Social agreement

Through an innovative community participation model called Social Agreements, more than 700 leaders from the municipalities of California, Suratá, and Matanza drafted Soto Norte Project’s social investment plan for 2023, which is intended to bring the maximum benefit for all the inhabitants of the province.

This US$1.3 million adds to the more than US$12 million that the PSN has invested in the communities of the Province of Soto Norte, in Santander, over the last seven years to improve education, health, housing, and roads.

The signing of the Social Agreements is the result of a shared vision of what is best for the territory and the municipalities in the PSN's area of influence, where all those involved in the process take on roles, commitments, and responsibilities to achieve a common goal.

The process began with a Community Meeting held on March 28-30, 2023. For three days, the inhabitants of the different rural and urban sectors of Suratá, California and Matanza used a virtual, real-time voting system to choose the social investment priorities of the Soto Norte Project.

Based on these results, the communities formed groups to select the social programs and investments with the greatest impact. In a second Community Meeting, held from May 8 to 10, 2023, communities established regional and municipal committees to ensure transparency in managing the funds.

Each committee is led by a person from the community, who is committed to oversee the technical, financial, and human resources, supervise implementation, and ensure accountability to the community.

The Social Agreements and the prioritized projects are the result of the Soto Norte Social Dialogue, a strategy that the Soto Norte Project and the EAN University created with the participation of leaders, miners, farmers, mothers, heads of households, presidents of Community Action Boards and members of the community in general.