SOCIO-CULTURAL CONVENTIONS, BRANDING, EMPOWERMENT AND SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY.
Ever since I was a law student, I have been fascinated by the legal regime of “distinctive signs”, or what we know as “trademarks”. The ability to identify goods or services, to give them names, to promote their dissemination and to protect them from copying or misuse, has been the main concern of the law.
However, I was interested in going further and giving another meaning and a better use to such symbols.
I was curious to note how images of so-called “commercial names” covered stadiums at games and sporting competitions, papered city walls, lit up highways, and even imposed themselves on clothing as supposed elegance. But they should not be limited to that function.
Companies, whether private or public, limit themselves to carrying out specific activities of sponsorship of their name, to comply with the so-called “social responsibility”, and require the beneficiary to incorporate their logos as a token of the support received.
Later, when I had the great privilege of creating and directing PDVSA La Estancia, the management of our oil industry, aimed at promoting a better quality of life or good living for Venezuelans, in accordance with the provisions of article 5 of the Organic Law of Hydrocarbons, I had the opportunity to take part in the creation of PDVSA La Estancia.
Hence, any cultural, public space, restoration or heritage revaluation project had to start with an Integral Social Diagnosis carried out “in situ” and with the incorporation in all its stages of the beneficiary communities, which would be previously identified, censused and invited to form part of our work and monitoring team.
Now, on this occasion, I would like to comment specifically on the way in which we managed to generate social empowerment in the cultural and social groups to whom our support was destined.
As a cultural promoter, we received many requests for support from all kinds of associations and individuals dedicated to this area.
And given that we understood paternalistic assistance as a form of charity, which does not solve structural problems, nor is it sustainable over time, we set ourselves the challenge of identifying a way of real support, based on social intervention, which, instead of causing dependency, would produce empowerment and with it, an increase in the well-being of the community concerned.
It was then that we decided that our accompaniment, rather than “welfarism”, would be the result of the application of an integral policy, in which our discretion in decision-making would be reduced to a minimum and the participation and exchange of the parties involved would be encouraged.
As a lawyer, I immediately thought of the use of the figure of contracts, through which, not only, as our rules establish, “a legal bond is created, modified or extinguished”, that is to say, an obligation, but which establishes charges aimed at achieving a common goal, as happens with the so-called “collaboration agreements” or “plurilateral agreements” in companies under commercial law. This eliminates the possibility of a person being able to commit himself without his obligation being the counterpart of another correlative or interdependent obligation.
Thus, through instruments that we identified as “collaboration agreements”, we established a system that allowed us to generate a network of promotion and cultural welfare, which decisively encouraged the development, among others, of the cultural, social and patrimonial areas throughout the country.
This time, advertising or the use of the brand, logos and labels by the sponsors would not be enough, but, in order to have the right to demand its use and to use it, each party had to guarantee for a pre-established period of time, its direct work in the communities of origin and other related communities.
This means that the members of the communities should be considered as fundamental actors in these processes, and therefore, they should be guaranteed the right to participate in the diagnosis of their situation and also in decision making, a premise that we always apply, in the sense of taking advantage of every space to educate, and with it, to favour social exchange.
One of our emblematic cases was the support to the Camerata Barroca, an extraordinary chamber group, created in 1978 by the maestro Isabel Palacios and other outstanding musicians, with the aim of performing universal early music, from the European Middle Ages to the Latin American Baroque, with emphasis on research, rescue and dissemination of lesser-known music. With them, we agreed not only a number of free performances in the neighbourhoods, but also the establishment of musical initiation classes for the children of the neighbourhoods. Through their various groups, we offered workshops to raise awareness of musical initiation and choral work with groups of children and young people.
Another example, the Tilingo Theatre, a children’s institution, signed an agreement with ours, which allowed us to take the Venezuelan fable of “Uncle Tiger and Uncle Rabbit” to the communities, as well as inviting them to “meet in the Bolívar Square”, to learn about the country’s history and the ideas of precursion and freedom.
A floor of the former Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, located in the Central Park Towers in Caracas, was destined for use by the String Orchestra of the Venezuelan Orchestra System; we also provided the new headquarters of this foundation, characterised precisely by its technology for teaching, with new state-of-the-art computer equipment; and the various Orchestral Nuclei located in the interior of the country always received our support. Through the System, we have been able to bring live academic music to the most remote areas of our city and our country, bringing the community closer to musical instruments, in a simple and even fun way. Likewise, 100 children from underprivileged communities were admitted, and 15% of the tickets for the events that the Centre organises for selected communities were provided.
