GTE’s successful Key Partners program has evolved from a simple award given to the best performing vendors into an integrated, multi-stage program with five components. This program has led to tremendous growth in the capabilities, capacity and competitiveness of vendors in the areas where the company operates.

GTE’s Key Partners program helps supply chain partners develop their technical and administrative capabilities. Key Partners includes educational programs tailored to the needs of local suppliers in partnership with well-respected academic institutions and regional Chambers of Commerce. Key Partners also facilitates relationships between contractors and local suppliers, fostering a growing ecosystem of opportunities for area businesses. Performance evaluations measure, recognize, and reward outstanding vendors.

Components of Key Partners

• Developing close, beneficial relationships with existing and potential vendors through continuous contact with dedicated company staff. This ensures ongoing dialogue and alignment between vendor and company.
• Dedicated high-value training offered to managers and owners of vendor companies delivered in partnership with regional Chambers of Commerce.
• Supply Chain standards that ensure GTE’s contractors are also sourcing from local suppliers.
• Performance evaluations that measure, recognize and reward outstanding vendors.
• Facilitating relationships between contractors and local suppliers to foster a growing ecosystem of opportunities for area businesses.

Gran Tierra’s Commitment to our Key Partners

• Economic Growth
  Gran Tierra Energy promotes free competition as a constitutional right. This encourages local businesses to provide higher quality goods and services not only to our operations, but also to Colombia.
• Education Development
  Gran Tierra develops educational programs tailored to the needs of our local suppliers. Through these programs we are providing opportunities for educational advancement with well-respected academic institutions.
• Improved Networking
  We provide our Key Partners with full access to the database for commercial opportunities with Gran Tierra and our contractors.
• Sustainable Relationships
  Gran Tierra recognizes the importance of sustaining strong relationships with our suppliers and contractors through our Key Partners program. We are always willing to listen and assist our Key Partners.

Members of the Key Partners Program are Expected To:

• Offer high quality goods and services.
• Submit competitive proposals, both in price and quality, when invited to bid.
• Be a collaborative partner with the goal of ensuring that GTE operations are carried out safely and accurately.
• Respect corporate decisions made by GTE or its contractors.
• Understand and apply GTE’s human rights and anti-corruption policies in their business practices.
• Participate in activities developed by GTE aimed at strengthening business skills.

“GTE recognized our capability to take on more responsibilities and gave us the training we needed to grow. After GTE arrived, people moved from illegal crops and armed groups to finding jobs and educating themselves to become businessmen, doctors, and technicians. Before we had wood shacks with thatched roofs, and now we have cement houses, paved roads, community and health centres.”

JOHN JAIRO MEZA CABEZAS

Partner, Soluciones Integrales J.M., Puerto Limón, Putumayo

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GTE continues to increase opportunities for local contractors and suppliers through a strategy focusing on putting local companies first to meet its needs for goods and services, only expanding its search beyond the locality if no qualified providers are available. Local vendors are an important driver of regional economies, as GTE’s contributions circulate well beyond its direct supply chain.

Providing opportunities for local businesses to participate and evolve with GTE’s operations is a fundamental value. Significant investments have been made in training, education and operations to drive economic growth and build a reliable supply chain through its award-winning Key Partners program.

“GTE’s contributions to our community have made it into an incredible partner for us, and now we are seeing results materialize. Our municipality is stronger as a result of the dialogue, agreements and social endeavours that we have worked on together.”

Rubén Darío Villabona Pérez

Former Mayor, Rionegro

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Emprender+, GTE’s signature entrepreneurship-based social investment project, is a critical component of GTE’s efforts to address local economic challenges. For the last several years, the program has created opportunities for people to strengthen their businesses and launch new companies while bolstering local economies in Colombia’s Middle Magdalena Valley and Putumayo regions.

Emprender+ provides technical training, business management guidance, and seed capital along with recognition for innovative business ideas and execution. The program, carried out in partnership with the World Corporation for Women in Colombia (CMMC), also helps entrepreneurs navigate the technical, administrative and management challenges of operating a small business. The popularity of the program has grown steadily and rapidly from 30 to over 200 participating entrepreneurs since its inception, and over 2,000 people registered to participate since the program started in 2021. Free online training sessions were created for the additional participants who were unable to join the full program.

In 2023, all program participants received seed capital for their businesses and 79% of Emprender+ participants are women.

