14,376 The Body Shop Customers Take the Pledge of Respect

By Deb Baxter - The Body Shop

The Body Shop are proud to have partnered with ANTaR again this year, a three week window of opportunity to educate and create awareness of issues effecting our Indigenous Australians. The RESPECT campaign; aiming for 20,000 of The Body Shop customers to sign the pledge for a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, resulted in a final total of 14, 376 signatures. Short of what we had hoped for, but there were so many more wonderful conversations between our staff and our customers. Conversations that opened peoples hearts and minds as to the simple steps they as individuals could take towards a more respectful Australia. I have every confidence that while we may not have reached our goal in signatures, the number of conversations exceeded our goal and we should never understimate the power of a conversation. The following feedback came from The Body Shop Launceston and summarises beautifully what this campaign was all about.

An Indigenous Australian man entered the store and said he needed to talk to someone about our Respect Campaign. He was very emotional about the effort we were making to educate our customers about RACISM – of which he has been a victim of. He shared some of his experiences with us, shed some tears and could not thank us enough for taking the time to listen. His parting words were “together we can make a difference”. We had inspired each other, what a powerful conversation.