More and more companies are looking to make their incentive trips more meaningful for their participants by adding an opportunity to give back to the local communities.

In Argentina we have explored several options for different groups.

A dentists group, wanted to visit a free dental clinic in a shanty town to see how they work with disadvantaged children to give them a better chance in life.

For a women-only group, visit to a woman is shelter or help at a women-run small business (cooking empanadas, for instance)

A visit to a combined orphanage and old people is home, to take part in different artistic activities with the children and the old folk.

For a very mixed age group, we organized a morning helping at a food bank, where different teams sorted donated foodstuffs, checked expiration dates, re-packaged for delivery to soup kitchens or orphanages, and loaded up vans. The activity was followed by a finger-food lunch with the other workers to celebrate a job well done.

A group of doctors were coming out to Argentina and wished to give back to the community, but they had only very few days in Buenos Aires. One of the activities on their program was a day at a ranch on the outskirts of the city, with a gaucho demonstration. When they expressed an interest in a CSR activity, we proposed that they invite a group of low-income children from a shelter to share the day with them.

This particular shelter cares for children of low-income shantytown parents during the day, and sometimes several days, whilst their parents are working, in hospital or otherwise unable to care for them. These are children who often suffer from neglect, poverty, a lack of role models, and who certainly do not have many joyous moments in their lives.