Today I spoke to another amazing woman, Hasina Kharbhih. She looks like any other charming young woman from India, who talks about her achievements with great simplicity as if she had set up just another NGO. In fact, she is a great innovator who over the last ten years has weaved a web of cooperation between people and organisations who did not understand each other, let alone work together, to help young victims of trafficking.

She founded and heads the Impulse NGO Network and is one of the Women Forum’s Rising Talents. A management graduate from a good university in India, Hasina decided to defy expectations of a successful career in business to found an NGO which started off by helping rural women in the Indian state of Meghalaya gain a livelihood producing handicrafts. Through close contact with rural communities she saw the increasing numbers of young women and children who fell victims of trafficking and forced labour. This prompted her to focus on this larger challenge, and to persuade local government, the police, the media and local communities to work with her to help these young boys and girls. Now she is running a home centre, she trains the police, educates other NGOs and has built up a network of 11 centres in her state to help victims of trafficking.

She has managed her NGO network with the efficiency and systemic view of the best businesses, measuring results and ready to restructure and innovate to improve effectiveness.

Hasina has received enormous recognition from her work on the part of the international community. She is advising the Anti Human Trafficking Unit of the United Nations and has represented India as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador for Positive Living, among others.

She talks with great passion about the need for NGOs to take a holistic view of the problem of trafficking and work together among themselves and with governments and other institutions. She will make this plea to the larger NGOs who are active in this field, and judging by how many she has been able to persuade so far, I have no doubt she will succeed.

Tensie Whelan from the Rainforest Alliance sees a paradigm shift in the making. Until now businesses have maintained a mentality of bottom line versus sustainability. Now, some businesses are looking at reinventing their technologies and processes to improve the bottom line while also addressing the environmental concerns of society and individuals. Tensie Whelan calls it the revolution of design.

She says this is happening because of the influx of a young generation of CEOs who are more environmentally aware, of companies becoming more international and their brand valuable but vulnerable, and of governments not always effective so that NGOs have turned to businesses.

The examples of L’Oreal and Renault show how sustainability can be one of the foundations of business performance. Alice de Brauer from Renault believes measurement of the impact of a sustainable business is crucial. It is essential to get the financial community – so far a laggard in this process – see the business value of sustainability. It is also essential for consumers to see the value proposition of a sustainable product.

Making a business sustainable can bring potential, from cost reductions to a stronger brand and a differentiation advantage. It can also create new markets and motivate employees. But to be successful it needs to look at the entire value chain, and it must develop effective metrics to measure and communicate progress to consumers, investors and employees.

So perhaps it is not so useful any more to talk about corporate social responsibility, which focuses on business obligations instead of opportunities. We should rather talk about a revolution of design, where innovation within and outside companies is accelerated to change products and processes. In this environment, organisations which can anticipate trends and address unspoken social and consumer demands first can gain tremendous advantage while also attracting the best talent. This is a much more effective way to talk about the role sustainability can play in a business. It puts innovation and business opportunities centre stage, which is where they belong.

If you spend a few minutes with Antonia and Claudia, you will not want to leave them until you have heard the whole story! Not because they are from Colombia and Mexico and their story telling puts you under spell in the best Latin American fashion. Not only, at least. It’s because they are two very inspiring women and I want to share how their stories touched me.

Antonia Sanin and Claudia Garza are finalists of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards — the winners will be announced tonight. Being finalists has helped them a lot by giving them the confidence to pursue their dreams. Not that self-doubt has stopped them on their way to become innovative entrepreneurs so far!

They have developed two absolutely new business ideas which respond to a big need in Latin America, if not everywhere else: giving every child and young person the opportunity to take out the best of themselves. Is there a mission more important than that, I was thinking as I was listening to them.

Claudia Garza is an inspiring teacher who has worked for a number of years giving vocational guidance to kids and their families in her town in northern Mexico. Dropping out of universities is a huge problem in Mexico, with up to 400 million dollars wasted every year in students who never graduate. But it’s an even bigger problem for the student’s self-esteem and for the whole family which invested in the wrong career. Claudia turned this into a business. She developed a testing model to help kids decide their future independently from pressures from their parents or society. She boasts an impressive record of success and is now planning to franchise her company into other parts of the country.

Antonia Sanin has started an educational business which organises workshops for young children in Bogota. The idea is to show the world to children who may never get to travel out of Colombia. “I enjoyed seeing the world when I was small and kids should also get out of their little bubbles”, she says. It’s pure global fun, by the sound of it. After three months of setting up her business, she is also working on developing interactive multi-media tools for children and teaching aids for parents.

It’s a spell. Since meeting them I have not stopped thinking about my own dreams and how I can go about realising them… If Claudia and Antonia make the same impact on the children and young persons they will encounter in their businesses, Mexico and Colombia will be better places! And perhaps the grown-ups who meet them on the way like me will become better persons also…

Emilie Goodall is a match-maker, but of an unusual type. At New Philanthropy Capital, she guides corporations and wealthy individuals in their search for the ideal NGO to support. Getting this match right is crucial to ensure that money given to charities does make a difference to people. She is one of 20 Rising Talents awarded by JPMorgan at the Women Forum 2007.

“It is difficult for donors to fund small organisations because large charities have more resources to get themselves known than small ones. We must have a better flow of information about which NGOs are achieving results”.

