“Participating in Fundación MAPFRE’s volunteering program helps you be a better person”

Angela Paola Polania Ruiz is one of the most active Fundación MAPFRE volunteers
in Colombia.

TEXT & PHOTOS: MAPFRE COLOMBIA

Angela has been working at MAPFRE COLOMBIA for ten years – this last year as an underwriter – within the Industrial, Aviation and Marine Risk area. She could be considered an ambassador for the organization, given her participation and hearty recommendations for others to join the Corporate Volunteering program. In her own words, “you not only help others or the environment, but you also help yourself to be a better person.”

This MAPFRE employee has participated in a wide range of activities. These include delivering gifts to neglected children, organizing thematic activities, accompanying children under the age of ten on kite-flying excursions with the Fana Foundation, adopting trees to see they receive the necessary treatment and can thus live longer, constructing prefabricated homes for low-income families, or teaching within the ‘Brindando Oportunidades para la Vida Laboral’ program headed by MAPFRE COLOMBIA to train people with disabilities, vulnerable youngsters and single mothers through various programs designed to enhance the employability of these segments of the population.

As for her favorite activity, Angela stresses that “it’s really hard to choose one, as all the programs are so different.” However, two are of particular relevance for her: the activities with children and the construction of homes for low-income families. This is because “a child hugging you and saying that it’s the best day of their life, or seeing a family cry with joy because you’ve built a roof over their heads, is truly priceless.”

Fundación MAPFRE makes you an “agent of change”

MAPFRE COLOMBIA’s Corporate Volunteering program enables Angela to see the needs that exist in society and make her contribution. And it is not just her, but her relatives and colleagues also become “agents of change”. “Volunteering in MAPFRE is an invitation to take off our blindfolds and not limit ourselves to worrying about our own obligations, but also feel the needs of others as our own.”

Angela is proud of the MAPFRE volunteering program and highlights the fact that it is “ever stronger and more important within the company, but, above all, the significant impact it makes on those institutions they turn to.” “MAPFRE is planning to participate in even more programs and this is important, given that the more people we help, the better the result will be.”