Athena’s Pledges

Upholding human rights is at the heart of why we do what we do, and we are committed to delivering the best to our clients who work to bring social change and impact to marginalized communities in Asia and beyond.

Our expertise and human rights interests include:

• Women’s and girl’s rights and empowerment
• Gender equality
• Global and public health
• Environmental sustainability, and
• LBGTQIA+ rights

These are even more important to us when they intersect with communities and individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Our work ethics and ethos are guided by feminist principles – equality, equity, justice, transparency, and humanity, and we seek to work with clients who are committed to enacting societal change in these areas.

The founders of Athena Communications & Research are committed to upholding the highest standards of conduct in both their personal and professional lives.

We will not work with ethically-questionable organizations or individuals, and we will not partake in activities that go against our values of transparency, justice and humanity. Corruption is a no-no, so bribes will not work on us.

We also cannot work with clients with a track record of violating human rights, or who profess problematic views such as transphobia, homophobia, sexism or racism, among others.

We strive to be professional, transparent and honest about our pricing, remuneration, and processes with our clients and associates.

Societies are highly inequitable, and in many spaces, lack diversity. An equitable world will be one that comprises individuals from all strata of society, which includes people from a diversity of ethnicities and backgrounds. 

Marginalized groups such as the disabled, queer, indigenous, women, minority ethnicities, and those from a low socioeconomic status (SES) background are often left out of decision-making processes, and often, they lack the ability to have their voices heard. They also lack representation in many facets of life, especially in the media. 

As a media company, Athena preferentially works with a diversity of people, especially those who are lower SES, disabled, queer, women and of minority ethnicities. We include them in all processes, from conceptualization of strategies and projects, to decision making, to implementation.

And we are committed to remunerating our associates in a transparent, fair and equitable manner.

As a small business, we work in a lean way that seeks to not just reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact, but which also helps us keep costs low. 

We are a fully digital consultancy, so we keep our operations as online as possible. This means we prefer to utilize technology to conduct meetings, communicate, and deliver work to our clients. In this day and age of enhanced digital communication, the need for in-person meetups is drastically reduced.

A primarily-online form of communications with our associates and clients helps all parties reduce their carbon footprint from transportation, on top of saving time and associated travel costs.

While it’s inevitable that some materials need to be printed, we strive to reduce the use of materials such as paper and other plastic materials as much as we can.