Month: July 2026

AUSTIN, Texas, July 21, 2026 /3BL/ – Whole Foods Market Foundation is excited to announce over $2.2 million in funding across three transformative projects impacting more than 570,000 people in Ghana and the United States. Throughout the year, the Foundation provides funding to help its partners improve nutrition and create opportunities for financial stability. Each project is community-led and designed to create lasting impact in communities worldwide.

Together, this quarter’s grants reach more than 573,000 people: 370,000+ students connected to garden-based learning, 202,000 students gaining access to scratch-cooked school meals, and 1,200 smallholder farmers getting capital and market access for the very first time. The three investments look different on the surface, but they’re grounded in the same belief that real, lasting change in how communities grow, access, and prepare healthy food starts with the people and institutions doing the daily work. Learn more about each project below:

Chef Ann Foundation | $1,500,000

Transforming 110 Schools to Scratch-Cooked Meals for 202,000 Students

Most school cafeterias in the U.S. aren’t serving scratch-cooked meals because no one cares. They’re doing it because the system wasn’t built for anything else. Processed food, bought in bulk and reheated, became the default because of tight budgets, limited staff, and a lack of culinary training and equipment. The kids in those cafeterias spend their school years eating meals that fall short in nutrition.

Chef Ann Foundation is a long-time Foundation partner doing the hard work of changing that default, one school district at a time. Building on the Foundation’s January 2026 investments in their Salad Bars to Schools program and Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship, this $1.5 million, three-year grant goes deeper into two programs that have already shown they can drive real, lasting change.

Get Schools Cooking works with K–12 school districts from the inside out — providing hands-on training, comprehensive assessments, and practical support to make the shift from heat-and-serve to scratch-cooked meals. More than just a training program, it tackles procurement, equipment, staffing, and menus together.

The Healthy School Food Pathway Fellowship is a 13-month program for school food professionals who want to lead change in their own districts. Fellows build skills in leadership, advocacy, and culinary practice. They come out on the other side ready to transform their programs from the inside, and many go on to mentor and inspire peers across the country.

Together, these two programs will reach over 202,000 students across 110 schools in 5 districts, with 16 new Fellowship participants joining a growing national network of school food leaders, resulting in more kids sitting down to a real, scratch-cooked meal.

Life Lab | $123,280

Building the Infrastructure That Connects 370,000+ Students to Garden-Based Learning

School garden programs work best when the people running them aren’t doing it alone. Yet across the country, that’s exactly what’s happening. Garden educators work in silos, without peer connections, shared knowledge, or ongoing support that keep programs thriving. When these educators don’t have a community to learn from, even the best-resourced gardens stall out. Most importantly, the bigger opportunity of helping kids build real relationships with fresh food and healthy eating never reaches its full potential.

Life Lab, based in Santa Cruz, California, has been a Foundation partner and a leader in garden-based learning for over a decade. This $123,280 grant supports the 2026 School Garden Support Organization (SGSO) Leadership Institute, a week-long, hands-on professional development program that brings together 40 school garden professionals from 20 organizations across the country. Over the course of the week, participants visit model programs, learn from each other, and build the kind of relationships that keep going long after the program wraps through quarterly check-ins that keep the cohort connected and accountable.

The 40 people trained through this year’s Institute collectively support 80–100+ school gardens, reaching an estimated 370,000+ students every year. Beyond that, institute graduates bring what they’ve learned back to the broader SGSO Network, a community of 4,600 people representing over 2,000 organizations nationwide. That ripple effect is transformative. This grant helps build the connective tissue that lets garden-based learning, and the fresh, healthy food experiences it creates for kids, grow at scale.

True Farmer | $600,000

Growing Smallholder Income 16x in Ghana — From $0.30/Day to $5.00/Day

For smallholder farmers in rural Ghana, the path to a living income isn’t blocked by a lack of effort or ability, rather by a lack of access. Without something to put up as collateral, farmers can’t get the loans they need to grow higher-value crops. And without established buyers for their harvests, even a great growing season doesn’t translate into reliable income. The result: families, most of them headed by women, remain stuck at $0.30 a day, with no clear way forward.

