Where truth meets impact: SEF - A unique sustainability report
Prevailing industry standards has meant reports regarding key performance indicators for a mine’s operations have commonly been written by external agents.
Many now suggest significant insight and indication of operational success could derive more clearly from those on the ground. Written from within a project that was sponsored by the mine but run by the community. A report that tells the full story, highs and lows, as written by the community itself. A report like this may ring truly transparent and useful.
SEF highlights that “The main goal of a sustainability report is to provide transparency on the company's contribution to sustainable development; it is also viewed as a means of accountability vis-à-vis stakeholders (investors, employees, market regulators, suppliers, civil society, customers, etc.)”
The story of how the report at hand came about comes from SEF’s core methodology itself. The community involved in the project asked a question, ‘How were they doing?’ SEF guided the questioning back to the community. ‘How was the community doing?’ SEF encouraged the questioning to become both introspective and communally oriented, ‘Ask yourself and ask your community’. Communities are renowned for not withholding the truth when it comes to assessing the success or failure of a venture, and so, at the end of the day, it is the community's judgment that matters the most, for current and future sustainable successes.
New Gold's Cerro de San Pedro Community Report & SEF Canad
SEF Canada Ltd. is proud to share this inaugural Community Report, as created and written by the community itself. The unique document was produced by the communities of Cerro de San Pedro (CSP), the community adjacent to New Gold’s mining operations, Minera San Xavier in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
This report is an innovative, pioneering and leading edge advancement in the industry at large, and SEF is especially proud of this achievement and to share it anew.
The CSP Community Story and Report
With a population of little over 4000, the CSP community is located in remote Mexico, including around five small suburbs. The community has long faced challenges of high levels of poverty, absence of basic public, phone and internet services.
Community fragmentation and political instability has further eroded community trust, with the difficulty of significant conflict and discord amongst villages, largely over economic resources. These factors and more have contributed to the significant challenge of achieving sustainable economic futures for the community of CSP.
New Gold’s Minera San Xavier’s closure was looming large, with the discontinuation of operations occurring at the end of 2016. Significant job loss was expected from the closure, and in a conscious effort by the mining company to bolster economic development independent of the mine, projects were introduced and financed by outside agents.
The projects included a hotel, fish farm, greenhouses and chicken farming yet with pressures such as water shortages and logistics, these projects were abandoned. However the community was able to turn a corner through developing and taking ownership of their own sustainable economy through adopting the use of SEF Canada’s Entrepreneurial Development (ED) project.
SEF’s methodology in this program, and CSP’s full adoption of it, saw the creation of an inclusive and equal playing field for small and medium sized businesses, with the social return and trust garnered from this investment being seen and experienced by all in the community.
The report that came about after a time of SEF’s ED project flourishing, with the community of CSP fully onboard, is not written by outsiders but by the very people that have lived and experienced the project.
SEF Canada facilitated the process, wrote a preamble and conclusion but the substance of the report, coordination, charts and surveys were all conducted by the community members themselves. SEF’s ED programming has always been to help build up the capacity of the community to support itself, and that is excitingly displayed through the completion of this report.
SEF sought the official permission of the community to distribute this report. Its contents and the project it describes is fascinating, challenging and profoundly rewarding.
SEF is honored to share it now with you.
Please find it below.
Dennis Wilson, Silvana Costa, PhD, New Gold Inc.
hashtag#Community hashtag#SustainabilityReport hashtag#Newsletter hashtag#Entrepreneurs