The Social Responsibility Program has undertaken a large number of highly-innovative and geographically diverse projects. About half of these projects have already been completed. Some of the regional highlights are presented below.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa's development struggles are well-known and widely publicized. For its part, the Social Responsibility Program seeks various opportunities to be more engaged in the region. To date, most of the projects have been in the extractives, agroforestry and tourism sectors. This work generally focused on supporting IFC clients in developing stakeholder and community related activities and undertaking analytical work to help these companies operate sustainably and benefit communities around their operations.
Regional Highlights
Magadi Soda is a Kenyan ash producer, one of Kenya's oldest companies. A new expansion project to service demand for export provided the company with the opportunity to enhance its support to the local community in a more strategic and sustainable way. Social Responsibility and Magadi Soda worked with local communities to prioritize their needs and formalize a community development plan (CDP). With the CDP now being implemented, the company will be able to address the pressing needs in the community including provision of basic services such as water, health, and education. In addition to delivering tangible developmental benefits, this work will help to maintain the positive and beneficial relationship between Magadi Soda and local communities.
Pro-poor Tourism project, supported by Social Responsibility, produced a new series of booklets to help tourism companies in South Africa create linkages with the local economy by supporting pro poor tourism initiatives. The series are unique in that they offer practical guidance to tourism companies based on a vast research conducted over a 3-year period. The guidelines include "tips and tools" on how to set corporate priorities and manage internal change, build partnerships, stimulate local products, and procure from local businesses.
East Asia and the Pacific region is performing comparatively well on most poverty reduction indicators, although differences among countries and even within countries persist. Social Responsibility is concentrating its work in the region on helping IFC clients play a greater role in development of their local communities and improvement in their livelihoods. Social Responsibility also works at a more strategic corporate level to assist firms in embedding sustainability in their business operations.
Regional Highlights
Manila Water is a privatized provider of water and wastewater services to metropolitan Manila in Philippines. Social Responsibility made in-house IFC expertise available to the company first to create a corporate structure for implementing and monitoring sustainability in its operations. Social Responsibility then worked with Manila Water to prepare and publish a Sustainability Report along the lines of Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. Upon its publication in early 2005, it was the first such report released by a company in the Philippines. Read more about this in Our Stories...
Thanh Hoa Bamboo in Vietnam supports the development of a sustainable supply chain of quality bamboo to a local bamboo flooring factory currently supplying to IKEA. Principally, local farmers needed to meet the factory's demand for eco-friendly bamboo and learn best planting, growing, and harvesting techniques. The Social Responsibility program and Mekong Private Sector Development Facility partnered with the Asian Development Bank to deliver comprehensive trainings to farmers and conduct analytical work to ensure environmental sustainability of the livelihoods. The project addressed key shortfalls in the market and better positioned about 500 local farmers in the bamboo supply chain. A feasibility study is being conducted to assess replication potential in Lao PDR and Cambodia. Read more about this in Our Stories...
Favorita: The purpose of this project was to help the banana producer FavoritaFruit Company improve environmental and labor performance in its supply chain of small banana farms in Ecuador. Roughly half the bananas Favorita exports come from these independent farms, which complement the company's own plantations. Social Responsibility worked with the company to provide training courses to all of its nearly 400 suppliers in regions throughout Ecuador on over 18,000 hectares of plantations. The training courses familiarized small banana producers with current expectations of the European, North American, and Japanese marketplaces relative to good farming practices, environmental management, and social accountability. As a result, this project established a base for improvement in labor conditions for thousands of workers in the field from which the demands of markets in developed countries can be met.
