Fifteen years ago, Cemefi (Mexican Center for Philanthropy) brought together business and civil society leaders to create the Alliance for Corporate Responsibility – AliaRSE. This introduced a new perspective on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, including environmental care, ethics, labour conditions and community wellbeing.

Since then, Cemefi has promoted and encouraged social commitment and the implementation and continuous improvement of socially responsible management. Using a self-diagnosis tool with more than 160 CSR standards, companies that meet at least 85% of the standards receive the ESR Badge as a socially responsible enterprise. The programme has extended throughout Mexico and to corporations in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, Uruguay and Brazil.

Each year, Cemefi organizes a major international event: Encuentro Latinoamericano de Empresas Socialmente Responsables. Nearly 2,000 people participate in workshops, concurrent sessions and ceremonies to award the ESR Badge.

This year, Cemefi introduced a new element: a standard on corporate donations. During the conference, 75 of the 1,037 ESR Badgeholders made a public commitment to invest 1% of their profits before tax in social causes.  Others have since shown interest in responding to this new challenge that will bring new ideas and resources to the social field.

For more information
http://www.cemefi.org