Companies must help fight poverty by incentivating local economy


The socially responsible market is still embryonic. In order to grow, be strong and walk by itself it must count on the support of companies, and also on specific public policy. This was the core idea of the workshop that investigated the theme “Contributions of Companies to Fighting Poverty”, held at the 2008 Ethos International Conference.

The workshop was organized by the CSR and Poverty Eradication Actions Work Group, a partnership among Avina Foundation, Banco do Brasil Foundation, Ethos Institute, ICCO, Unisol and Unitrabalho. Created in 2003, its objective is to establish a clear relationship between corporate social responsibility and poverty eradication, besides developing strategies, methodologies and paths for action.

In these five years of activity, the WG has made efforts and taken initiatives focused on employment and income generation in the Northern and Northeastern regions of Brazil, while undertaking an awareness-raising and co-responsibility work with companies, aimed at engaging them in possible integrated solutions for poverty eradication.

The first part of the workshop discussed the constraints and opportunities for transforming the local economy. Some representatives of the WG organizations presented challenges in the areas of sales, working capital, production chain governance, management, and technical support.

The challenge of lack of professionalization and technical background of solidary economy enterprises (EES) managers was commented by all speakers. “This difficulty results from wrong choices made along the Brazilian history,” says the WG coordinator, Marcus Fuchs, Avina Foundation representative for the Brazilian Southeastern region and Federal District. According to him, since the beginning of colonization, Brazil has chosen to grant human rights to part of the society, not all of it. “As a result, nowadays we don’t have as many skilled solidary enterprises to partner with companies,” he says.

Francisco Mazzeu, National director of the Unitrabalho Network, believes that this problem could be seen as an opportunity. “When the EES offer a product that does not have quality or does not meet the demand, instead of excluding it, the company could help prepare the enterprise to meet the demand.” The challenge lies in making the companies realize the opportunity to develop this new market. “As long as the EES only sell raw material, they can come out of misery, but not of poverty,” he says.

One of the advantages of the partnership among companies and EES is the reliability of the business. “Due to the own nature of the enterprise, the company ends up adopting social responsibility practices,” explains Mazzeu.

After presenting the challenges, the 74 participants in the workshop, divided into groups, developed a number of proposals to contribute to the creation of a sustainable market. Such proposals were added to the results of all the other workshops, panels and roundtables of the Conference and will be available for reference on the Ethos Institute website.

Source: Ethos Institute

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