Four years ago,
I embarked on an adventure with a group of friends
We launched Corrugated,
a toy manufacturing company
who seeks to develop children’s creativity and imagination.
But the peculiarity of our toys
is that they are made from recycled cardboard
we buy on one side from a cardboard manufacturer
who makes recycled cardboard
and also to urban recycler cooperatives
more commonly known as “cartoneros”
In parallel,
we worked a lot on the production process
to provide work for people in vulnerable situations.
And we do it according to the principles of fair trade:
we do not negotiate the price, we do not finance the payment,
and we give them the time to finish the job.
And everything I’m talking about generates waste
that we recycle again with cooperatives.
Why did we start a business with this business model?
Because in truth, I was and I am exasperated
to see the inequalities, to see the poverty, to see the pollution which surrounds us,
and all that was partly produced by the companies.
Today, we live in a society
where a person who could not finish high school
is very unlikely to get a formal job.
Or just turn on the TV or search on Google
the amount of ecological disasters generated by businesses.
But just as I think they are part of the problem,
I also think that they can be part of the solution.
This is the idea that motivated us to try it,
to be part of the solution.
But in reality, to be honest, we had this nice idea
but we had no idea how to start a business.
We knew what we did not want:
this paradigm of winning at all costs,
where society and the environment do not matter.
So when we decided to make toys,
the first question we asked ourselves was:
“With what material? “
And we opted for recycled cardboard to protect the environment.
The company has taken its first steps,
she began to grow slowly,
the time has come when we needed to recruit staff.
And there arose the second question:
how should our production process
to be able to generate work
for a person who, because of the vagaries of life,
could not go to school?
Or how could we develop the process
in order to transfer tasks to a single mother
who has no one to entrust his child to look for work?
These decisions have somehow created Corrugated,
they have developed this model to which we aspired.
And we realized on the way
that we were not so crazy,
that we were not the only ones crazy to think that.
We realized that there is in the world
other entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs
who in a way, just like us,
were redefining the meaning of entrepreneurial success,
that success was not measured just by the financial gains
but according to the gains for society and for the environment.
These companies, which are called “social enterprises”
or “triple impact”, economic, social and environmental,
grouped into one movement, the “B companies”,
companies not just looking to be the best in the world
but also the best for the world, and this “for” changes everything.
For us, it really was a revolution in our heads
and it motivated us to say:
“We want to be part of this movement.”
I remember we were at one point
where we felt we were doing things very well,
we were doing super social,
we were doing super environmental,
we only needed the cape to feel like a superhero,
and we went into that certification process,
in which you evaluate your business according to four criteria:
governance and transparency,
our relationship with our employees,
our relationship with the community
and our relationship with the environment.
This evaluation gives a maximum of 200 points,
you are required to earn 80 points to be certified.
We got 53.
For us it was a cold shower.
But instead of losing our motivation,
it allowed us to realize that there was still a lot to do.
By deepening the model we were working on,
after seven months,
we became the first company B in Cordoba.
And that did not stop there because …
if there are a lot of crazy people in the world,
here in Cordoba, there are even more.
And with these crazy people, with these entrepreneurs,
we got together and created Minga,
the first network of social enterprises in Cordoba,
with two objectives:
The first, spread the idea of social enterprise
and the second, create synergies between companies
to generate more positive impact.
That’s how I knew Paolo Bianciotti
who owns a company named Drimcom
which develops different fundraising campaigns for NGOs.
One of his campaigns was
to collect paper and cardboard thrown by companies
and that recycling cooperatives be integrated into this process.
When I heard this idea, I told Paolo
I would like ondulé to participate by using this box
and working with the cooperative
to develop a new line of toys
that they were going to make themselves.
And that’s how six months ago the campaign
“You are reciclar” was launched
managing more than 50 companies in Cordoba
process their paper and cardboard via a cooperative
and that Corrupt is about to launch
a new range of built-in toys.
During this journey,
we had a lot of failures, some successes
and learned a lot of lessons
but I think there is a fundamental
which in a certain way marked the path of Corrugated,
it’s empathy:
this capacity to put oneself in the place of the other,
to know the other, to perceive it, was, I think, the basis
which allowed Corré to build everything that was built.
And that’s what I want to invite you to.
Today I want to invite you to “empathize”
to everyone, from where he is
see the other, know him, understand him.
Because in the end, put yourself in the other’s shoes,
it’s changing the world.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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