The toy makers of our country, in a number of more than 60, almost all located in our Andean Region, were supported with materials, machinery and space, with the commitment to generate a School that would allow these “makers of illusions” to transmit their skills to the greatest number of children and adults in the communities.
The artisans of the Bulevar de Sabana Grande, those who had been showing and selling their work to passers-by for so many years while our immense Project for the Integral Rehabilitation of this public space was being carried out, supported us with trade courses for the victims of the 2005 floods, as well as in the so-called Cities created by the Housing Mission, to then return in a systematic and orderly manner, several times a week, to their previously mentioned urban headquarters of origin.
Our indigenous Waraos, whom we were able to support with the installation of a petrol station near their living spaces, which allowed them to replace hours and hours of deep walking with heavy loads in the middle of the Amazon jungle, for their activity of exchange of products and handicrafts, using their gas canoes, not only exhibited their baskets in our headquarters, but also transmitted their knowledge, teaching weaving to many children, adults and the elderly, with a beautiful cultural and above all, human exchange.
The doctors of the Children’s Emergencies of the most important hospitals in Caracas, which we rehabilitated with the best equipment and furniture, committed themselves to visit our neighbourhoods to collaborate with us in our mobilisations and communities.
The donation of the grand piano to the Municipal Symphony Orchestra, allowed the communities to enjoy performances in their squares and “retretas” or podiums, and to learn about the conformation of the orchestras and the role of their members.
The athletes of the Venezuelan football teams (of the so called “Vinotinto”) of the different categories, in view of our support for their efforts, with equipment and clothing, and much more, in the provision of the important Training Centre located in Pampatar, Margarita Island, accompanied our social activities with presentations and workshops, as did baseball players, boxing, martial arts, among others, also under our sponsorship. In the case of baseball, in view of the construction of our part of the “Campo Deportivo Urbano Los Picapiedras” in the upper area of the Antímano neighbourhoods in Caracas, we were able to carry out a serious programme of support and follow-up for the children and especially for the Los Criollitos de Venezuela League, which is their guardian.
On the other hand, the exhibition of painters and singers did not stop at the mere fact of their enjoyment in our headquarters, but, in addition to their presentation in other spaces embedded in the popular communities, the transmission of their knowledge in “workshops”, courses and workshops was agreed with them, which, together with the invitations received by them by positive imitation of our management in other venues, which were being born as echoes, gave rise to the formation of new groups and talents.
In this way, the fundamental principle of recognising the groups and individuals targeted by social intervention as subjects was always present.
Education became our fundamental instrument.
Thus, social work was proposed, given the need to apply knowledge to the solution of problems located in a specific domain or in micro-social spaces, through a wide and diverse range of interventions with different subjects and social groups such as the family, young people, the elderly, displaced persons and the sick, among others.
In this way we manage to build spaces in a web of socio/cultural relations, articulating the resources between communities, in order to effectively guarantee our objectives.
This is a way of achieving sustainability, proclaimed for the first time in the Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development of the United Nations (UN), as “a goal of human development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, since the collaboration pacts are a valuable instrument in this sense, since, through them, always inclusive of education, social welfare is achieved.
There were more than 800 of our agreements, through which we managed to create sustainable relationships with the communities, in which our logo went hand in hand with culture, creativity and education, thus having a function that transcends the mere identification or publicity for the promotion of the consumption of a product, whatever it may be.
We are convinced that the so-called “social responsibility” cannot be limited to an occasional presence through handouts and the delivery of propaganda products (those known as “POP”), which only repeat the traditional models of dependency. On the contrary, there must be a reciprocal integration with the communities, starting obviously with those in the areas of incidence of each entity or organisation, and extending as repeated waves, until true empowerment generating solutions and social wellbeing is achieved. That was our proposal, that was our achievement!
However, it was not enough to conclude the agreements; the dynamics of our co-participation and the maintenance of the achievement had to be designed in them, through participatory methods and instruments of measurement, for which we assigned a group of young people, trainees and graduates in Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Science, History, Literature, Journalism, among others, who would become integrated in the communities and make it sustainable over time.