Rome: Incubating corporate social responsibility

Respet, which stands for Rome’s centre for ethical and responsible enterprise, ends its three year experience and takes at look at the results acheived. “Persuading enterprises to embrace corporate social responsibility projects has been a challenge,” admits Conni Neri, “but thanks to the local authority’s help we have nevertheless achieved very positive results”.  The centre, whose main aim was to promote Csr practices in business, was managed by four main partners: Icea, the institute for ethical and

environmental certification; Avanzi srl, a think tank, consultant and training centre that promotes social and environmental sustainability; Banca Popolare Etica, Italy’s largest ethical bank; Ctm Altromercato, Italy’s largest fair trade organization.

The project’s main aims were to encourage small and very small enterprises to respect the environment and society and to stimulate the debate on corporate social responsibility issues, not only among enterprises but also within public administration institutions and between citizens. “Respet’s goal was to raise awareness”, explains Conni Neri, “Rome’s local authority has helped us a lot by facilitating contact with enterprises and offering us free consultancy services”.

But what were the actual results of the project? The number of people that approached Csr for the first time by asking Respet’s consultancy desk for information on environmental and social issues or on the centre’s activities was 378, this included enterprises, public administration, not for profit organizations and individuals. A total of 864 people were involved during the awareness raising campaigns and over 200 thousand people visited the website (www.respet.org).

The innovative element of this incubator was the fact that it opened its doors to the so called “other economy”, that is to say to organic agriculture, fair trade, energy saving, renewable energy and social enterprises. In fact, a recent survey carried out by Respet that aimed to understand what people thought of using fair trade products in school canteens shows an encouraging trend: the sample, 240 people including parents, teachers and cooks, was generally in favour of fair trade. 58.4% considered it a useful practice, 32.25% said it was necessary and only 5.88% thought it was useless. Besides, 69% considered fair trade’s educational value positive for its awareness raising impact.

Plans for the future? Conni Neri hopes that cooperation between Respet and the institutions will continue, “because we believe that public administration can influence the diffusion of Csr culture at all levels”.

Translation by: Cristina Barbetta