In 2018 Daabon
Group’s Social Administration program focused on three courses of action:
entrepreneurship, food security and education for peace.
In terms of
entrepreneurship, we focused on two major objectives: to create an
entrepreneurial culture by providing advice and support to the educational
institutions of Santa Marta that are in the process of adopting
entrepreneurship in their curriculum, and to provide support through technical
and business training, and by granting microcredit loans to the families of
Daabon’s employees and members of surrounding communities.
The Daabon
Foundation, in coordination with the Famiempresas Atlántico Corporation,
manages the Youth + Entrepreneurs project, whose purpose is to support the
educational community in complying with the Entrepreneurship Law of the
Ministry of National Education. The law was created to ensure that Colombian
public education enhances the capacity for students to undertake
entrepreneurial ventures; Daabon Group understands that this is the vital force
necessary to build businesses (entrepreneurship) and, in more general terms, to
transform and create new social realities.
This project
resulted in educational institutions with trained teachers (a total of sixty),
training spaces for children and young people advised by the Foundation to
incubate new projects (more than 200 students), and families receiving
resources through the Daabon Microcredit Fund to support the first child who
has just received his or her bachelor’s degree.
Through the Daabon
Microcredit Fund, operated by the Magdalena Microentrepreneurs Foundation
(FUNDEMICROMAG), it has been possible to provide administrative and financial
support to more than forty (40) microentrepreneurs located in neighborhoods in
Daabon Group’s areas of influence in various sectors of the economy (mainly
commercial, food processing and production of minor species). The beneficiaries
propose initiatives that require development and the Fund, with soft loans,
allows them to scale up their business and generate new growth targets.
In the area of food
safety, the objective is to promote the cultivation of vegetables on a
small-scale among worker’s families. Starting with the establishment of
productive home gardens, Daabon initiated a program aimed at improving their
diet. According to one of the latest studies conducted by Tequendama (household
surveys to determine living conditions, 2017), the daily diet of most of these
families is based on the consumption of products rich in carbohydrates with
very low consumption of fruits and vegetables.
We believe that the
small-scale vegetable production initiative can not only improve the nutrition
of its beneficiaries, but for some families it can become an alternative income
option. In areas with favorable environmental conditions, the development of
these schemes can be complemented by the management of meliponas (Meliponini
tribe), or stingless bees.
To create the
conditions for lasting peace (education for peace), Samaria and Tequendama
(companies dedicated to the production of organic bananas and palm oil) worked
toward the development of methodologies aimed at self-strengthening “life
skills”. Samaria held the first pilot project of Biodanza (Biodance) and
women—a system that allows the person to strengthen their capacity to live and
solve challenges based on emotions, rather than conflict and disagreement.
Tequendama worked on the consolidation of the sports school “palmeritos,” which
uses sports among children as a base for developing talks and workshops on the creation
and strengthening of values.