True Farmer, a non-profit based in New Longoro, Ghana, was built to change that. Their RISE model — Regenerative Agroforestry, Inclusive Financing, Savings Groups, and Entrepreneurship — takes on every piece of the problem at once: giving farmers the inputs, training, financial tools, and direct market connections they need to build something sustainable.

This three-year, $600,000 grant will provide collateral-free input loans to 1,200 entry-level and landless smallholder farmers to grow herbs and spices. True Farmer will buy their harvests directly and sell to agro-processing companies, cutting out the market access gap that keeps farmers stuck in survival mode. The expected outcome says it all: daily income projected to grow from $0.30 to around $5.00. That 16x increase strengthens families, communities, and the regional food system around them.

This investment reflects the Foundation’s deep belief that financial empowerment and resilient food systems go hand in hand. When farmers have real access to capital and reliable markets, the benefits flow outward to households, neighbors, and the broader community.

Since 2005, Whole Foods Market Foundation has invested over $220 million, supporting over 18,700 partner organizations and schools in 83 countries around the world.

For more information, visit wholefoodsmarketfoundation.org/funding-announcements. 

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ABOUT WHOLE FOODS MARKET FOUNDATION

Whole Foods Market Foundation is on a mission to nourish people by advancing food security, improving nutrition and strengthening resilient food systems. The registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization is based in Austin, Texas. For more information on the Foundation’s work, visit wholefoodsmarketfoundation.org. For ongoing news and updates, follow Whole Foods Market Foundation on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Sandra Mariscal, Director of Philanthropy
Sandra.Mariscal@wholefoods.com

This month, Cascale and Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP) convened brands in Denver ahead of American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) Traceability & Sustainability Conference.

The organizations brought together members and industry stakeholders at REI’s community space, opening with a joint brands workshop. The week marked Cascale CEO Ying McGuire’s first major in-person engagement with members since stepping into the role, underscoring the organization’s continued focus on deepening relationships across the value chain.

The joint event saw 46 brand, retailer, and industry representatives attend the workshop on SLCP’s Converged Assessment Framework and the Higg Facility Social & Labor Module (CAF/FSLM) and Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD). Brand representatives from Cascale’s membership sparked strong peer discussion, giving attendees a practical look at how peer companies are putting the tools to work and reinforcing the value of the Cascale-SLCP integration.

The following two days, Cascale joined AAFA’s Traceability & Sustainability Conference, which drew 330 attendees representing brands, manufacturers, service providers, and industry stakeholders. Cascale’s manager of public affairs Gabriele Ballero joined Policy Hub director Marina Prados Espínola for a panel on the current state of EU due diligence. Ballero outlined Cascale’s approach to supporting members as regulation evolves, emphasizing that while legislation sets expectations, industry collaboration, common methodologies, and tools such as the Higg Index and Better Buying help companies operationalize due diligence consistently and at scale.

Across both events, Cascale and SLCP representatives held meetings identifying strategic touchpoints with members, prospects, and partners. The Denver visit also included networking events hosted by Retraced, Bureau Veritas/Oritain, AAFA, and the Human Rights Advocacy Program (HAP), further strengthening Cascale’s relationships across its wider ecosystem.

The week highlighted the value of continued collaboration across the industry and reinforced the importance of bringing stakeholders together to advance shared approaches to sustainability and social impact.

 

Thank you to everyone who shared their stories and videos for World Cleft Awareness Day 2026.

Smile Train is deeply moved by the incredible stories and messages shared by the global cleft community. Every contribution helped shine a light on the realities of living with a cleft and highlighted the experiences, challenges, and achievements that are often unseen. By opening up and sharing your journey, you helped raise awareness and remind others that they are not alone.

