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Overview
Community / The New Forests Company
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a fundamental aspect of The New Forests Company’s innovative business model. CSR makes economic sense by reducing security costs and mitigating future risks, as prevention is always cheaper than treatment. Instead of investing high amounts of money down the line in security and risk mitigation, NFC invests in the surrounding communities from the beginning because if the communities have a vested interest in the success of NFC then they will work to promote and protect it. NFC has also seen many exploitative investments in
NFC’s CSR philosophy incorporates the main pillars of the Global Reporting Index (GRI) and will begin publishing annual sustainability reports this year. These pillars include corporate governance, human resources, environmental conservation, community development, supply chain management and stakeholder communication among others.
Community Development Policies
Our mission for community development is to help communities help themselves. While many development interventions over the past few decades have perpetuated the dependency mindset, NFC’s projects exist to challenge this by empowering the communities to achieve their own objectives.
Based on our core values and experience over the past few years, NFC has developed best practice policies that govern the design and implementation of all of its community development projects.
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| The PRA participants from the communities surrounding Kirinya Plantation proudly showing their certificates for passing the training. | PRA participants explaining the process of creating a community calendar to figure out the best times to meet different members of the community. |
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| Chart: New Forests Company Community Spending by Focus Area (2005 - 2007). |
Demand Driven: the first exercise NFC conducts when it begins operations in an area is a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which trains leaders from the communities to identify their own challenges and potential solutions. All future projects come from these recommendations ensuring that all projects are “bottom-up”.
Partnerships: NFC implements all of its projects in partnership with the communities, both to prove their interest in the project and to encourage their ownership over the outcome. The community participates in the choice of the project and contributes to the materials or labour needed to carry it out.
Sustainability: all projects are designed to have a sustainable impact, meaning that when NFC ceases all funding to the project upon completion, the impact continues through the participation and management of the community.
Measurable Impact: as a private company, with obligations to its shareholders, NFC is determined to show a measurable Social Return on Investment (SRoI) through an effective monitoring and evaluation system for all projects.
Location: in order to have a strategic impact, all NFC’s projects are done within the parishes surrounding the plantations.
Our current projects are:
