2012 REPORT CODESPA Edition MADRID OFFICE c/ Rafael Bergamín, 12 Bajo • 28043 Madrid Tel. +34 91 744 42 40 • Fax. +34 91 744 42 41 [email protected] BARCELONA OFFICE Marc Aureli, 8 - Entresòl 3a • 08006 Barcelona Tel. +34 93 200 04 00 • Fax. +34 93 201 30 38 [email protected] www.codespa.org Design and layout: Pyma3 Comunicación Photography: Jerónimo Rivero and CODESPA Archives Printed on FSC® ecological paper Legal Deposit: M-33947-2009 Madrid, September 2013 2012 REPORT His Royal Highness Prince Felipe Honorary President of CODESPA Foundation CODESPA Foundation P. 4 2012 Report “Since its foundation in the middle of the nineteen eighties, CODESPA has made it possible for an increasing number of people to benefit from its programmes aimed at providing them with opportunities to develop their skills, thereby contributing to a fairer and more equitable world. I am proud to be a member of this organisation and to participate through supporting its work, projects and goals, in my case for almost twenty years. In fact CODESPA was a pioneer in backing what we now refer to as Corporate Social Responsibility. The promotion of respect, dialogue and solidarity in pursuit of a balanced and harmonious relationship between commercial interests and the priority social needs of less developed countries, in the context of the fight against poverty, represents enormous progress in the evolution of relations between business and society. In this regard, generating awareness and seeking support from the main social and economic agents remains a constant challenge that we cannot and must not abandon, so that we favour less prosperous communities becoming owners of their own destinies and leaders of their own progress. Your altruistic efforts and your commitment, initiative and professionalism are qualities of enormous value in achieving this. ...And I would finish by also congratulating the entire team at CODESPA for the enthusiasm it devotes to each project and for continuing to boost the development of the most vulnerable communities and of those in greatest need. I encourage you to continue working, with humility but also with conviction, with determination and with the enduring hope of achieving the greatest social and economic impact at the lowest possible cost, through alliances with society’s different sectors and principal agents, both public and private. Only in this way will we be able to reach our targets, maintaining our commitment with the Millennium Development Goals and achieving the sustainability and wellbeing of the most disadvantaged communities.” Words of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Asturias at the presentation of the XVI CODESPA Awards. Madrid, 11 December 2012. CODESPA Foundation P. 5 2012 Report Laura Castán Visa President of CODESPA Foundation At CODESPA Foundation we firmly believe in the value of work as a fundamental tool for achieving the social and economic development of all those people who are living in a situation of poverty. Our objective is to provide an opportunity for the vulnerable and needy to obtain sustainable livelihoods relying on their own resources and through their own effort. In order to achieve that goal, CODESPA’s work is to promote training, access to micro-finance and marketing in fair conditions. With an approach that is far removed from aid handouts, we have demonstrated that people who live in conditions of poverty are capable of achieving their own development if they are provided with the necessary resources and opportunities. For this reason, at CODESPA we work hard every day to offer opportunities to thousands of people and to accompany them in the process of development, without generating dependency. Thus, we carry out various development projects, in which we encourage the implication and collaboration of different social agents. We wish to optimise the results of our endeavours, and to this end, we make the most of the resources that we have available. Poverty remains one of the greatest problems of our generation and fighting it is not easy. This is why, at CODESPA we consider that innovation, efficiency and specialisation are essential requirements when it comes to developing all of our projects and fighting against this situation of inequality. We strive to execute projects that generate a real change in people and in the organisations with which we work, and that are sustainable in the long term. Current global poverty figures published by the World Bank motivate us to put our utmost efforts into changing the situation. About 1200 million people live in conditions of extreme poverty worldwide. Although, fortunately, the situation has improved and poverty has declined in recent years, there is still a lot of work to be done. In this sense, we cannot overlook either the current context of economic crisis in which we are immersed; a crisis that has affected our own country in particular. In spite of this, the solidarity of Spanish society with the most disadvantaged is worthy of mention given that private donations are ongoing and corporations continue to promote their social work. We are enormously grateful for this desire to help those who are suffering in situations of poverty in an extremely difficult context. CODESPA Foundation P. 6 2012 Report Constantino Chipepe, a farmer from the Municipality of Bailundo, in Angola, is one of the many people who encourage us to continue with our work. Due to the intense drought that the country suffered last year, Constantino lost almost his entire crop of soy and had to go from having three meals a day to being able to have only one. Through CODESPA, we helped him to improve his production by offering him related training and giving him access to credit so that he could continue to develop his work in a sustainable and endurable manner, therefore guaranteeing the following year’s production. Thanks to these efforts, his last crop went from producing 300 kg per hectare to an average of 900 kg. His and his family’s quality of life has improved thanks to our support. And so, throughout this last year, our projects have made and impact on the lives of almost 200,000 people. Stories like these are just one example of everything that we achieved last year thanks to the efforts of all of you: donors, financers, companies, our committed work team, volunteers, and the list goes on. I would like to highlight the contribution from private companies which, despite the difficult context that we are facing, have continued to support our work and have made an effort to ensure its continuation. We are a bridge that makes it possible to join the reality of hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged people, with the people and organisations that make up our society. Only by working together will we manage to solve this problem which concerns us all. This year, we aspire to continue with our work while multiplying its results. We would like to take our projects to more places and therefore improve the lives of an increasing number of people. To achieve this goal, we need the greatest possible amount of funds, from our own country and abroad. Only in this way, will we be able to continue offering innovative and sustainable solutions so that everyone can be given an opportunity. All of this, reflected in our report, serves to reaffirm our conviction that it is possible to change the world. Laura Castán Visa President of CODESPA Foundation CODESPA Foundation P. 7 2012 Report José Ignacio González-Aller Managing Director of CODESPA Foundation Living in a situation of poverty represents and enormous challenge. People in this situation lack even the most basic needs: food, water, homes, access to health services. Life for them becomes a daily fight for survival, in an environment that is deprived of opportunities to advance. That is how millions of people live, many of them in extreme conditions. Perhaps these would be the best words to describe the situation: lack of opportunities. Those that in the developed world, we have all been given to a greater or lesser extent. I once heard Mohamed Yunus make the following comparison: “People in situations of poverty are like bonsai trees, they have not been allowed to grow or have not been able to grow because they have no soil where they can put down roots and develop all of their potential”. CODESPA wishes to tackle the serious problem of poverty precisely by trying to generate opportunities that, while not replacing anyone’s duties, allow people of every age and condition to fight for their own future, in a climate of freedom and hope. Our approach stems from the firm conviction that professional work is a fundamental dimension of people. It is precisely there, in our work, that we realise ourselves, that we obtain the resources necessary to sustain ourselves and our dependants, and that we materialise our contribution to the society in which we live. And this is also true for people who live in that situation of poverty. Hence offering them an opportunity to find a job or to improve the conditions in which they work, is a very effective way of contributing to the fight against that iniquity that afflicts so many millions of families in the world. As I have mentioned previously, CODESPA works in areas where the population lacks everything, even basic needs. For this reason, creating opportunities, developing an economic fabric in those communities, where people can grow professionally, increase their family incomes and improve their living conditions, requires creativity, innovation and work performed with the utmost excellence on our part. Those opportunities must be offered in such a way that the process is sustainable, in other words, endures over time once we have finished our work.