Each story was unique. Some reflected on overcoming challenges, while others celebrated milestones, shared words of encouragement, or spoke about the importance of support from family, friends, and healthcare teams. Together, these stories showed the many different ways a cleft can shape a person’s life and why greater awareness and acceptance matter.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch them yet, we encourage you to take a few moments to hear directly from the community. Every video and photo offers a personal perspective, and together they paint a powerful picture of resilience. They also remind us that behind every statistic is a person with their own experiences and aspirations.

Thank you for being part of World Cleft Awareness Day 2026. Whether you shared your own story, helped amplify someone else’s voice, or followed along and learned something new, you played a part in making this year’s campaign meaningful. Together, we’re helping build a world where everyone affected by cleft feels seen, understood, and supported.

Key Points

• Personal Safety Professional Eric Lord helps support safe operations across Marathon Petroleum’s terminals in Florida and North Carolina, the Electronic Work Permitting team, the Safe Driving team and major projects.
• Lord says safety leadership depends on staying present in the field, reinforcing proactive tools and helping employees keep hazards front of mind from task to task.
• He also emphasized the importance of audits, training, incident reviews and careful planning, including work completed during Hurricane Helene response efforts with zero injuries.

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National Safety Month offers an opportunity to highlight the people who help keep safety at the center of everything we do. Lead Personal Safety Professional Eric Lord supports safe operations by helping teams strengthen hazard awareness, reinforce safe work practices, cultivate a culture of safety and apply Marathon Petroleum’s safety standards across terminals, major projects and enterprise safety initiatives. His perspective reflects the focus, discipline and collaboration that support safe operations across the company.

Lord began his Marathon Petroleum career in 1998 as a terminal operator and moved into Safety five years later. He now supports southern midstream operations, including terminals in Florida and North Carolina, electronic work permitting, safe driving and major projects. He holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration with a specialty in accounting and a minor in finance and is a certified safety professional through the Board of Certified Safety Professionals.

Q: How would you summarize your primary responsibilities as a safety professional at Marathon?
A: My key responsibility is making sure everyone feels educated and empowered to own their own safety and looking out for others. I help ensure compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Marathon standards through auditing, training, inspections and project oversight. I also investigate incidents, develop corrective actions and share lessons learned across sites so we can prevent recurrence and keep improving.

Q: What motivates you to keep safety top of mind daily?
A: After so many years here, Marathon feels like a second family. I never want to see anything happen to one of my brothers or sisters, and that is what drives me every day to inform, educate and correct so everyone goes home safely.

Q: How do you help other employees remain focused from task to task?
A: I advocate for our behavior-based safety program because it helps drive better decisions and stronger habits. It’s a proactive, data-driven framework designed to prevent workplace incidents. Paired with our Big 3 safety questions, it keeps hazards front of mind and supports a safer way to work. I strive to stay present in the field, offering support or a sounding board whenever someone needs it.

Big 3 Questions to recognize and mitigate hazards 

Plan – What are you going to do?

• Do you have the right tools and steps to perform the job?
• Have you communicated the plan with others?

Evaluate – What could go wrong?

• What are the hazards that could cause an injury?
• Any unintended consequences of your actions?
• If something goes wrong, does everyone understand they can stop the job to reassess?

Prevent – What do we mitigate?

• What are we going to do to make sure we mitigate, prevent or eliminate any of these hazards from causing an injury?

Q: How has your role evolved as you’ve progressed in your safety career at Marathon?
A: Early on, my large territory meant a heavy focus on inspections and audits. Over time, territories realigned and the role evolved into more one-on-one conversations with employees and contractors where I’m reinforcing that safety leadership belongs to everyone, not just the safety professional.

Q: How do you use both technical safety expertise and business knowledge to manage complex risk?
A: Risk is always present in our industry. The goal is to eliminate it where possible and manage it wisely where needed and hold the line on zero injuries. That takes experience, sound judgment and listening closely to the people doing the work.

