Business Sustainability Practices through Media Based Stakeholder Engagement: Maximizing Positive Social Impacts Via Locally Produced Educational Media for Young Citizens
Creators: name: Lazo-Herencia, Sandra Estefanía
Publisher: name: The University of Texas at Austin
Year: 2021
Subjects: sustainability
business
stakeholder engagement
media outreach
development
children
social investment
corporate projects and operations
education
community relations

description: In the present shifting role of business, especially post Covid-19, companies operating in developing countries can maximize the impacts of their social investment strategies in communities by addressing early-childhood capabilities development. Research shows that early childhood intervention can determine the reaching of full developmental potential by children, and as thus can have major impacts on the overall development of a nation. For this reason, it is recommendable to invest in programs that support the learning and development of the youngest stakeholders in a project area, children—especially of early childhood age, defined as a child’s first few years of life. Based off my experience working in education / outreach over many years, I have come to understand that messaging can be strengthened and broadened through supplementary educational materials such as locally-produced short-form video format because it is easily shareable, economically sound, and effective. Furthermore, incorporating local talent for the development and production of creative media can help secure adults’ collaboration and engagement, as well as assure the materials are culturally contextualized and appropriate for the age group. Through this investment in creative educational media production, both children and adults can engage, learn, and benefit from socially and culturally meaningful messages, in form and content. After a literature review to provide background and evidence for the problem and solution, I use an auto-ethnography and case study as evidence for solutions. I also include practical reflections on how to proceed in stakeholder engagement in countries where companies operate, in beneficial combination for all parties involved. The practical proposal is the use of locally produced short-form educational videos, which have an impactful and cost-efficient way to bolster stakeholder learning, especially where access to physical infrastructure and trained teachers may fall short. My personal field-work experience in a water quality research project in Peru, and recent field-work to develop stakeholder engagement materials in a liquified natural gas (LNG) development project in northern Mozambique, provide evidence to the value of investing in locally produced educational media. I, further, reflect on the importance of remembering to provide sufficient care and attention to an often-overlooked stakeholder-group, children. I urge that to maximize educational investments, a focus on early childhood is required for social and economic impacts on society as a whole. This paper’s front-end brackets and contextualizes both field experiences, to later contextualize policy, theory, finance, and sustainability frameworks, the SDGs, and how it all relates. Its second part focuses on soft-infrastructure and human-capabilities investment opportunities, child development, value of investing in education, and the power of video media as a learning tool. It concludes with ways to create locally produced successful learning media and reasons to invest in local artistic production of educational tools. As a final part of the paper, I have included appendices which focus on practical field-based take-aways. In Appendix A, I further describe the two projects I conducted, and some takeaways from those individual projects. Appendix B, contains methodological recommendations for producing educational vided, and finally, Appendix C is a photo-journal of the narrated experiences.