Rafael Nunez Aponte: Grupo Bimbo Benefiting the Society, Environment and Community

Social Commitment of Grupo Bimbo

Grupo Bimbo is a Mexican food company operating in America, Asia and Europe. The company produces more than 10,000 products through various brands.

Social responsibility. 

Grupo Bimbo understands that social responsibility becomes more relevant when done together. In this regard, the company provides best practices in the management of the organization and allowing the adherence to international standards, that give the company an opportunity to be compared in the global context and also acquires a training aspect to serve people in their professional and private lives.

In 2012, the communication platform of social responsibility Grupo Bimbo Sembrando Juntos was born. It guides the actions of the company to join forces for the benefit of society, the environment and community development.

Under this concept, Grupo Bimbo adds to their supply chain, its customers and society in general to a program that works in the following areas:

• Create products with improved nutritional profiles.

• Better care, conservation and recovery of the environment.

• The development of the communities in which the company operates.

• Promote personal and professional development of its employees.

Community Development.

Education / Health and Fitness / Environment and Rural Development

Donations

The company has a program of donations to institutions that work in the following areas:

·         promoting physical activity and health,

·         environmental conservation,

·         social development and indigenous development,

·         and education.

Through the donations budget, Grupo Bimbo supports the communities. In 2013, 2.0% of its net profits of 2012 was allocated to support around 300 institutions with financial donations.

Recycling Circuit of Ecological Notebooks for schools

Idea Verde

Idea Verde starts its first circuit of eco-sustainable notebooks which will allow 1,000 low-income children receive 5000 recyclable notebooks that they can recycle and reuse six times for six school years.

Idea Verde has made alliance with four educational institutions offering courses to low-income children in Caracas (Venezuela) which have informed and specified the need they have of counting with notebooks to the children’s degree and their materials.

A un cuaderno de ti

Once collected the financial resources for manufacturing 5000 notebooks, Idea Verde will start the manufacturing process for a month, and after that, the company will give the notebooks to the children on October 15th, 2015.

At the end of the school year, Idea Verde will collect the notebooks for processing them and then, the company will return the notebooks to the children, repeating this recycling process for six years.

The objective. Idea Verde aims to contribute to the educational development of the Venezuelan youth regarding its general aspects and regarding eco-sustainability. Idea Verde specifically wants to:

• Donate 5000 eco-notebooks to 1000 children and teenagers of one school and three nonprofit organizations on the date October 15th, 2015.
• Recycle and return these 5000 ecological notebooks to 1,000 children to create the first recycling circuit of notebooks for the next six years.
• Promote ecological values in the Venezuelan population in innovative ways.
• Collaborate to increase the chances that low-income children have of continuing their education process without interruption.
• Reduce expenditure on school supplies of low-income families.
• Contribute to the reduction of the deforestation.
• Recycle paper, cardboard and plastic.
• Contribute to the creation of a movement for eco-sustainability.

Support schools.

This project will benefit more than 900 families in the first year, and in the long-term it will benefit more than 300,000 families.

Rafael Nunez Aponte: Learn more about Gender-Based Violence

Groups of Support to the Victim

Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is a term used to describe the harmful acts committed against a person based on the differences that society assigns to men and women separately. This term is used primarily as a way to highlight the vulnerability of women and girls to several forms of violence in the places where they are victims of discrimination because they are women. Important organizations such as UNICEF give us a list of various forms of GBV. The examples they provide include:

• ·         Exploitation and sexual abuse.
• ·         Child marriage.
• ·         Mutilation / female genital cutting.
• ·         Sexual harassment.
• ·         Abuse in the price of dowry.
• ·         Honor killings.
• ·         Domestic or intimate partner violence.
• ·         Deprivation of inheritance or property.
• ·         Abuse of the elderly.

It is important to highlight that there are many institutions and organizations that give support to victims of abuse such as Counter Pedophilia Investigative Unit and PLAFAM (Asociación civil de Planificación Familiar). This association has a program for all the public which objectives are:

1. Awareness and strengthening institutional capacity on issues of violence to improve the detection and treatment services to people living in situations of potential or actual risk.
2. Awareness of violence as a public health issue, both in users as in PLAFAM staff.
3.  Prevention of GBV situations, implementing education programs and guidance to young people.
4. Promoting research on issues related to violence.
5.  Creating intervention and evaluation strategies that allow the optimization of health services.
6. Promote Socio Emotional Empowerment  to Women victims / survivors of GBV.

How PLAFAM Can Help the Victims?

Individual Psychological counseling (psychotherapy)

Attention to children / girls and adolescents victims of sexual violence and providing a service to the legal authorities and, by giving child and adolescent psychological treatment, support groups and counseling preteens, teens and parent in order to protect and guarantee their rights.

The Collective Interest of the Venezuelan Chamber of Construction

The Venezuelan Chamber of Construction (CVC in Spanish) was founded in 1943, as a nonprofit civil association of public interest, which aims to promote, develop and protect the construction industry in Venezuela and defend the professional interests of its members and encourage their social, economic and moral improvement.

The CVC

As always, the CVC assumes its commitment to Social Responsibility with the foundation of the NGO of the Venezuelan Chamber of Construction –FCVC (in Spanish)-, which was created with the intention to encourage, among members of the CVC, an active and voluntary contribution in order to improve their social environment.

Current Programs of the CVC

Subject of Construction Management:

The FCVC has focused its action on two key programs in education the Subject of Construction Management. Since several years ago the CVC teaches the Subject of Construction Management as a compulsory subject in the curriculum of Civil Engineering at UNIMET, and in September 2006 it signed the Inter-Institutional Cooperation with the UCV. The School of Civil Engineering includes the Subject as a selective module and the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism has introduced it among the optional subjects in the construction area.

This Subject is designed to offer students an overview of the construction industry in Venezuela, presenting formal aspects with updated data, the topics inherent in the management of civil works, familiarizing the student with the development process in the construction in the country.