing activities and relationships, rather than valuing commodities. An alternative form of globalization, bringing together insights of low-income families, scientists and philosophers, that will grow at the slow pace of natural transformations, probably unnoticed for generations, probably already at work in LCEJ activities, is the seed of hope that our members are seeking.

From fundraising to the production of coconut shell buttons, the Ecojust Managing Unit is a complex but very friendly entity. Lifestyle transformations begin with the way we work together. Creating a work style that is just, harassment-free, in contact with the rhythms of nature on a daily basis, walking side by side with our associates, is what makes us proud to be and work together. You can now turn to the description of our programs and projects and evaluate what we are doing. Your suggestions are always welcome.