In honour of International Volunteers Day celebrated on 5 December, we would like to inform you about our ‘Professionals for Development’ international global corporate volunteering plan, which has a track record of more than 10 years and in which more than 100 employees from companies such as Ineco and PwC, have taken part through their Foundation, and from the engineering and technology group SENER, with the only common goal of fighting against the poverty and inequalities that exist in developing countries.

International Volunteers Day acknowledges the commitment of all volunteers and praises the hundreds of millions of people who voluntarily offer their services towards a better world. Through the ‘Professionals for Development’ programme CODESPA helps enterprises with Corporate Social Responsibility Plans to find their own space in solidarity, making available to them the projects carried out by the Foundation in the most disadvantaged areas of poor countries and that may require the knowledge and experience of employees wishing to become volunteers.

Retaining its talent, improving the organisational climate, and involving employees in the enterprise’s social activity are just some of the benefits a company will find in implementing a programme of this nature. In the context of the programme, we have designed a methodology that helps to support companies in all phases of the project: identification, preparation, execution, follow-up and evaluation. In this way, any company that is committed to fighting against poverty can count on our help and our technical assistance in helping to select employees for the project, and in training and supporting volunteers throughout the entire process.

And that is how a team of engineers from Ineco currently finds itself in Imbabura, Ecuador, completing the work started this summer by another group of experts in railway matters who experienced the global corporate volunteering programme in the area by taking part in the ‘Ineco en Ruta’ programme. In both cases, Ineco volunteers helped local residents to implement measures for the security, operation, maintenance and signposting of the area’s railway service, so as to offer a better service and increase the flow of tourists. This helped more than 150 low-income families to improve their living conditions by increasing the volume of train passengers.

For its part, PwC through its ‘Impulsa’ programme has put the knowledge and experience of its employees at the service of our various delegations to help the most disadvantaged. To do this, these volunteers travelled to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru where they devoted their knowledge and experience towards finding new funding methods, preparing successful case studies for the delegations’ projects, corporate materials and transferring management tools from headquarters to the delegations.

Likewise, part of the SENER team travelled to Colombia to collaborate on a project for the production of cassava starch. The purpose of the project was to improve the panela cane processing system used by small producers and micro-entrepreneurs of Cali. To do this, they worked with us in designing an organisational process map for the rallanderias (cassava processing units).