Botho Treats On Upliftment And Power Through Mindfulness Practices

We have been afforded an important opportunity in the pandemic of 2020 – that of self-reflection and paying closer attention to our well-being. 3 years after this much-needed pause, Beth McGroarty of the Global Wellness Institute reports that in 2023 there will be a radical shift in consumer attitudes toward wellness, with attitudes becoming more reflective and holistic, focusing on collective rather than individual well-being. Ahead of this curve, Botho Treats treats holistic well-being as a critical component of modern living. This organisation is led by Mindfulness Coach and Practitioner, Mother K. Masire who sees great value in providing holistic wellness solutions. This means that the solutions don’t focus on one component of well-being but look to cover the mind, body, and soul.

By Lorraine Kinnear

Mother K Masire on the journey to mindfulness practice

Mother K. Masire is the Founder of Botho Treats, an organisation wholly committed to using mindfulness practice to uplift and empower communities in an especially crisis-filled world. Prior to joining the wellness practice, she had a corporate career in both executive and non-executive roles, mainly in Personnel Development and Media Advisory (specialising in Marketing & Advertising). She has also worked for different media mediums; two commercial radio stations and a television production consultancy company, a publishing company that produced weekly newspapers lifestyle magazines, and a personnel consultancy organisation.

Throughout her work in these different roles, one thing would always stand out with the people she interacted with, and that was that most people don’t take enough time to center themselves and become more aware of how they go about life. Botho Treats was then birthed out of wanting to guide individuals to be more mindful.

Mindfulness at the Core

At its core, the organisation operates using mindfulness-based approaches such as tapping into the power of breathing better, gaining more awareness of one’s surroundings, and journaling to mention a few.

“Our services use mindfulness-based approaches to empower our clients to make better well-being deci- sions, apply them to their everyday lives and cultivate more alignment, and well-being. We provide various mindfulness-based programs for corporates, institutions, groups, and individuals,” says Masire.

“Botho Treats appreciates and acknowledges the unique design and fingerprint of each individual or organisation and thus the custom design of our each service offering. The programs that clients can benefit from include, retreats, mindfulness programs and engagements, corporate wellbeing activities, zen lounges, team building as well as mental wellbeing awareness talks. While these programs are in place at the moment, the organisation continues to use feedback from clients to find new ways to come up with impactful solutions.

Mindfulness as a Driver for Social Impact with the youth Holistic wellness organisations are typically social-good drivers and in Botswana, Botho Treats has committed time to young people. Botho Treats provides mentorship programs and believes that since the state of mind influences one's life it would be beneficial to share skills that will help young people navigate life grounded.

Since launching Botho Treats, Masire has worked with transitional youth and creatives, asserting, “I have a soft spot for the two demographics as I, in my youth struggled with finding my footing in adulthood and wished that there was someone older (not family), loving and easygoing to guide me through this transition from being a child to being an adult.”

“It was a very confusing time; trying to figure myself out while society had an expectation of me which wasn’t always easy to decipher. From this experience, I then decided to be that person I needed when I was transitioning. I focus on the creatives because I feel they are misunderstood and this can make navigating life while pursuing their talents very challenging,” Masire adds.

To further increase the impact on our communities, especially those who would benefit the most, Botho Treats hosts Retreats throughout the year being mindful of other activities happening in the country. For instance, knowing how strenuous a period year-end is, the organisation normally hosts the Pause & Breathe Retreat aimed at helping individuals re-center themselves during the rush of the period’s activities.

Masire adds, “We also plan on hosting our first Silent Retreat in September 2023. This is a way of helping individuals find peace in being left alone with their thoughts – to a great level silence is a great starting point of more awareness which trickles down to leading a more mindful life.”

Furthermore Botho Treats is working on a prod- uct that medical insurances and corporates can utilise to support their members and employees. The product's aim is to provide emotional and mental reprieve, especially in the work context. According to a World Health Organization report, half of the global workforce works in the informal economy, which lacks regulatory protection for health and safety. These workers usually work in hazardous conditions, work long hours, have little or no access to social or financial protections, and face discrimination, all of which can have a negative impact on their mental health. Botho Treats, therefore, approached this area with a sense of urgency.