She believes that NGOs can learn from the business world, as much as time-poor wealthy individuals can learn from working with charities. She talks of many of her friends who agonise over what to do for society, but many never get round to doing anything. This sounds so familiar! But organisations at the interface between the NGO and the business world can take would-be volunteers by the hand and help them put some of their business skills to a good cause.

Emilie has so far focused on very important problems affecting young people in the UK – child abuse, school disaffection, truancy and exclusion – and measured the impact of different types of interventions.

She finds it inspiring to work with so many different players, from the tiny NGO to the millionaire. She sees a new trend of charitable giving among young individuals who have made their first million and want to donate some to NGOs, but who also want to know how the money is spent.

Emilie is passionate about what she does and her passion is infective! I left our meeting convinced that if we get to understand better the impact NGOs make, and if NGOs take whatever practice from the business world can be useful to be more effective, a lot more can be achieved.

Do women have a special role to play in making economic development more sustainable? There is some evidence that women-led companies are faster at embracing the challenges of acting sustainably. Business writer Alison Maitland thinks so, and says that two out of the three companies first to sign up to the Aspen principles have a female CEO.

Herman Mulder from the World Business Council on Sustainable Development believes businesses increasingly want to show they are committed to sustainability. The next step for leading businesses is to assess their long-term impact on society, the environment and people.

Consumers can make sustainable choices as more and more green products are offered on the market. But latest research from the UK shows consumers feel they need guidance from governments and businesses to make their choices. Also many women with children cannot afford the sustainably sourced products which are often more expensive.

There is a new trend which is merging network communities enabled by the web with the sustainability movement. Social networks and communities expert Susan Kish said she was intrigued by a new online community called Do the Green Thing. The idea is to make “going green” fun and easy for consumers. This holds great potential in raising awareness and helping consumers in their choices.

Women cannot take the moral high ground on sustainability issues. Some women and some men care about sustainability. But a more diverse business leadership with a higher number of women at the top can broaden the debate on sustainability and help companies question themselves more on their long-term impact on society and the environment.

Like in all gatherings, some of the most interesting discussions happened behind the scenes, or rather in a suffused tone over lunch. One of the interesting chats your ears on the ground picked up was about the very core issue of the conference – diversity policy in corporations, or why so few women get into company boards.

A few untold truths emerged at a table of European and US female managers from a number of European multinationals. First, they all agreed a convincing business case for gender diversity has to be presented to the (male) senior management. Only a business case can motivate change, and not fairness arguments. Second, many companies, especially those with low women representation, are pondering what to do to attract more diverse talent. The long-sighted ones have tasked their women employees attending the Forum to come back with an actions plan, which is an interesting approach of bottom-up ideas generation. Other companies have put procedures and diversity teams in place to drive change top-down, with substantial budgets. So far, no surprises.

More surprising was the fact that many of these female managers were not sure the top (male) ranks of the company were really sold on the idea of the business value of diversity. It is all up to how the CEO sees the issue, said one. One manager even said she will bring back ideas from the forum to her top executives, but she will not mention gender diversity as part of those discussions. The company’s top management does not see the value of this debate on gender diversity, she said.

More cynically, or realistically perhaps in some cases, one senior woman manager said that she thought there is very little appetite for women board members within all-men boards. Women board members would challenge the way things are done, and once you let one woman in, a few more would follow, and then what happens? All the women managers at that table noticed that their company boards had members from all corners of the globe, but no single woman. What a shame that European shareholders haven’t noticed the research from diversity consultancy Catalyst. This shows exactly the opposite, that women in top management perform better than all-men driven companies. If this is not a business case, what is?

Why have women entrepreneurs, managers, civil society leaders, academics and artists from all over the world come to Dauville to meet for three days in a conference centre? Talking to the participants as they queue up for their badges shows a universe of women leaders who deeply believe in the value of this event for them personally and for their organisations.

They are here to find inspiration and share experiences with their peers from all corners of the world. Elizabeth Pastore-Reiss from the consultancy Ethicity sums it up saying the Forum provides a global vision on sustainability built on women’s concern about what kind of world future generations will inherit from us. Elene Chatillon, a young consultant at McKinsey, is here to meet amazing women and participate in a strong debate on trust in business and society. For Florence Lenne from Aeroports de Paris, the Forum creates a space for reflection and exchange, networking and even making new friends.

The Forum as an opportunity to network with inspiring women is a key motivation for the participants. They come here to gain energy, ideas and new relationships and hope this will help them change their organisations to the advantage of other women as well as men. Some of them are senior managers who have been charged by their organisations with the responsibility of improving talent through diversity. Erika Pulings leads talent management and diversity policies at Dexia. She is here to share best practices with other leading organisations on how to improve diversity and attract talent. This is important for all businesses, but in the financial sector in particular. Yolanda Conyers from Lenovo also believes in the importance of winning diverse talent for her organisation. For Lenovo, sponsoring the conference is an opportunity to reinforce its commitment to diversity and networking with women leaders who share the same vision.

For many of the participants, this is the first year they attend the Forum. This shows how a long way the Forum has gone to establish its reputation as a source of inspiration and ideas for women leaders from all over the world. On its first day, the atmosphere of the event is filled with energy, confidence and interest to learn from each other. It is the women leaders who create this atmosphere and they want to carry it with them and bring it out into the world on leaving Deauville.