By: Patricia Apreza, Head of Social Management of
Grupo Daabon
DAABON Group’s Social Foundation was created to
contribute to the economic development of the communities located in the
areas
of influence of the business units that make up the vast majority of the
company’s
work force. It focuses on improving the quality of education, promoting
microenterprise (through education) and providing training and resources
for
self-employment in these communities.
The organisation invests its resources to ensure young
boys and girls can receive an education to help them face the
difficulties of
inclusion in dire economic conditions, worsened by the pandemic, through
two projects
‘Jovenes Más Emprendedores’ & ‘Emprende Más’. These
projects
are run through public educational institutions in Santa Marta and were
designed to create the necessary conditions for the implementation of
Law 1014
of the Ministry of National Education of Colombia, the objective of
which is to
promote the emergence of an entrepreneurial mentality, from the early
stages of
school education.
In the execution of both projects the emphasis has
been to prepare schools through the redesign of the Institutional
Educational
Plan to the training of teachers. This makes entrepreneurship a
transversal element
of the curriculum; that is to say, that the entrepreneurial culture is
fomented
from the teaching of all subjects and not in isolation, as it is in most
public
state schools. In a second phase, support is offered to students in the
last years
of high school so that business plans are formulated with teacher
assistance.
The initiative links the entire educational community.
It is led by the school’s headmaster with the encouraged participation
of
parents, who support the students so they can transform their ideas into
realistic business plans. Parallel to the learning in formal educational
and newly
introduced entrepreneurship topics, training and awareness spaces are
provided to
cover emotional intelligence, self-determination, goal setting, life
projects
and empowerment.
So far, the initiatives have been developed in seven
educational institutions, reaching a population of eight thousand
benefited
students. Much of this population is made up of low-income adolescents;
many of
them inhabitants of suburbs facing complex social and economic
difficulties.
Entrepreneurship constitutes an alternative to the limited access to
higher
education that many of these young people suffer from; either due to
limited
economic family income or due to deficiencies in secondary education.
Entrepreneurship and productive inclusion
In addition to promoting entrepreneurship as an
alternative to overcome poverty, DAABON Group’s Social Foundation has
supported
the creation of productive units, mainly composed of women, through
technical
and business training for self-employment, the granting of microcredits
and the
provision of equipment. These projects have benefited many of the
families of our
workers in the areas of influence of our companies.
One example of the results of these productive units is
the Natural Soaps microenterprise, which is a small start-up run
by
twelve women from the El Libano suburb (a sector of Santa Marta located
near our
own soap manufacturing facility, Caribbean Ecosaps) that manufactures
soap from
the shavings derived from palm oil. For the execution of this project
international resources were secured from the ACDI/VOCA Corporation, an
entity
that operates projects under the North American Cooperation Agency
(USAID).
Natural Soaps
was designed
with the Alliances for Reconciliation Program (PAR) in mind. The PAR is
an
organization created to strengthen the post-conflict peace objectives
that
Colombian society has set for itself. This project therefore not only
targeted
a key issue in overcoming poverty, but also helps bring about the
creation of peaceful
living conditions in our local communities.