TRASO is a social, civil and business collective that develops initiatives, articulates efforts and manages alliances in search of improving people’s quality of life, generating prosperity in communities and reducing the inequality gap in the population. Its vision is to be an actor of change to energise education and promote civil society leadership in the region, generating equal opportunities for all. They have 30 affiliated companies to carry out their mission. And among its areas of work is corporate volunteering.

Since 2019, the Volies team has worked collaboratively with TRASO to strengthen the corporate volunteering programmes of some of its affiliated companies, also seeking to leave installed capacity in the TRASO team so that they can replicate the actions with their entire network.

In 2019, we collaborated with the design of the corporate volunteering strategy of one of them, which is part of the health sector. It is a cooperative specialised in the administration of Health Benefit Plans, present in many Colombian regions. To do this, we first conducted an internal analysis – looking at corporate strategies, the interests of employees and those who lead the organisation – and an external analysis – including a comparison of global and national trends. With the information gathered in the interviews, focus groups, surveys and benchmarks, we designed the programme’s strategic objectives, as well as the proposed organisational structure and action plan for the first three years.

In 2021 we collaborated again with TRASO to measure the impact of one of its volunteering projects on the competencies of the volunteers involved. The analysis process was carried out on the VIBRASTEM project and the volunteers of DOW Colombia, this being the first hybrid volunteering project carried out by Traso. The first step was the selection of the various competencies to be acted upon, based on the competency framework of the company as well as of TRASO, and taking into account some concepts handled by UN Volunteers, and depending on the potential degree of impact on the development of each competency through corporate volunteering. Employees were then asked to self-assess themselves on the different competency behaviours.

Specifically, the competencies selected were passion for service, collaboration, creativity and leadership. Participants in the competency measurement project who completed the entire pre- and post-questionnaire response process received a certificate.