He studied law, worked in marketing and was a national shooting champion. Why did he dedicate his time to social responsibility?
“Who will accompany me to Cajamarca?” his father asked. “Me, me, me,” his children said, raising their hands excitedly. That’s how Juan Manuel got to know Peru. His father was a salesman and traveled around the country, especially the markets. “The only way to have the service fiber is by knowing it. You won’t love Peru if you don’t know it,” he tells me.
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He was on his way to Jorge Chavez Airport to travel to Iquitos. Suddenly, the car began to move erratically. He turned on the radio and, sure enough, there was an earthquake, which was felt especially in Santa Maria de Nieva, Amazonas, near the border with Ecuador. “To have felt like this in Lima, this must have been a cataclysm in Amazonas,” thought Juan Manuel. And he changed direction towards the National Emergency Operations Center, where he has a place representing the entrepreneurs.
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Juan Manuel Arribas He is the executive director of the Hombro a Hombro association and will soon have a video column on the Perú21 platforms.
Abraham Levy, ‘The Weatherman’, has written about Hombro a Hombro that “it is the patriotic contest of dozens of companies, businessmen, and executives to assist our compatriots in the event of disasters.”
Many thanks to Abraham for those nice words. We have, in general, a business community that is very supportive and proactive when disasters occur, but before there was no entity that brought together all the companies to work as a team with the State. That is, instead of each company going its own way, trying to do the best it can, the idea now is to bring together the entire private sector, all the banks, all the mines, all the mass consumption companies, etc., and work in coordination with the authority, with the National Institute of Civil Defense (Indeci), which defines what to take, what not to take, and where. In this way, we make our performance immensely more efficient.
What they have already put to the test in the pandemic.
Since the 2017 Coastal El Niño, in the mudslides of Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna.
Would you say that your motivation is Peru?
Absolutely. I was a scout at school, we went to the provinces and then at university we formed student groups to worry about the national reality. I also participated in the Freedom Movement, led by Mario Vargas Llosa, we went to the provinces.
There is a leadership vocation, to be in the field.
It is also the education at school: the Jesuit who instills a lot of thinking about others.
Why study Law?
To try to fix things. But once I started practicing, I didn’t really like the course. I finished it and did a master’s degree at the University of Piura, where I discovered marketing, and I started practicing at Inca Kola. I worked in soft drinks for almost 10 years. While at Coca Cola, I moved to Alicorp, until Alicorp called me to set up the Social Responsibility area.
Should social responsibility be a cross-cutting issue in every organization?
Otherwise, it is not genuine. Am I responsible on one side and not on the other? These are not poses. Working well and being a good corporate citizen is a matter of essence; it is not a matter of “ah, from now on I am like this.” No. This is not a make-up, it is something intrinsic to the actions of a businessman or a company. If it is not genuine, it is not sustainable.
And people don’t believe it either.
Exactly! It is a question of reputation. Following the experience in El Niño Costero, the three most important business groups in the country, Breca, Intercorp and Gloria, decided and called us to Business Solutions against Poverty (an NGO that we formed with Pedro Olaechea and Lucho Salazar with the idea of supporting the State in matters of public policy management) and asked us to launch a business front in the face of disasters. That is where Hombro a Hombro was born.
Beyond being a job, why do it?
I think there is a vehemence, an obsession with taking care of our people. If we have, as a society, the possibility of doing something to minimize that cost, why not do it? Dr. Arellano did a study during the pandemic and showed that Peruvian businessmen supported several times more in percentage terms of GDP than the North American private sector, for example, when the pandemic occurred. So, if we have a private sector that genuinely helps, many of them without coming into the spotlight, why not get together and make the issue more efficient?
At home, doesn’t your family ask you to have a more ‘conventional’ job, not related to national emergencies?
I have the maximum support of my family.
You came to this interview with your son and that says something too… Like your father when he took you out of Lima…
Look, that’s so nice, it makes me very excited… What happens is that from here we go to the simulation in the Plaza Mayor of Lima.
Those father-son moments stay with you. Maybe that’s why you’re now dedicated to this work of social responsibility…
I hadn’t seen it that way, but it’s a point… Today my father is 96 years old and my mother is 91.
What do they tell you about the work you do?
They are happy…
Self-portrait:
-“I am Juan Manuel Arribas Berendsohn, I am 55 years old. I was born in Piura. In 1976 we came to Lima, when I was 7 years old, my father was transferred to work in Lima. I studied Law. I did a Masters in Business Administration. Today, Hombro a Hombro is a group of 72 companies.”
-“The information we are going to provide in the video column of Peru21 is extremely important and focuses on the following fact: when major disasters occur, we will not have rescuers nearby; each family will have to take care of itself.”
-“We are responsible for identifying safe areas in the house, evacuation routes, knowing where to go, knowing what to do, and each one has to spread these ideas to the neighbors. In the video column we will give useful tips to use in families, which is the most valuable thing we have beyond the material.”
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