Originally published in the Unashamedly Ethical newsletter, June 2025.
“I strive to commit to collaborate with my peers to impact our community and nation.”
The first nine commitments are, in large part, about the individual. How I speak. How I treat my family. How I work, lead and give.
The tenth commitment changes the direction of the whole list. It takes everything that has come before and asks: what happens when people who hold these values start working together?
Where personal ethics runs out
Personal integrity is essential. Nothing else in this series works without it.
But personal integrity on its own has limits. One honest official in a compromised department can be isolated and worn down. One ethical business in a corrupt supply chain can be outbid. One person who speaks up in a silent workplace can be easily dismissed.
The tenth commitment recognises that lasting change, the kind that shifts cultures and systems, almost always comes from people of principle standing together.
Ubuntu in practice
In South Africa, we have a word for this. Ubuntu reminds us that we belong to one another: that my dignity is bound up with yours, and that we become fully human through our relationships with others.
Applied to ethics, Ubuntu means that my integrity makes room for yours. When I hold the line, it becomes a little easier for you to hold it too. When we hold it together, it becomes very difficult to move.
That is why Unashamedly Ethical is a movement rather than a club of individuals. Our signatories are not simply people who have made private promises. They are people who have chosen to stand alongside others making the same promises.
Collaboration with consequences
This commitment asks for collaboration that actually changes something in our communities and our nation.
In 2025, during South Africa’s G20 presidency, UE joined the Values 20 (V20) movement, working alongside civil society partners and thought leaders to ensure that values such as Ubuntu, dignity, equity and ethical governance were part of the recommendations put to G20 leaders.
That is one expression of this commitment. Most expressions are far closer to home: business owners in one town agreeing that none of them will pay bribes to win municipal work; parents and teachers working together to keep values at the centre of a school; colleagues across departments supporting one another when someone raises a concern.
Who are you standing with?
The question this commitment leaves us with is not only “What should I do?” It is “Who can I do it with?”
Who are the people in your workplace, community or industry who share your values? What could you change together that none of you could change alone?
Ethics starts with me. But it grows when we stand together.
Add your name to a growing global movement of people choosing ethics together. Sign the Ethical Commitment at unashamedlyethical.com/commitment.
Yours in ethics,
Ilene Power