THE STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT AS KNOWLEDGE-SHARING
In the beginning of 2020, we were guests of the Solarplay company in Monza, supporter of our projects for some years, becoming protagonists for a day organized by the company to raise awareness to employees and internal collaborators about our organization and activities, as well as the projects we share in Senegal.
We left nothing to chance, planning the morning in detail: the first theoretical part, with our reports from Africa and the videos on the Corporate Social Responsibility projects supported by the company, the second part on “practical” activities , with a workshop led by our team where the corporate stakeholders have made their own solar lamp with their hands.
“However, we had not foreseen the deep and genuine interest generated in our interlocutors, with numerous enthusiastic questions and observations of the projects that their own company supported.”
We found ourselves talking about when we got stuck under a baobab for hours because the local project manager had forgotten to pick us up at the end of a workshop, so as strategies we have to invent every time to fix solar panels to roofs.
We explained how the base of each streetlight must be able to prevent and resist to goats and various other animals from knocking down the pole with their head and have answered all the questions and curiosities that have been made to us.
“In sharing knowledge, the challenge is always to bring together two different worlds unknown to each other. In African rural areas as in the company.”
At the end of this experience we understood h sow powerful stakeholder engagement is when it comes to sharing knowledge which the companies are using to work on the corporate culture of their stakeholders, making it increasingly oriented towards the idea of sustainability they want to convey.