STM Vale - Sumbawa Timur Mining, Indonesia

The Problem

Being in the exploration stage for a few years already, STM Vale – Sumbawa Timur Mining experienced difficulties with the local communities including roadblocks and dissatisfaction with the company’s (positive as well as negative) impacts. It was difficult for the site team to fully understand where the real cause of the difficulties lay.

Voconiq Local Voices was recommended to STM Vale by Yamana Gold as a solution to understand, assess and monitor social performance.

The Solution

Voconiq Local Voices was rolled out in December 2021. Working with a local data collection company, quarterly surveys are conducted in the seven villages around the current exploration and future operational site.

To support the local team with the development of their social impact strategy and to realise the full benefit of the Local Voices results and insights, a hands-on workshop was done in Indonesia in November 2022. Workshop themes included social impact 101, social risk and data literacy.

Distributional Fairness is one of the main drivers of the company’s social acceptance. However, at first, it was difficult for the Community Engagement Team to translate survey insights into actions to improve their Distributional Fairness. Communities were unhappy about how benefits were allocated, especially jobs, and community investments.

In a social license strategy workshop, the following actions were developed:

Equity instead of equality: previously the team tried to allocate benefits equally amongst the 7 villages around their operations. Now they allocate benefits proportional to the negative impacts for each village – the closest village has the highest negative environmental impacts, hence, also has a higher allocation of social investment funds.
Transparency: to combat the dissatisfaction that people have who missed out on job opportunities, the HR process and hiring criteria will be published on a one-page document. Everyone can see and understand why certain people are selected and how to increase their chances for a job next time. Job ads are also strongly promoted locally.
Distributional Fairness is complex and needs a whole of company approach. Instead of trying to solve community issues only by themselves, the Community Engagement Team is discussing survey results and community issues with multiple departments to fully understand the issue and cross-connection with other departments. This makes it easier to find solutions that address the root cause of the problem.
They have objective measures, e.g., number of engagements per village, to ensure fair distribution of engagement activities across villages and across community sub-groups.
Establish a checklist for community engagement activities to better handle (unrealistic) expectations; this establishes a common process and standard. It includes things like being responsive (maximum turnaround time, updates), accountable (my issue to follow-up), explaining next steps and what to expect (not overpromising).

The Impact

The Local Voices data, especially the STM specific Trust Model, helped the site team to understand the underlying concerns of the community. Now knowing which issues will drive their social license, they concentrated on the items that are most important for the community and can already see significant improvements in the relationship, as reflected in Local Voices data.

The in-person workshop increased the team’s data literacy and established a process to work as a team effectively with the data. It also highlighted areas of risks and next steps to improve their social performance.