From the Grassroots…

Using the Founder's “One Child One Tree” Movement to empower children with life skills is another important complement of Botho Treats. The One Child One Tree Movement is an initiative aimed at encouraging tree planting and using lessons from trees to teach children life skills. The trees are sourced through donations. This movement also ignites the idea and habit of nurturing living things in our surroundings. Understanding how life works from an early age, being equipped with traits of “Botho” which means that one navigates life with humility and respect for fellow human beings. This is a great way to set children off well into the rest of their lives and Botho Treats prides itself in this imitative.

Cultivating Mindfulness into the Future

As a way of ensuring long-lasting impact, Botho Treats is committed to being consistent in curating the quarterly Soul Catch-up Day Retreat. The retreat is aimed at holding space for those whose souls feel weary, and exhausted and need time to reconnect with themselves. “It's time to listen to our souls and pay attention to emotions under the surface and remember what really matters,” stresses Masire.

“Botho Treats’ intention is to have organic growth and our desire is to fulfill our mission of assisting individuals to live happy, healthy, and meaningful lives. Over and above this, we also intend on being more inclusive by developing an array of facilities and services such as a spa, an emotional and mental well-being center, a botanical garden, a creativity hub, yoga, dance & meditation outdoor studio, sound healing center and a variety of educational resources that will be offered including web-based instruction books, seminars, and retreats. The longterm goal is that Botho Treats will become a center of holistic healing, education, creativity, spiritual, and recreational activity,” says Masire.

Botswana ESG and Sustainable Finance Forum

2023 To Unpack Investment Strategies For Sustainable Value Creation

Climate change issues have become part of the agenda within the context of investors, governments, and business in Africa. For a very long time, until only about a few years back, these conversations had been seen as "nice-tohaves" but not necessarily something that needed to top the agenda across various institutions and organisations. The dialogue is now rapidly changing, and the world is experiencing an inevitable Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) paradigm shift as external pressure for businesses and governments to operate sustainably mounts.

Government officials, institutional investors, corporate executives, environment and sustainability professionals, fund & asset managers, and many other key stakeholders in the investment and green finance professionals, will convene at Avani Gaborone Resort & Casino, on the 12th and 13th of April 2023, for the Inaugural Botswana ESG and Sustainable Finance Forum 2023. The Forum will be under the theme, "Green-Growth Paradigm for Botswana Investment Strategies for Sustainable Value Creation", and the first-of-its-kind gathering in Botswana, will be hosted by the Botswana office of the MNCapital Group.

MNCapital Group is a South Africa-headquartered, Africa-focused institutional investment communications and research firm that has become synonymous with hosting high-end conferences and trainings that are specifically curated to highlight investment opportunities within the African continent and assist institutional funds to function optimally through industry-focused training programmes. This Group have now invested in ESG in Botswana, a country-specific programme primarily developed for institutional investors and big business to come together and engage in implementable conversations that will lead to the formulation of strategies that will see the country thrive economically whilst adopting non-financial factors like the planet and people into their investment decisions.

The ESG in Africa Forum Journey

On the 5th of August 2011, MNCapital hosted the first-ever ESG Conference in Africa, under the theme, "Africa ESG Integration Forum". The Forum was held at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in Sandton, South Africa. The conference which focused on "Integrating ESG Investment Strategies in Portfolio Management. An Africa Perspective," was designed to "present an opportunity for Africa's finance and investment community to meet, share, network, and discuss ESG issues in the African context.

The keynote speaker at this inaugural ESG conference in Africa, John Oliphant, then Head of Investments and Actuarial at the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) - South Africa, said,

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the MNCapital Group, Michael Ndinisa, said, "I am impressed by the overwhelming response and support we have received for this Forum. It's now evident that the industry is ready to implement this longterm, forward-looking investment strategy." At the time, the ESG conversations were around capital markets and were not a huge concern, if any at all, for the corporate executives.

The question that ESG has been embedded into the investment decision processes and corporate strategy is, can the corporate sector turn ESG into an asset? MNCapital believes that ESG is no longer just a consideration, but rather a business imperative, and it should play an integral part in both the corporate strategy as well as the institutional investment decision making. Furthermore, ESG being a business imperative, should be viewed as a new way of doing business, meaning that businesses should continue making profits, and investors should continue getting healthy returns on their investments, only that this time around, there is a deliberate focus on the social impact and sustainability.