Q: Can you describe a project or situation where your safety input significantly influenced outcomes?
A: One of the efforts I’m most proud of was our response to Hurricane Helene in 2024. Teams came together to replace critical equipment and help restore fuel supply to the Tampa Bay area. By working together, maintaining strict energy-isolation practices and planning every lift carefully, we completed the work with zero injuries.

Q: What skills or personal traits are helpful for being an effective safety professional?
A: Strong safety work starts with strong people skills. You must tailor the message to the audience, be willing to listen and keep learning. In this field, there is always more to understand, and that mindset makes safety leadership stronger.

By Liz Miles

The stark images of a single home standing amid charred ruins of its neighbors are an apocalyptic memory of the Eaton and Palisades fires across Los Angeles in January 2025, 18 months ago. There was one house left standing in Malibu. Another in Altadena. One more on the westside of Los Angeles. Fewer than a dozen homes were built to resist the raging fires that devastated 40,000 acres across L.A., $30 billion worth of real estate and over $200 billion in capital losses. Insured losses were estimated at $45 billion, an indicator of many homes being uninsured or underinsured.

But how did those few houses manage to survive? And what can they teach homeowners set on rebuilding on their property in designated high-risk wildfire zones? Today, at least 44 million homes in the United States are sited in vulnerable areas – what’s called the “wildland urban interface” (WUI) – either because of homeowners’ desire to live closer to nature or because housing prices are more affordable.

Material Defense
One home in the Palisades was constructed to be fire-resistant after its owners lost their first home to wildfire in 1993. Theirs was rebuilt with steel-reinforced walls and a metal roof. Walls trimmed in cinderblock protected the seams where walls meet the ground, preventing flaming debris from blowing indoors. Notable is what’s missing from the home: eaves and roof vents which can trap heat or allow burning embers, which start fires from inside the house. Plants and brush growing near the home are cleared weekly. While all the grass and bushes in the yard were singed to nothing, the house survived where neighbors’ homes burned to the ground. Native plants, acting as natural firebreaks, can protect buildings from wildfires by singing rather than igniting, thus slowing the spread of fire.

Other homes that stood post-wildfires were largely brand new, built after 2008 California Chapter 7A rules passed, which upgraded codes to require fire-resilient features to protect structures built in wildfire prone areas. They also had vegetation-free zones around the yard, fenced off by a solid concrete perimeter wall, metal roofs with a fire-resistant underlay, and covered chimneys to prevent burning embers from slipping indoors. Some used Class A wood, which provides the highest level of fire resistance. The lone-standing home in Malibu was concrete with a fire-resistant roof and tempered double-paned windows.

Wildfire-Hardened Homes
Not all homes hardened against wildfires survive. “There are lots of examples of homes that have done everything right, but when you’re fighting millions of wind-borne embers that are flying through gusts of 70-mile per hour winds, it’s hard to keep one from going underneath your garage door,” says Alexandra Syphard, a research ecologist who studies wildfires.

The WELL for residential certification includes Fire Mitigation as a strategy for improving home safety, as the “majority of all fire injuries and fire-related deaths occur in residential buildings” and because “homes located in wildland-urban interface zones and similar areas have an increased risk of experiencing a wildfire.”

A fire suppression system may not save a home, but it will slow down a fire enough to give occupants extra time to evacuate. The key is to well-maintain such systems. One system in the Pacific Palisades with “heat and flame detectors, fire retardant, a 2,500 gallon sprinkler system to soak the property and humidify the air for an hour, and autonomy from the power grid,” slowed the fire, but didn’t save the house. Some of the sprinklers were clogged. But it was the home’s position on a canyon-edge exposed to flames racing uphill that overwhelmed the home’s extensive protective device. Where housing gets sited is a major determinant of wildfire destruction.

The Best Defense: Community Collaboration
Since wildfires are a chain reaction event, leaping quickly from one structure to the next, the most effective defense is a whole cluster of wildfire-hardened homes. A group of forward-thinking neighbors in Altadena are working together to rebuild their homes using Passivhaus methodology, in this age of climate change where droughts last longer and fire conditions are intensifying.

