Grupo Nutresa creates opportunities by promoting a diverse and inclusion-driven work culture among female shopkeepersand forklift operators

In collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Fundación Nutresa celebrated the graduation of 211 women as safe forklift operation and logistics assistants and the completion of the training program for female shopkeepers centered on entrepreneurship, income generation, women leadership and gender equality, thus strengthening business models through our Íntegra’ Program.

This program is intended to develop capabilities related to gender equality along our value chain, looking to build more equitable and thriving societies, which is an objective that is aligned with our higher purpose of building a better world where development benefits everyone.

Providing logistics training to women
This initiative enabled developing capabilities related to work skills traditionally associated with masculinized roles among 61 unemployed women. The main objective was to create economic opportunities for the women and to promote their inclusion in our Organization’s Business Units, thus contributing to the diversity of the employment market.

As a result, twenty-seven of these women are already officially employed, eighteen of whom have been hired by our Business Units, namely Opperar, Novaventa, Zenú, Comercial Nutresa and Colcafé.

The training spanned 80 hours allocated as follows:

• 40 hours in key and overarching abilities, such as adaptability, instruction observance, working under pressure, gender equality, women leadership, the fight against gender-based violence, self-schemas, family-work life balance, passion for clients and consumers, life purpose, good manufacturing practices and food handling training provided by the ‘Acertar’ Foundation.
• And another 40 hours that enabled them to obtain the dual degree as distribution & logistics assistants and forklift operators certified by the organizations Educarga and Defencarga.

Training for female shopkeepers

Additionally and in collaboration with the Nutresa School for Customers, the Organization provided training for 150 women in the fields of entrepreneurship, income generation, women leadership and gender equality in Medellín, Bogotá and Cartagena.

The training stage was centered on developing capabilities related to gender equality, women leadership and the fight against gender-based violence with the purpose of boostingthe role of women in both their business models and society.

Discussion session: Empowerment for everyone, building a more diverse,
equitable and inclusion-driven world

The closing event included the participation of Claudia Rivera (Grupo Nutresa’s Sustainability Director), Karen Luz Rojas Salcedo (operator at Zenú and beneficiary of the seminary about masculinized jobs), Luz Dary Meneses Rivera (beneficiary of the Nutresa School for Customers), Claudia Roncancio (Technical Sub-Director of the ‘Generating Equity’ Program – USAID) and Enrique Saleme (Organizational and Human Development

Director at Opperar), who talked about the empowerment challenges and how these initiatives contribute to building a more diverse, equitable and inclusion-driven world.

‘Íntegra’ Results:

The first cycle of the ‘Íntegra’ Program benefited 300 Novaventa Entrepreneurs, who participated for fourteen months in eight training workshops and four webinars focused on: women leadership, comprehensive financial education, economic empowerment and fighting gender-based violence. The aim of these activities is to bridge social gaps among the women with the objective of building an increasingly diverse and inclusion-driven
culture.