What does GIIRS certification mean to you? Don’t mean to be glib, but click on the link and do the research if you are not familiar with this social and environmental impact assessment system.  For Playa Viva, part of going through GIIRS certification was taking our “game up a notch” when it comes to measuring our impact on the local community, especially when it comes to our supply chain.

[slideshare id=16521528&w=427&h=356&sc=no]

Last summer, Monica Oyarzun, lead a project that involved tracking our suppliers and documenting how our own supply chain meets the demands of the social impact investment community. See the slideshow below including photos of various partners in our supply chain including vendors of fruits and vegetables, meats and poultry, cheese and milk as well as various excursion providers.

In addition to the GIIRS process, we are now more closely tracking our impact on suppliers, starting with changes to our accounting system to more closely track expenditures by each vendor. While this adds overhead to our already hard working hospitality team, we hope to plug this data into methodology developed by the Overseas Development Institute to study our impact in our local community and be able to compare to other similar projects globally. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is the UK’s leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues.