We transform—raw material into products; talent into leaders; employees and partners into teams; ideas into innovation; and investments into results. In the communities around our operations, it's no different!

Our energy transforms children, youth, and adults in the locations where we operate. We want to positively contribute to this audience, promoting education, professional qualification and, consequently, income generation.

We operate under this purpose through our Social Performance area. Projects are conducted using company resources and making the best use of incentive laws. They are managed by a robust internal governance structure, which includes software for prioritizing and evaluating projects and multidisciplinary committees for the analysis, selection, and approval of initiatives aligned with our strategy.

Governance of private social investment

Our goal in relationship with the surrounding communities is to contribute to social and economic development in a manner that is integrated with our business strategies. In 2019/2020, we supported more than 200 education and social inclusion projects in communities surrounding our operations, reaching 3 million beneficiaries directly and indirectly.

Through the Raízen Foundation, a non-profit civil society organization, we carried out the Early Childhood Education project in Jaú (SP), which serves, full-time, around 106 children between the ages of four months and five years. It also offers 110 young people from six to ten years of age extracurricular activities outside school hours: computer science, reading and writing, performing arts, health and environment, citizenship, and school support, among others.

In Raízen Foundation's centers in Dois Córregos, Igaraçu do Tietê, Ipaussu, Jataí, Piracicaba, and Valparaíso, we developed a pedagogical technology that aims to spark the self-esteem of socially vulnerable youth, between 14 and 16 years old (the age group with the highest dropout rate) so they can discover themselves professionally and become the heroes of their own lives. More than 600 public school students are already part of the program. In a 12-month course, outside of school hours, they develop a project for the future and expand their skills toward self-knowledge, empowerment, communication, and citizenship.

Throughout the project, they are assisted by volunteer tutors who help them put the planning into practice and offer support with any challenges. This assistance offers an attitudinal model for the youth, and the results of the process are measured and verified.

In Argentina, we continue with the Creando Vínculos program, whose goal is to promote and monitor initiatives, ideas, and projects of social organizations in the communities where we operate. In the 2019/2020 harvest, we supported 13 projects that reached more than 2,000 direct beneficiaries and 6,500 indirect beneficiaries. In its 17 years of existence, the program has mobilized more than 105,000 beneficiaries in partnership with almost 300 organizations that are part of our community network, which is growing and enriching year after year.