Commenting on the evolution of the ESG Conversations in Africa, as championed by the MNCapital Group, the General Manager of MNCapital Botswana Rre Gobopaone Gasietsiwe said, "Since 2011, the Africa ESG Forum has evolved, and with be on its 9th installment in Cape Town, following the success of our post-Covid-19 pandemic offering of the same event in Mauritius last year (2022), and due to the growing need for stakeholder engagements around the ESG issues, MNCapital Group has decided to intensify its efforts of creating such platforms for these critical conversations, and hence instead of having just one ESG conference that is open to the entire continent, we bring it down to the specific requirements of selected countries. And that is exactly how the Botswana ESG and Sustainable Forum has been born, and so far, the responses we are getting from the stakeholders is proof of the importance of this critical project of healing our planet, taking care of our community members, all this while we continue to build our economy."

ESG Integration is Fast Becoming Mission-Critical

The year 2020, without a doubt, changed life as we know it and ushered the world into what we have come to know as "the new normal", a world where governments, investment professionals, the corporate world, members of the communities, are in their respective ways, navigating through this bold, new world, and trying to make the best out of it.

The undeniable fact about the post-pandemic world is that environmental and social responsibility conversations have become topical. Public, private and civil sectors have come under immense pressure to take centre-stage in protecting the environment, as well as improving the quality of life for the members of their immediate communities, alongside realising their financial goals. These three points of focus now must go together.

Why Should the Corporate Sector Integrate ESG Factors?

The corporate world is at the brink of a major turning point as corporate sustainability, championed by the ESG frameworks, is fast becoming a critical business imperative. The management teams across various industries will continue to find themselves in a position where they are compelled by investors, shareholders, customers, and other stakeholders to strike a balance between financial and non-financial factors, and then marry these into their companies' strategic corporate objectives. Because of this external pressure, some corporate executives might choose to dismiss the whole ESG agenda as merely an item on the list that they need to check off for the sake of appearing to be ESG compliant. This kind of approach would be amiss because the integration of ESG into the core values and principles of any business will avail value-creation opportunities.

ESG Integration into the Institutional Investor Decision-Making

The Covid-19 wave hit while the world, particularly the emerging markets were making headway with the tech-oriented fourth industrial revolution (4IR), with the talks of digitisation of most of the things that were previously done manually, like for example, introducing paperless banking technologies within banking and payments space, the rise of digital music and on-demand "entertainment"; paperless offices, where one could sign-off a document digitally and send it back to the relevant recipient without having to print it out, physically sign it, scan it and send back via email or fax machines. This was all done with the key benefits being, 'efficiency' and 'convenience'. The pandemic, as it forced people to find "socially-safe" ways of going about their day-to-day businesses and activities, brought to the fore ESG issues, and it has since become pivotal for governments, institutional investors and the corporate sector alike, to place a special focus on the triple bottom-line (3BL), "Planet, People, and Profits".

This might sound like an easy approach simply place as much focus and resources on environmental and social issues as you do on Return on Investment (RoI), however, due to various factors involved in the process of making ESG a key investment decision-making criterion, there is a need for continued intensive trainings and stakeholder engagements as regulations evolve.

The Inaugural Botswana ESG and Sustainable Finance Forum 2023

The Inaugural Botswana ESG and Sustainable Finance Forum 2023 is designed as a meeting platform for the entire institutional and ESG ecosystem where participants will engage on best practices on ESG and formulate implementable strategies with the goal of aligning, planet, people and profits. MNCapital Group has invited participants form two key groups, namely key players and stakeholders of Banking and Finance as well as The Corporate Sector. Some highlighted key speakers to include, Adrian Bertrand, Co-Founder and Practice Head of Six Capitals ESG Advisory, Andrey Bogdanov, Chief Executive Officer of Insight Risk, Gomolemo Lolo Madikgetla, Founder of Ungwa Africa, Thapelo Tsheole, Chief Executive Officer of Botswana Stock Exchange and many more.

This conference promises to unlock co-creation of solutionist collaboration between players in the private, public and civil sectors. As the African proverb goes, “If one wants to go fast, go alone and if one wants to go farther then go with others” MNCapital through its programmes continue to invest in the creation of strong mechanisms in the ESG space. Through meaningful dialogue and dissection of ESG matters by different key players, this event could inspire and influence a more purposeful approach to the implementation of sustainable value creation.