I wasn’t going to shout about this. I was going to be understated, quietly put it on our website and hope nobody noticed it hadn’t been there for years.
But I’ve changed my mind because I am so proud of our tiny team (there are only 7 of us!) for doggedly persisting with the (correctly) rigorous demands of the B Corp process alongside the day to day of Kalinko.
You see, Kalinko’s day to day is very distracting. The process was delayed by all sorts of complications that come from doing business in the context of a civil war.
But through all of these things, we push on with the day job: developing products, marketing, shipping, looking after our customers and being the best we can be for everybody involved.
This last part is what B Corp is about.
It assesses a company’s impact on people, the planet, and how it operates — ensuring we’re building something fair, transparent, and responsible, not just in principle but in practice.
Everybody aims to make better choices, to be aware of their impact on people and the planet, but it can be difficult to pick apart what businesses are actually doing from what they intend to do or say they are doing. B Corp is an external, unbiased, third party assessment of this.
It’s not a badge for doing things perfectly. It’s a commitment to keep doing better and to keep holding ourselves to that standard. It also means you don’t have to take our word for it that we’re doing business in the right way.
So contrary to my plan, I’m very proud to share this, not because we’re perfect (we’re definitely not), but because this feels like a hard-earned milestone.
For a tiny company working in a tricky context, this feels like a particularly big moment, and I am so grateful to my beyond-brilliant team — especially Jenny and Yadanar — for getting us here.
