2016_02_02_CIE_nicaragua

"Social responsibility is just a fad, a propaganda strategy". This is an expression I have heard a lot in recent years. And, I must confess, I also used to relate the term social responsibility to corporate advertising strategies. However, due to the importance that the subject was acquiring in Nicaragua, I decided to open my mind and learn about it. As I studied it, I understood that poverty eradication, environmental conservation and respect for human rights, among others, are all interrelated issues.

From that moment on, I understood what social responsibility is, what its purpose and importance are. So much so that I ended up dedicating myself to it as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) coordinator at a sugar mill in the city of San Rafael del Sur, 60 kilometers from the capital of my country, Nicaragua. My role at business is to guarantee the implementation of the CSR strategy by designing, coordinating and monitoring activities for its implementation and the development of good practices, thus ensuring the correct behavior of business towards its different stakeholders. This strategy has three lines of work: social investment -support for neighboring communities-, development human -addressed to the internal public- and environmental conservation.

Taking into account that social responsibility is the "responsibility of an organization for the impacts that its decisions and activities have on society and the environment", the knowledge I acquired while studying the Master in Biodiversity, Landscapes and Sustainable management at the University of Navarra was of great importance in the process of formulating the Strategy. Partly because this training taught me that respect for each place -both its natural and human environment- cannot be achieved without knowing its reality, from an environmental and social point of view. In other words, preventive, corrective or compensatory measures to deal with the potential environmental and social impacts of a business -which are part of the CSR strategy- are established precisely on the basis of a socioeconomic and environmental diagnosis of the area. And that is what I did.

I also learned that one aspect of social responsibility, core topic , is to involve all stakeholders in the strategy, interacting with each other and with civil society, with public administration employees and with other companies, so that the decisions taken are based on the broadest possible consensus. To ensure that decisions are "socially based", so as to better guarantee their sustainability and durability.

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