Homes built using Passivhaus are airtight, keeping out smoke and toxic ash, and highly insulated, which reduces the need for air conditioning and heating. It also makes maintaining high quality indoor air an imperative. Many are built all electric for health and safety reasons, omitting reliance on fossil fuels. WELL for residential also advises homeowners to minimize combustion or eliminate combustion-based products altogether from the home, as doing so significantly reduces “combustion byproducts including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter” – exposure to which can lead to negative health effects such as asthma symptoms.

Short of collaborating with neighbors on brand new rebuilds with all fire-resistant materials, there are simple low-cost steps that neighbors can decide to implement together, which can dramatically reduce their homes’ vulnerability to fire. Steady maintenance and smart strategies include:

• Closing a fireplace flue during wildfire season
• Relocating firewood at least 30 feet from the house
• Installing metal gutter guards
• Enclosing under-deck areas with metal mesh screening
• Clearing dry vegetation from property
• Replacing mulch within five feet of buildings with non-combustible dirt, stone or gravel
• Cleaning roofs, gutters, decks and the bases of walls regularly to avoid accumulating fallen leaves and other flammable materials.

An Opportunity to Strengthen
Rebuilding after widespread disasters such as the Eaton and Palisades wildfires is a slow process. Of over 22,500 homes destroyed in five of California’s most destructive wildfires between 2017 and 2020, less than 40% were rebuilt by 2025. Meanwhile, homeowners in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena who received unsatisfactory settlements from insurance companies, are selling their land to developers, who have reportedly purchased 44.6% of fire-damaged properties in these areas. For the homes that survived, there is significant smoke damage to clear as well as remediation of land strewn with debris and toxic chemicals. Eighteen months after the wildfires, renewal and rebuilding continues to be an uphill battle.

The California Wildfire Rebuilding Guide, developed by U.S. Green Building Council-California with support from Arup, contains more information for homeowners making critical decisions while rebuilding. There is also new construction using low-cost methods such as prefabricated, factory built modules that are joined into a house on site. The Altadena Prefab Showcase displayed modular homes costing just $292 to $362 per square foot compared with traditional builds that cost between $500 to $650 per square foot. Factory built modular housing also goes up on a quicker timeline, taking around 5-6 months to design and 6-8 weeks to install. Cosmic Buildings is utilizing robotic methods in its pre-fab builds that can frame a home in just 10 days and complete the build in 4-6 months. These modular builds incorporate materials and designs that improve structures’ fire resilience.

Affordable building methods combined with more resilient design and fire-hardened materials will hopefully improve upon and strengthen these communities’ structural defenses against wildfires, helping to improve long-term safety and public health in the process.

View original content here.

Originally published in GoDaddy’s 2025 Global Stakeholder Impact Report

Our employee experience is grounded in inclusivity, engagement, and belonging.

We seek individuals who will bring enthusiasm, curiosity, and a passion for what we do to their everyday work. Attracting and retaining qualified talent from a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences is a strategic priority. We intentionally create an environment where all employees can feel represented, valued for their contributions, and comfortable sharing feedback. Once here, employees are encouraged to engage and collaborate with the community around them. We regularly evaluate our processes to incorporate feedback, reduce bias, and strengthen inclusivity across our operations, where possible.

GoDaddy employees bring our inclusive culture to life by sharing their stories through videos and posts.

GoDaddy is an incredible place to kickstart or grow a career, because this isn’t just a company, it’s a community that celebrates who you are. From day one you will feel the energy from the diverse groups, ERGs, different fun activities, and challenges that make your day more exciting. You’ll have endless opportunities to learn, grow, contribute to the community, and put your ideas into action.

