Company: Ab In-Bev

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Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting BIER projects.  As part of our Member and Stakeholder spotlight series featuring the individual leaders within BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations, our project spotlight series highlights BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations involved in the innovative Charco Bendito project.

Learn how these practitioners and their companies have collaborated to develop and implement this innovative, first-of-its-kind, basin-level watershed initiative addressing three main goals: water accessibility, quality, and availability. Gain insights into key learnings and what inspires each of them to advance environmental sustainability in the beverage sector and collectively, overall.

Briefly describe your role and responsibilities and how long you have worked with your company.

My role mainly consists of developing and executing projects aimed at these two goals by 2025:

• Sustainable agriculture: Seeks that 100% of our farmers are trained, connected and financially empowered.
• Water Stewardship: With which we commit that 100% of our communities in areas of higher water stress must have a measurable improvement in the quantity and availability of water.

I have been in this incredible company for 4 years, and my role at Charco Bendito is as a company participating in the project, along with our other allies.

What is your participation within Charco Bendito?

Support with our other partners in the program execution, which translates into an improvement in the quality of life of the community!

What were the main incentives that made Grupo Modelo participate in the Charco Bendito project?

As a company, we have clear sustainability goals related to water management, so it was very easy to decide to get involved in the execution of this transversal project, which brings benefits for the families in the area, but also for the availability of water in the aquifer and the ecosystem in general.

How has Grupo Modelo’s participation in Charco Bendito evolved?

At the beginning, our participation consisted a lot in the co-creation of the idea, but today we can proudly say that we have grown to become a large family of 10 companies, and always seeking to grow and develop our project even more!

What do you hope can be achieved in the future with the project?

I believe that Charco Bendito has great growth potential, and our focus is on being able to integrate features that add greater value, as is the case of microenterprises, local activities that the Red Bio Terra team (implementer) has taken on to develop, and which we must continue to focus on, apart from our nature-based solutions and restoration actions, which must be maintained.

And how has Grupo Modelo’s global sustainability vision been aligned with the project?

So far, we have been able to see the social benefits (direct and indirect) of Charco Bendito, and we are working to measure and monitor the hydrological benefit that this project brings. It is an example of a sustainability initiative aligned with our goals as a company.

What are the best practices you have learned to develop at El Charco Bendito?

Mainly collaborative management of ideas. I have learned a lot about teamwork, inter-business work, and how to exploit the potential of our ideas when several people work together.

How can this learning be capitalized on in other projects at the local level?

At Grupo Modelo, we have several projects in Mexico, Charco Bendito being one of the most important, but also Aguas Firmes, an interdisciplinary project that takes care of the aquifers of Calera, Zacatecas and Apan, Hidalgo. With these, we develop interdisciplinary work since we have several actors collaborating, including private companies but also external investments, government institutions, international cooperation, the community (being one of the most important), and others.

If you had an ecological superpower, what would it be and how would you use it?

Power of conviction and attraction to multiply our efforts so that we can all work together for a better ecosystem!

Would you like to add something or comment on something else?

A famous phrase in our company is that “sustainability is not part of our business, it is our business” and something that makes me feel very proud personally is that at Grupo Modelo, we live sustainability, and we always seek to make it part of each of our decisions, but it becomes part of who we are. Our goal this year and in the coming years is to continue growing Charco Bendito and with greater emphasis on it becoming that flagship project that makes all of us who are part of it feel proud.