s4b & my community

Why we support Carlos Coste

It has to do with inspiration, perhaps a bit with feeling identified with his success. It has a lot to do with our vision of supporting, helping out local and international talent, and of course, it has to with pride.

Free-diving is an aquatic sport, in which divers attempt to reach great depths unassisted by breathing apparatus. It is a sport of demanding physical conditions but mostly of mental conditions.

Carlos Coste is the man who established a Guiness world record for diving deeper in the sea than any human being without the assistance of any equipment -101 mts.

He was born in Venezuela as was S4B. Through excellence, commitment, hard work, and intelligent planning both Carlos and S4B have attained international success in their areas.

Carlos has experimented world wide success with his discipline. He has achieved 9 world records in every category of free diving. S4B has in just 4 years established international success by serving clients all over our region and Europe through the more than 5 offices in 5 different countries.

Of course we do not wish to compare our success with Carlos, but, we can not help to feel identified and inspired that Venezuelan excellence is something of the highest international levels and standards.

Social Responsibility or a Return to Childhood?

On December 2004, we wanted to give our Social Responsibility program a little twist, beyond donations or community work, we wanted to get everyone involved. Our Staff, our clients and of course the receptors of the Social Benefits in this case, the children.

We may as well call it the Santa Claus syndrome. Our staff all participated in one way or another. Some of us got a check and got a taste of how it feels to go on a shopping spree in a big toy store- a fantasy maybe a couple of years late, but a fantasy nevertheless- were we shopped until we dropped.

Left to right - Lisbeth Ramos (Finance), Cora Alvarez (Assistant), Thaís López (Human Resources), Amny Guerra ( Business Development) Texel López (Consultant) Carlos Arocha (CEO)all posing with part of the toys in marketing office at our Caracas Headquarters.

Other members of our staff participated in the fun wrapping process while they imagined the faces of the receptors of the gifts. And Finally it was our clients turn to get involved.

We sent each of our customers one of these toys with the address of a different charity in charge of helping abandoned children, this way they could send the toy to the one of their choice. (and hopefully inspire them to take the same initiative next year). The marketing/social responsibility fantasy consisted in imaging a city full of grown ups receiving toys on December filling them with nostalgia and the gift o benefiting kids who need it.

In our Trinitarian office things were handled differently. Over there our working buddies had the pleasure of giving the toys directly to the kids.

In both ways the objective was reached. To Give another smile to the kids during the holidays.