Social Balance in AFA SCLThe Social Balance Model applied by Agricultores Federados Argentinos S.C.L. is developed by the International Cooperative Alliance.
Once AFA SCL decided to implement this model, the following step was to reformulate it to properly reflex this Cooperative’s exclusive reality; whether it is the internal reality (structure, organization and AFA’s work dynamic) as the external (social and economic context in which AFA is immersed).
This reformulation was performed through extensive team-work days attended by all the AFA SCL Primary Center’s referents, with the purpose of expressing each one’s opinion and vision; which is particular of each represented region. So that after several exhausting but highly satisfactory working days, a unique Cooperative Social Balance Model, specific for Agricultores Federados Argentinos SCL, was created.
The Cooperative Social Balance implemented at AFA SCL is voluntary, since in Argentina it’s not obligatory by law, but it is at certain Europe countries.
It is multilateral, because despite there’s a Coordination Group at AFA Rosario and there are referents at Primary Cooperative Centers, an important and variable number of people that belongs to the Cooperative participate in it, who play different roles according the kind of information that’s gathered at different research stages.
It’s also remarkable the interdisciplinary character of the AFA Rosario’s Social Balance Coordination team. It is composed by professionals and scholarship holders who come from the cooperative sector, as well as academic disciplines such as Social Work, Literature and Social Communication. All of this shall be added to the heterogeneity provided by the people that work in this huge project: Youth Center’s members and Cooperative Women Group’s members, councilors as well as executives and employees of the 26 Primary Cooperative Centers. This entire group, besides gathering different information, attends a training process called “Implementing the Cooperative way and Social Balance”What the Social Balance isThe Social Balance is a research tool based on quantitative and qualitative methodologies that enables to discover how the Cooperative Principles, related to the Cooperative’s Social Responsibility, are accomplished.
The Social Responsibility represents the obligations that every institution has, beyond what the Law and the Economy dictates. This means that every organization, besides doing what’s considered right from the legal point of view, must assume a positive role in order to improve the conditions of the society in which it’s immersed.
Considering what’s previously stated, the nature, functions and objectives of the Cooperative Social Balance can be briefed as following:
a) In a first perspective, the Social Balance is a diagnostic of institutional Management, completely linked to the Social Responsibility and to the accomplishment of the Cooperative Principles, but also enabling to get a clear cartography (or internal map) of the current Cooperative’s reality, whether from its internal dynamic and structure, as its links with the external side.
b) As every diagnostic, the Social Balance is also a tool. In this case, a planning and management tool which shall promote the development of strategies and actions aimed to consolidate AFA’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses. One of the most relevant features of the Social Balance as a tool is its flexible character, since it’s a planning and research tool that can be modified year by year according the different institutional goals that follows the cooperative.
c) Once the time goes by (between three and five accounting exercises) the different reports from the Social Balance shall be used every year as an evaluation system. By looking behind and comparing, it’s easier to evaluate the results of the applied strategies.
d) At Last, it will enable to see every positive change that’s generated at Social perspective, which could be not discovered in other way.
It’s very important to clarify that the Social Balance in AFA SCL is a group construction, an organized and cooperative action between many people. It is performed for everybody’s benefit, and it’s a first experience which will for sure be improved. |  | P.C.C. Coordination Group
Currently, the 3rd Cooperative Social Balance taking place at Agricultores Federados Argentinos S.C.L. it’s coordinated by Mr. José Acosta, chief of Cooperative Education and Training Department, working together with the Social Balance Coordination Group, an interdisciplinary team that plans and designs the yearly guidelines to follow, and also processes all the necessary information to build the Social Balance. This group is composed by the following professionals: Ms. Mariana Rossi, Ms. Jimena Altobelli, Ms. Georgina Giampaoli, Ms. Gabriela de la Iglesia, and Mr. Jerónimo Granda, all of them supported by AFA Foundation.
The field work is performed by the Social Balance referents at each Primary Cooperative Centers of AFA SCL. At each one of these localities there are between 3 and 4 referents that must perform the different information research, which is acquired along the year by the employees, its associated members and their families.
MethodologyEven though there are different models or schemas of Social Balance which are suitable to cooperative organizations, Agricultores Federados Argentinos SCL took as reference the model proposed by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), the highest international organism of cooperatives. By following the ICA guidelines, the AFA SCL Social Balance is guided by the 7 Cooperative Principles, which are structured on the research and the recent work’s content.
Why to use the Cooperative Alliance model? This international organization has worked for a long time with the purpose of identifying new necessities and demands determined by the current cooperatives environment, which has resulted into the Cooperative Values and Principles Statement, approved by its members at Manchester‘s General Meeting in 1995. The statement establishes Seven Principles, shared by worldwide cooperative organizations and its accomplishment must be committed to as an essential requirement to be considered as such by the Cooperative Movement. This commitment demands an auto-evaluation effort to the cooperatives, related to its economics and social aspects.
Therefore, the social work with its associated members and the community is inherent to the cooperatives function, which must be demonstrated in concrete cooperative practice. That’s why AFA SCL implements the Social Balance for the first time. This instrument will let the Cooperative evaluate itself and will be able to plan and control its social and economic dimension. |
