February 2021:“Links with local communities are increasingly important,” said Pilar de la Cerda, founding partner of Nodo Chile.

Camanchaca reports on its Sustainable Schools Program

Salmones Camanchaca has published a positive report of its Sustainable Schools Program during a year heavily affected by the pandemic. This initiative began in 2012 in the Los Lagos region and during 2020 it supported seven rural schools from Purranque to Chaitén, which benefited 869 students, 112 teachers and close to 500 families.

These seven schools are: Nueva Israel school in Hueyusca; Mario Pérez School in Los Bajos; Epson School in Ensenada; Terao School in Chonchi; and Buill School, Ayacara Peninsular School and Admiral Juan José Latorre School in Chaitén (also known as the Buill, Ayacara and Juan José Latorre Schools in Chaitén).

The program forms part of the company’s sustainability strategy through its community engagement plan for the communities surrounding its facilities. The program included designing new activities to adapt to the effects of COVID-19 (coronavirus), which focused on three support areas, namely addressing school, family and returning to school issues.

Some of the measures implemented during the year at these schools were over 150 kilos of health and hygiene supplies, 480 sets of seeds, training on environmental issues, a digital talk for parents and students on using social networks during the pandemic, interactive material on emotional support and healthy living, a contest on infection prevention measures, and continual socio-emotional support.

Accordingly, the Technical and Sustainability Manager at Salmones Camanchaca, Alfredo Tello, commented that “During 2020 we had to adapt to new situations, which heavily impacted the dynamics of students and their families. Therefore, the Sustainable Schools Program helped us to reinforce our commitment to our local communities, by directly helping students, families and teachers to continue caring for our environment.”

A collaborative network was formed between the management teams at all these schools called ‘Leadership for discussions about the future’, whose objective was to provide innovative tools to respond to current educational challenges, support the design and monitoring of new projects, and maintain a dialog between these schools.

The Buill Rural School Director, Maria Nella Vera, was grateful for this initiative and said, “We benefited greatly from the meetings with other schools, since we were able to learn about their situation and their positive experiences, which we could replicate in our school.” Similarly, the Director of Mario Pérez School in Los Bajos, Lorena Velásquez, said, “We really hope that Salmones Camanchaca will continue to support us next year.”

The founding partner of Nodo Chile, Pilar de la Cerda, said, “This is a special year, where links with local communities are increasingly important. We helped Salmones Camanchaca to strengthen its relationships with these schools, their directors, students and the community in general, through an innovative program that allowed us to continue being close, in spite of the physical distance.”

Finally, the program also worked with schools on addressing the returning to school issues, in order to secure a safe return to school, by providing information and essential hygiene items to build the preventive conditions that would avoid any infection from spreading. Furthermore, the program will launch a ‘Covid Fund’ in 2021 that will finance Covid initiatives at these schools.