The Business Call to Action (BCtA) in Colombia

About Us

BCtA is a unique multilateral alliance among donor governments with UNDP that aims to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by challenging companies to develop Inclusive business models that engage people at the base of the economic pyramid (BoP), as consumers, producers, suppliers, distributors and employees.

 

1. Sanofi: Colombia-based organic snack producer has joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a commitment to train and support 500 smallholder farmers in organic farming practices, and increase the incomes of 1,500 people working in agriculture by the end of 2020. By 2017, Sanofi will help HMOs belonging to the subsidized national healthcare program to reach and track up to 450,000 people, which is the estimated number of persons at risk of having diabetes in the subsidized regime. This pilot initiative targets to empower at least 90% of diabetic patients belonging to subsidized regime and under Sanofi insulin therapies, in a program aimed to take control of their care through healthy lifestyle choices, effective use of insulin therapy and optimal nutrition  

2. Credifamilia: The company aims to address Colombia's chronic housing shortage by developing home-loan programmes that target low-income families (40 percent which are headed by women), who have limited access to traditional banking services. Their commitment to expand its successful low-income loan portfolio by extending US$240 million in home mortgages to at least 20,000 households in six urban areas which will house 78,000 people by 2020. The program includes loans for 4,000 informal households who traditionally have had difficulty in accessing mortgage loans.  

 3. Fruandes: To date, BCtA in Colombia has a total of seven (7) members, from social enterprises to MNCs, that have responsible and sustainable inclusive business models that contribute to the localization of SDGs.   

4. Bive: A Colombia-based healthcare social enterprise helps low-income people to access high-quality, private healthcare services by connecting them to its network of specialists, who provide preferential times and prices – enabling timely diagnosis to prevent complications. Bive has pledged to provide more than 27,000 low-income clients with access to timely, high-quality and low-cost healthcare services, by scale up its inclusive health model to three new regions across Colombia by 2020.  

5. Crezcamos: a Colombian microfinance institution established in 2008, supports entrepreneurial families primarily in rural areas by providing transparent financial and insurance services, as a means to contribute to the economic and social development in the region. Crezcamos is aiming to scale up its customer base in its current operating region as well as to enter new regions in Colombia focusing especially on rural clients and developing tailored and suitable financial products for agricultural sector clients. Creezcamos has joined BCtA with a pledge to provide appropriate and responsible financial services to 240,000 Colombian micro-entrepreneurs by the end of 2020 – at least 65 percent of them in rural areas, out of which 35,000 will be new customers in two new conflict-effected regions (Meta and Tolima). The company also has plans to increase its agricultural service offering to 30 percent of its portfolio.

 6. Corpocampo: Corpocampo is a family-owned food company that in association with the Afro-Colombian communities and indigenous people of the region, has been fostering the continual production of a wild palm açai palm (Euterpe Oleracea) abundant in the region, from which the heart of palm and the acai are extracted, through a system that guarantees the sustainability of the resource. Corpocampo has pledged by 2020, to responsibly manage 200 hectares of acai palm in the Colombian Pacific, benefiting 600 Afro-Colombian and indigenous families through sustainable harvesting of the acai, by hiring 100 people and including 500 farmers in their supply chain. In turn this will allow them to increase their income by 5% through the optimization of products harvested by the same community.  

7. Postobon: Colombia’s leading producer of non-alcoholic beverages, has joined Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a pledge to provide stable livelihoods for 3,000 smallholder farmers through is integrated supply chain by 2020, impacting 15,000 people in all (including farm workers and farmers’ families. To achieve this, the company aims to increase the percentage fruits supplied through its inclusive Hit Social Postobón programme to 40 percent by that same year. To get involved with BCtA in Colombia, please contact our Country Team in Colombia.