In the new global economy, private businesses and transnational corporations are crucial agents of change and play a leading role in the development of global culture. Samarco, a Brazilian national corporation, has contracted Pact to provide Engagement to Action (E2A) services to help the company achieve competitive advantage by supporting innovative business strategies that deliver greater social and environmental accountability and performance.

Pact has implemented its innovative Engagement to Action Process (E2A, formerly known as Corporate Engagement Services or CES) in Brazil with the national mining company, Samarco. E2A provides a highly interactive, comprehensive process that combines the diverse objectives of stakeholder engagement, social investment, and community development. In bringing communities and companies together in an open forum to discuss issues, share perspectives, identify priorities, and plan initiatives, E2A helps participants to establish common ground for community development and corporate social investment while identifying issues of greatest community concern related to company operations. The Pact approach incorporates strategies and specific tools to encourage regular analysis of the partnership experience. The Pact approach also provides the means to improve corporate social accountability and impact over time. Through E2A, the formation of social compacts becomes a fundamental element of meaningful engagement with the local community.

Ethos Institute and Samarco

Pact was an international partner of Instituto Ethos located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The highly participatory elements of Pact tools and approaches could benefit stakeholder engagement, particularly when working with representatives of the local community is recognized. So, once designed, Pact sought to test the E2A approach with a company that met specific criteria. The company had to have a strong reputation in pursuing social responsibility, be located in a sector of importance to engagement, express a long-term commitment to the engagement process, and have clear support from executive leadership to pursue such activities. In November of 2000, Pact and Samarco, a mining company of iron ore pellets for blast furnaces, which met all of the above criteria, signed an agreement to test the approach.

Pact and Ethos institute worked very closely with Samarco to ensure that a sustainable relationship was created and that specific goals identified during the E2A process were met. The company and community built these goals together with a common understanding of the concerns and values of the community and a commitment to the proposed methodology. This relationship was based on a theory of trust and transparency between the company and community.

Pact provided technical and facilitation support, including:

• Engagement preparation to collect and review key demographic and organizational data, facilitate the creation of various committees to guide the process, and map stakeholders and community resources; 
• Framework development to design and validate an assessment tool that measures the effectiveness of engagement and inform social investment through collaboration with stakeholders; 
• Assessment to administer the tool, tabulate results, and conduct debriefings on findings about community perceptions of capacity in the areas of community development, stakeholder engagement , and social investment; 
• Action planning to help organize and facilitate a workshop to present assessment results and generate action plans for community engagement and social investment and; 
• Implementation to provide ongoing support to enhance effectiveness of the company-community interactions, including meetings with the company and community to assess progress and address areas needing adjustment.