Paola Luksic: "I firmly believe in the capabilities, freedom and strength of people. It is they who will forge their future".

19 •  April •  2022
  • The president of the Luksic Foundation participates in the recently published book “Reimagining Chile”, by the consulting firm McKinsey, which brings together 50 visions on the challenges facing the country and the opportunities they see for the future.

 

“When it comes to reimagining Chile, I envision a country that seeks and creates solutions with people”, begins the intervention of Paola Luksic, president of the Luksic Foundation, in the recently published book “Reimagining Chile” by the consulting firm McKinsey.

The project brings together 50 visions on the challenges facing Chile and the opportunities they see for the future. Among the participants in the project are economists like Andrea Repetto, teachers and researchers like Ignacio Irarrázaval, entrepreneurs and executives like Francisco Pérez Mackenna, artists like Gonzalo Cienfuegos, conservationist Kristine Tompkins, among others who share their positions on issues such as sustainability, inclusion, collaboration, innovation or productivity.

The president of the Luksic Foundation expresses her vision of how to make Chile a fairer and more inclusive country. In that sense, she emphasizes that foundations and civil society organizations have a fundamental role to play in delivering comprehensive and effective solutions, co-creating with people in the process so that the solutions are precisely relevant and legitimate. “A Chile in which philanthropic initiatives are marked by excellence in the quality of their services, and therefore contribute to building trust among people and among the various spheres of our country,” he says in the text.

 On the future of philanthropy, Paola Luksic comments: “I firmly believe in the capabilities, freedom and strength of the people: it is they who will forge their future and make decisions based on their different experiences and convictions, and we must provide them with more and better opportunities”. To this he adds that he imagines that civil society organizations and foundations will continue to strengthen the connection with the different realities of the country.

“I imagine philanthropy deploying to the maximum the capacity to reach out with opportunities where society needs us, going with a sense of urgency, providing quality solutions and rigorous work,” he reflects.

Collaboration, methodology and participation

Paola Luksic highlights the crisis that exists in Chile in terms of social cohesion and trust in institutions, which has various causes and poses an important challenge. “We know that recovering interpersonal and institutional trust is an imperative to move towards a more harmonious society,” she says and says that it is “unthinkable” that a single actor can achieve relevant and legitimate solutions, that collaboration between different people and entities is essential.

“In this, foundations have the opportunity to serve as a bridge between citizens and decision makers, helping to make the reality of people and their communities part of the processes,” says Paola Luksic.

Regarding this need for collaboration, the representative of the Luksic family stresses the importance of ensuring the “effectiveness of philanthropy”, of having a methodology, with evidence and data for the definition of problems, for diagnoses and for the design of possible solutions. In any case, he reminds: “We must assume that there are no “miracle cures” to solve the current complexities, so specific and concrete proposals are required for each problem, flexibility to test or pilot, follow-up to understand the facilitators and obstacles to implementation, and willingness to adjust the proposals”.

As she has mentioned on other occasions, Paola Luksic reiterates the importance of collaboration between different actors and insists on the value that the answers to the problems “come from the territories themselves, their people, communities and local organizations”.