Diksha S. Security Engineer

Inclusive Recruitment 

As a global company, we are proud of the hiring practices that enable GoDaddy to be an employer of choice for talent. This includes showcasing our inclusive culture and principles, and reaching broad, diverse candidate groups. Our practices include:

• Talent Partnerships: Through partnerships, we invest in talent pipelines and workforce development to support hiring across our global footprint.
• Fair & Accessible Hiring Practices: We focus on reducing bias in job descriptions, supporting internal mobility through transparent role postings, and offering flexible, virtual interview experiences. In furtherance of our human-centered approach while also harnessing the power of AI, we are transparent about how we are using AI in our hiring practices, and we also provide guidelines to help candidates who choose to use AI to support their interview process. We also offer interviewer certification training focused on inclusive candidate experiences, bias mitigation, and responsible AI use. To learn more, visit our GoDaddy Careers page.
• Early-Career & Workforce Development: We invest in future talent through our global internship program and programs such as the Future of Work Summer Camp and the GoDaddy Software Engineering Bootcamp Program to broaden access to technical training and career pathways.

TEXAS CONFERENCE FOR WOMEN AND TRANSFORM 2025

GoDaddy periodically participates in conferences and industry events to strengthen brand visibility and connect with the communities in which we operate. In 2025, GoDaddy attended the Texas Conference for Women and Transform 2025, to engage with professionals of various backgrounds and reinforce GoDaddy’s commitment to community and inclusive recruitment.

Employee Engagement 

Engaging a global, hybrid workforce means fostering connection, collaboration, and a shared sense of purpose, no matter where employees work. We prioritize clear communication, meaningful growth opportunities, and an inclusive culture where employees feel valued.

We support these priorities through our employee engagement programs, including the GoDaddy Fun Fund, which enables team bonding activities that strengthen relationships, and Everyday Champions, our global recognition platform that celebrates and recognizes peer contributions.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) play an important role in fostering a workplace where all employees benefit from the opportunity to learn, grow, and succeed. ERGs are voluntary, employee-led groups open to all employees, focused on the identities, interests, and experiences that matter to our employees. They support connection, professional development, skill building, and collaboration, while advancing GoDaddy’s priorities across talent, learning, business, and community impact.

Our 11 Global ERGs:

• GD Abilities in Tech¹¹
• GD Asians in Tech
• GD Black in Tech
• GD Entrepreneurs in Tech
• GD Fitness in Tech
• GD Green¹²
• GD LatinX in Tech
• GD Next in Tech¹³
• GD United¹⁴
• GD Veterans in Tech
• GD Women in Tech

GoDaddy Entrepreneurs in Tech (GDEIT) is a community of people who think like builders and innovators. For me, it’s the perfect blend of passion and profession. In my day job I get to solve real-life problems for entrepreneurs, and through GDEIT, I help nurture that same entrepreneurial spirit within GoDaddy. It’s incredibly fulfilling to support others who are curious, scrappy, and eager to create, just like the customers we serve.

Vinod S. VP Product Management, GoDaddy Entrepreneurs in Tech Sponsor

Employee Feedback

We aim to create a workplace and culture where employees feel respected and supported to do their best work. Listening to our employees is a critical part of our talent management approach, and in 2025, 79% of our employees participated in GoDaddy Voice, our annual engagement survey.¹⁵

¹¹Focused on disability inclusion. 
¹²Focused on sustainability and environmentalism. 
¹³Focused on early career in tech employees. 
¹⁴Focused on LGBTQIA+ inclusion.

¹⁵ In 2025, GoDaddy conducted two shorter pulse surveys rather than a full census survey, as was completed in prior years. Results reflect the Q3 pulse survey.

Learn more about GoDaddy’s 2025 Global Stakeholder Impact Report.

About this Report

The GoDaddy 2025 Global Stakeholder Impact Report details our progress toward our corporate sustainability goals, strategies, and initiatives in support of our overarching purpose and values. Unless otherwise noted, this report reflects our corporate sustainability performance across our global operations covering the fiscal year period from January 1 to December 31, 2025. To demonstrate our commitment to transparent communication regarding our sustainability progress, we routinely share updates through our website and our annual reporting. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback on this report by contacting ESG@GoDaddy.com.

