Corporate Sustainability Report 2022
Microfinanza is pleased to present its second Corporate Sustainability Report!
4th september 2023
We published our first Sustainability Report in 2022. We are pleased to present the second edition. This exercise has once again allowed us to reflect deeply on our activities: on why and how it is possible to accompany processes of economic and social change where we work professionally.
For the Microfinanza’s team, thinking about sustainability means measuring, as precisely and objectively as possible. What is our contribution to the creation of an economy capable of preserving as much as possible the natural and cultural resources on which it is based, and of promoting the principles of justice and equity without which no society can be considered sustainable?
This is a difficult task, because it is embedded in complex regional and national dynamics. In non-European contexts, where instability and conflict often make the work difficult (we think of Sudan, where a tragic war has been going on for many months in the heart of the country’s capital, where more than six million inhabitants are trying to survive). In other contexts, such as the southern shores of the Mediterranean, local development and the fight against poverty are essential guidelines for preventing new social rifts and institutional instability.
Our contribution is undoubtedly limited by our small size, but we cannot reduce or limit our efforts to acquire the most rigorous and effective analysis and intervention tools.
In recent years, microfinance activities have also grown considerably in Europe. On the one hand, we have been working in specific projects dedicated to combating the social and financial exclusion of significant parts of the population. On the other hand, Microfinanza collaborates with organisations able to improve opportunities and territorial services in favour of the most vulnerable part of the population.
Defining how we work, monitoring our actions and reporting our results to partners, investors and customers is an integral and not a secondary part of our job.
Results are important, but so is the way in which they are achieved, and a dynamic and adaptive culture is essential. Our most important resource is the motivation and professionalism of all the people who work in our company every day, people who determine the quality of our actions and our impact.
Once again: sustainability is not a product but a process, and it requires constant questioning in order to avoid falling into automatism, the uncritical repetition of outdated practices, consolidated mental laziness. This is why we have included a passage from the introduction to J.M. Keynes’s General Theory as an exergo to this premise: even before innovation, we need a precise and tenacious ability to escape from idées reçues, from commonplaces, from the current trend, from opportunisms.
It is not certain that we are and will be able to do this, but we must invest resources and energy to avoid falling into this trap and reproducing the ordinary.
Giampietro Pizzo, President of Microfinanza
J.M. Keynes, 1935
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