Product Description

Change Activists make things happen - quickly and effectively. The tools of activism can be used by everyone to effect rapid change for themselves and their companies. This book shows you how to use activist tools in your working life to get big results, fast. And how success, profit and principles are mutually achievable – so you can have a job and give a damn.   The second edition tackles the "lack of trust" issue post Enron, Andersen etc. The cover of dirty business has been blown - stakeholder change activists are watching more closely so business leaders need to listen. Change Activist financial advice is expanded particularly how the pension crisis means change activism is needed to take responsibility for your own financial future. The rise of cause-related marketing is further explored showing why businesses need to show Change Activist awareness to get ahead on the 'milk round' - according to KPMG corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the second most important thing to graduates. Also see how Anita Roddick, Julia Middleton and other campaigners viewed and used the Change Activist message.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #299335 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review

"A self-help book with a difference" Big Issue

She Magazine, October 2006
Carmel McConnell featured as Inspiring Woman of the month.

From the Publisher
Every copy of this book that is bought helps feed hungry children! All of the author’s royalties from Change Activist, and an additional royalty from the publisher, go to Magic Breakfast – a child poverty charitable project founded by the author. Whilst writing Change Activist, Carmel discovered that for a staggering 1 in 4 inner city London schoolchildren, the only proper hot meal they received was at school. Many children arrive at school in the morning without having had anything to eat, and too hungry to learn. True to the Change Activist message, Carmel decided to do something about this, and founded Magic Breakfast with the aim of delivering nutritious breakfasts to primary schools, so that any child who otherwise would arrive hungry, can be fed (whether or not they can afford to pay for the breakfast). Now operating in three London boroughs, and hoping to expand rapidly in 2004, Magic Breakfast is delivery bagels and cereals to primary schools in need, with the support of Bagel Factory and Pearson. By buying a copy of Change Activist, you will be directly feeding hungry children – and giving them the chance of a decent start in life.Please encourage friends and family to also buy a copy of Change Activist – it will feed their mind and feed a child too. Thanks for your support in ending child poverty!

Customer Reviews

Change Activist - Make Big Things Happen Fast
HEAD, HEART AND HAND -
This is really what Change Activist is all about - uniting these three important ingredients in everything you do. Sounds so simple and yet very few of us are actually able to carry it out in the many aspects that make up our lives.

This book is the most magnificent guide of how to make things happen - explaining that there are no limits, really, if we truly believe in something.

Hence, 'Change Activist' is not as the title might suggest on one single subject, isolated to a single area of life and work. Rather it is a philosophy for life, an attitude to life and everything we do living our lives on a daily basis. It is about making the impossible (or what we perceive as being impossible) possible. A possibility if we really want it.

It serves as a reminder to all of us that it is never too late or too impossible to change the way things are if we really want to. A reminder of the fact that we can all make a contribution, however small or big, towards a fairer and more humanistic world and way of life.

It is an inspiration to the ones amongst us who believe that certain things ought to change, and yet feel that we do not quite have the courage or confidence, neither the tools to take action.

Ms McConnell has a writing style that has so much integrity that not for one minute are you left in doubt that this woman means what she says, she is serious about everything she talks about and it is evidenced in the examples given in the book that she lives by the principles that she 'preaches' - quite unlike, I am sure, many other personal development book authors in the market. Her sense and use of humour throughout further proves that here is someone who has learned a few life lessons and yet she maintains a very healthy distance to herself.

This book contains a power that goes beyond words, and it can lead us to a better and more fulfilling way of leading our lives with a conscious and confidence to make a difference.

Throughout there are specific examples and practices and clear keys that show us how to discover for ourselves the change activist within us. It has a power to awaken presence and consciousness in us.

'Change Activist' is a must-read for anyone looking for a way to take action, a new take on life, a take on the rebel within us that needs to be let out and do something to make that all important difference - using our head, heart and hand.

Could Carmel McConnell be our answer to Oprah?
This is a great self-help book. I have finished a course of study in a new area after having been a lawyer for too many years. I am now trying to find a job and have had a few setbacks recently. I had reached the stage of wondering whether I had made a big mistake to give up my salary to find something more satisfying to do. I had bought this book for my husband (he still hasn't read it) but decided to have a look at it myself. As a result I now have a revived sense of enthusiasm for job hunting plus some ideas on how to do it more effectively. More importantly I have realised that it is not "mad" to want to make changes and to challenge the status quo. I was once told by one of my bosses that I was too idealistic. This book has helped me to see that he was not idealistic enough. If more partners in law firms had read Carmel McConnell's book I might still be a lawyer!

I enjoyed the bright colour of the cover, the difference in print size and type and the easily digestible chunks of wisdom. The exercises are practical-often self-help tasks are so daunting that I give up half-way through. These are manageable but still thought-provoking.

I'm so enthused I'm going to look up the web links listed at the back of the book. That's a first for me.

Everything orange is cool - this book included
Let work be a great thing - this book tells you how. Operate with integrity, in other words all parts of you together at once, rather than "dis-integration". Carmel's book makes working for a corporation sound like operating as an underground revolutionary. Because it is. Also the cartoons in here are micro-works of comic genius. And did anyone else notice that the body shop on Oxford Street gave away its profits on Monday? I like it.