• Through Alianza Soluciones and the Taparales Project, it is making a contribution to building peace by supporting communities that lived through the armed conflict.
• SURA is also involved in initiatives that contribute to the collective memory of the conflict so as to counteract hate speech.
• Supporting organizations with regard to initiatives aimed at peace-building, reconciliation, memory and truth form part of the investments that the SURA Foundation has made so far this year.

 With regard to the nation-wide discussion on new ways to end the armed conflict in Colombia, SURA understands that building peace and encouraging reconciliation is a task involving everyone. This is why, as an organization we have historically assumed a commitment to collective solutions aimed at producing knowledge, building a stronger democracy, strengthening social fabric and offering opportunities for civic training and participation.

 "We are corporate citizens and that means that through our individual lines of business, the relationships we cultivate and the initiatives we support, we have a responsibility to be an organization that creates public value for society. Here at the SURA Foundation, we have supported alliances between institutions for carrying out projects and initiatives that allow us to promote scenarios of peace, coexistence and the construction of social fabric on issues that involve us all," said Maria Mercedes Barrera, Manager of Corporate Citizenship at Grupo SURA and the Executive Director of the SURA Foundation.

Alianza Soluciones: employment, inclusion and social fabric
Alianza Soluciones is a business initiative in which the SURA Foundation participates together with other partners throughout the country with the aim of promoting employability, providing training, encouraging entrepreneurship and labor inclusion among people who have lived through the armed conflict.

The SURA Foundation helps with the process of systematizing the program as well as its strategic direction, which already this year has hired 106 people in the companies forming this Alliance, thereby  strengthening their diversity and inclusion models, and supporting 25 ventures.

 "When you form part of an armed group at the age of thirteen, you are not allowed to plan your life or have life projects, the only thing you have to do is to follow instructions, without being able to think about what you really want or what you like. Ten years later, when I decided to demobilize, I began to tread an uncertain, difficult and fearful path until I had the opportunity to work with Alianza Soluciones. People and companies must open up to changing their prejudices so as to build more possibilities, since the mistakes we make due to lack of opportunities cannot define the rest of our lives," said Gloria, one of the participants of the Alianza Soluciones initiative.

Another case is that of Édisson Vergara, an entrepreneur dedicated to the production and marketing of coffee in the south of the Department of Huila. "I am part of the reincorporation process. Thanks to the second chance I have been given, today I have my own company, I am moving forward and managing to employ many people", says Édisson, who owns 18 hectares of land with 75 thousand coffee trees of five different varieties.

Just like the stories of Gloria and Édisson, there are many others that are woven into the efforts of Alianza Soluciones. This demonstrates that peace is not only an urgent need, but a shared commitment for supporting the process of  a more effective reinsertion and reintegration into society.

 Taparales: a peace signatories' productive project
Together with other partners, the SURA Foundation is providing its support to 93 peace signatories and their families in productive agricultural projects in Dabeiba (Antioquia), so as to be able to facilitate the economic and community reincorporation of former FARC members who joined the region´s peace process. "Taparales is something that we feel very happy and excited about, because we finally have what we have always dreamed of: land. Land means a wealth of life and hope for us," said Francisco Tuberquia, a former combatant and participant in the project.

Taparales currently has 10 hectares of cocoa, 4 fish farming ponds with a productive potential of 12,000 fish, 10.6 hectares of lemon trees, technical training in beekeeping, among other projects. In addition to the local village community as well as the peace signatories, members of the Emberá indigenous community also participate. This has been made possible on a 270-hectare plot of land that was donated along with other companies so that the peace signatories could receive training, start their productive projects and today become an example of peace and territorial development.

 With initiatives such as these, the SURA Foundation has joined up to forge paths aimed at addressing the country´s social problems, supported by organizations that promote a culture of reconciliation and coexistence. This also has an additional purpose of encouraging conversation and putting relevant issues on the public agenda so that people can understand and adapt these to their own situation.

Memory- and peace-building initiatives
The SURA Foundation was also involved this year in cultural initiatives relating to the process of appropriating the final report issued by the Colombian Commission for Clarifying the Truth, this in order to raise awareness of its contents among different audiences in the country.

Furthermore, SURA was one of the organizations that contributed to make possible the "El Testigo” (the Witness) collection , which in all its 1,372 pages gathers more than 700 photographs taken by Jesús Abad Colorado during three decades, in the form of a work of remembrance of the different realities of the armed conflict. In the words of its author, this publication is important from the standpoint of the future "because we cannot pass on hatred and violence to the next generations, but rather hope".

Finally, Grupo SURA is promoting the project "From the mountain to democracy" in Vistahermosa (Meta), this selected from the Pensar Con Otros 2021 call for proposals for building citizenship and democracy in Colombia. This transmedia project gathers 15 life stories of people who lived through the armed conflict.

With a publication, conversations and a traveling exhibition, it raises awareness regarding the social integration of signatories of the Peace Accord while counteracting narratives of polarization and stigmatization. Indeed, this exhibition is on display, until November 3, at the Suramericana Art Gallery, located at its headquarters in Medellin.