- Behind a suit, a look or an expression there are stories that we do not imagine.
- The IPMe led us to discover stories of our people, their families, their daily lives, brought us closer to their realities and allowed us to contribute in various ways to improve their lives.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is an instrument developed by the University of Oxford (through OPHI) and supported by the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD) :Countries apply this tool to identify the shortcomings of a household in the areas of health, education and standard of living. In Costa Rica, in a pioneering way, Horizonte Positivo, together with the University of Oxford, adapted this instrument to make it possible to implement it in the private sector. IPMe , this is a tool through which companies can detect needs and areas of vulnerability and contribute to the quality of life of their employees.
For CCK, our people are our driving force, so we are always looking out for their well-being and quality of life, and we are constantly looking for innovative ways to do so. Thus, since we learned about IPMe, in 2017, we knew we had to implement it. After 3 years of being part of the IPMe community of companies, we have applied it twice and executed two action plans to address the needs we detected.
In the first year, we applied the instrument in all our offices in Central America and covered 78 households. We got even closer to our people and their families, got to know their basic living conditions in depth: health, housing, education, work and social protection, and discovered realities we had not imagined and, at the same time, allowed us to take action.
We focused mainly on the areas of financial education, labor and housing. We offered financial talks given by allied entities, raising awareness among our personnel about the importance of good financial health; we promoted the Emprendamos initiative among unemployed family members or those with small businesses, in which they received guidance in different areas to strengthen their business ideas; and we developed two fundraising campaigns that helped us to remodel and repair two of our employees' homes that required immediate intervention.
Sometimes we ask ourselves how can we impact our societies or how can we make a change in our countries? Starting at home is the starting point. Let's be a model for other companies, small, medium or large, to also implement the IPMe and contribute to improve the living conditions of many families.