This report references the Global Reporting Initiative Standards, includes select Sustainability Accounting Standards Board metrics for the Internet Media and Services sector, and the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures. We also disclose our contributions and progress toward priority UN SDGs. For additional information on how we align with these frameworks and key indicators demonstrating our sustainability performance, please refer to the Frameworks & Metrics section.

About GoDaddy

GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar, helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. People come to GoDaddy to name their idea, build a website and logo, sell their products and services and accept payments. GoDaddy Airo®, the company’s AI-powered experience, makes growing a small business faster and easier by helping them to get their idea online in minutes, drive traffic and boost sales. GoDaddy’s expert guides are available 24/7 to provide assistance. To learn more about the company, visit www.GoDaddy.com.

In this bonus episode of Rethinking EHS, host Angelique Dickson (President, Inogen Alliance) is joined by Mariarosaria Galiotti and Sofiane Kessouar from Baden Consulting (Switzerland) to explore a real-world energy resilience case study involving a multinational organisation operating in Switzerland. The discussion examines how large energy consumers must navigate Swiss regulatory requirements while identifying practical opportunities to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions.

Listen Now

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube

Time Stamps

• 00:00:00 – Introduction to the Swiss energy resilience case study
• 00:01:11 – Defining large energy consumers in Switzerland
• 00:02:13 – Legal obligations for energy efficiency and emissions reduction
• 00:02:31 – Regulatory compliance pathways and available options
• 00:03:31 – Choosing the most appropriate compliance strategy
• 00:04:09 – Single-site versus multi-site considerations
• 00:04:54 – Understanding Switzerland’s cantonal structure
• 00:05:22 – Local regulations and sustainable construction leadership
• 00:05:55 – Introduction to LEED certification
• 00:06:31 – Benefits of green building standards
• 00:07:06 – Key LEED certification categories
• 00:07:39 – Lower operating costs and environmental benefits
• 00:07:57 – Reflections on local expertise and real-world case studies
• 00:08:06 – Closing remarks and the value of global collaboration

Guest Quotes

Mariarosaria Gagliotti:

“By meeting the definition of a large energy consumer, the company is obligated to take action, implementing reasonable measures to optimise energy consumption.”

Sofiane Kessouar:

“The LEED certification provides a framework for designing, constructing and operating highly efficient and cost-saving green buildings.”

For 15 years, the Connected by Safety program has demonstrated a powerful truth across Latin America: safety is more than a set of rules; it is the cornerstone of a resilient, thriving community. Created by Foro 21 and backed by grant support from the Motorola Solutions Foundation, the program unites teachers, students, first responders and local leaders around a shared belief that lasting safety begins with connection. 

The Reach of a Shared Vision

What began as a bold commitment has grown into a movement spanning eight countries, including Brazil, Chile and Argentina, reaching everyone from young students to seasoned public safety officials. 

Through nearly 1,400 interactive workshops, the program has engaged 65,000 participants and counting. Each session shares the same purpose: inclusive, hands-on education that empowers every community member to play an active role in keeping their community safe. 

The Heart of the Mission: Cultivating a Culture of Safety

Connected by Safety equips children throughout Latin America with the tools to build safer, more inclusive and more responsible cities. By bringing school communities, security agents and volunteers together, the program creates a general connection between community members and the public safety officials who serve them. The result is a generation better prepared to navigate the world around them. Children learn to recognize risk, use communication as an early warning tool, remember emergency numbers and embrace their role as engaged community members.

A Commitment to Safety

Lasting safety demands ongoing commitment, diligence, advocacy and trust between civilians and the officials who serve them. Through its steadfast support, the Motorola Solutions Foundation invests in that brighter future. 

Fifteen years in, the impact is clear and the momentum is strong. The Foundation’s commitment honors the everyday heroes and resilient communities, building a safer future for generations to come.