Street talk

How Carvajal Empaques builds trust and creates better communities

Portrait of Pedro Carvajal

Pedro Carvajal

  • Company: Carvajal
  • Title: CEO
  • Industry: Paper & Packaging, Real Estate and technology
  • Founded: 1904
  • Family generation: fourth
  • Turnover in 2019: 1280 million euro

4 big takeaways

Build trust by listening

One of most important steps in any philanthropic journey is to listen to the people you're seeking to support. Imposing solutions on people breeds mistrust and discontent. By listening first, you're showing you truly value their input and ideas.

Discuss solutions

Once you've learned more about people's situations and needs, it's time to get down to the business of discussing solutions with the community. Set up regular meetings, workshops and focus groups to discuss potential solutions. You might also conduct surveys to clarify the information you've gained from those discussions.

Act on your findings

Listening and discussing with the community is only the start. All that effort will mean nothing if you don't act on it. And it will destroy the trust you've worked so hard to build. So use everything you've discovered to create a plan for delivering solutions – then make sure you work as a team to implement them.

Collaborate with public bodies

The challenges people face are too big for one company to tackle. So reach out to other organizations – public and private – and discuss your goals, ideas and projects. Connecting with others is likely to spark new initiatives, whether that's expanding a current project or creating a new one.

We said we're not the government and we can't replace it. We're a foundation that just wants to help create a better society – and you're the best people to tell us how to do that. From that moment, we started earning people's trust and confidence.