For more information on Emprender+ visit the program’s website here.

“The program helped me immensely with all the aspects of a small business and the support helped me grow my ice cream business. Since then, I’ve been able to expand and buy better equipment, and I hope to build my own shop someday.”

JOHANN ALVAREZ

Founder of Win Win Helados Artesanales

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After more than 50 years of conflict between the Colombian government and guerrilla forces ended in 2016, creating new, legal economic opportunities was essential to maintaining the peace effort. The cacao industry was identified as a significant opportunity because it offers a legal alternative to the many farmers who grow illicit coca. Colombia produces a particularly fine grade of cacao (the seeds from which chocolate is made), which is in short supply in world markets.

Agroemprende does this through the development of three key areas of the market chain. The first area is through the strengthening of local farmer cooperative associations, known in Colombia as “local associative enterprises”, in five Putumayo municipalities. These ground-based producer associations will come together to pool their production and will aggregate purchases, storage, and distribution taking advantage of volume discounts and utilizing other economies of scale.

Second, farmer associations are connected to new collection and purchasing points that are managed by producer associations. These collection centres are located strategically among member farms to receive dried cacao beans from association members and neighbouring cacao producers. The centres will not only collect the dried cacao beans, but they will also buy the dried beans directly from the farmers and then sell the gathered volumes to large scale buyers and local markets – replacing the role of intermediaries, who usually profit significantly more than the farmers themselves.

Finally, the Agroemprende program created one large regional cooperative association that gathers and represents local farmer associations. The regional cooperative association increases access to markets and competitiveness for local farmers. Cacao crops are negotiated at a larger economy of scale and have competitive access to national markets.

In 2023, Agroemprende surpassed its four-year goal to fortify over 400 cacao farmers in Putumayo and contribute to regional peace and stability by helping develop a thriving cacao industry as an alternative to illicit crops. GTE has committed over $5 million USD through 2025 to the initiative which supports cacao growing family enterprises with equipment, seedlings, materials, and training.

In 2023, the Agroemprende program offered a competition to encourage students to learn about cacao cultivation. The winners were selected to attend an all-expenses paid trip to visit The Salon du Chocolat, a massive trade fair in Paris that welcomes more than 100,000 global visitors. Jhency Pesillo, member of Villagarzón cacao association ASOPROCAVIP, was one of the 2023 winners of the competition.

“In Paris, I learned and experienced too much for words! The cacao program taught the farmers a lot about growing quality products and kept us standing strong. I’m excited to use this opportunity to cultivate high-quality cacao to continue to be able to support my studies and future career.”

Jhency Pesillo

Villagarzón, member ASOPROCAVIP and winner of the AgroEmprende Youth Competition, Putumayo

Project Highlights

• The Agroemprende Cacao project had set a target to intervene with 400 cocoa-growing families, which was achieved during 2023, benefiting a total of 419 families.
• The pre-cooperative Kausai Sacha was formed by 8 cocoa producer organizations, establishing itself as the main cocoa buyer in the lower Putumayo, achieving a sales volume of 322,612 tons of cocoa as of November 2023, totaling COP 3,869 million.
• Beneficiaries are from Puerto Asís, Puerto Caicedo, Mocoa, Villagarzón and Puerto Guzmán.
• 80% of the financial execution has been completed. Technical goals for implementing new areas, renewing areas, and post-harvest systems were achieved at 100%. The technical staff provides support and advice to the crops.
• The Agroemprende initiative has a specific focus on the empowerment and resilience of women in the cacao business by developing and strengthening their technical capabilities. It also facilitates female access to land tenure so that they can become direct beneficiaries of existing and upcoming programs.
• It wasn’t until 2022, that Putumayo cacao was sold for the first time ever at the Chocoshow, an international exhibition in the city of Bogotá. This changed the narrative that Putumayo cacao could not compete with quality standards from other regions.

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Works for Taxes (WFT) is a program created by the Colombian government that allows GTE to use up to 50% of its income tax contributions to directly develop and implement local projects that improve livelihoods, support economic development and help stabilize territories most affected by poverty and the previous armed conflict. WFT is also an important component of Colombia’s Territorially Focused Development Programs (PDETs) following the 2016 peace agreement signed between the FARC-EP guerrilla movement and the Colombian government. The PDETs are a vital tool for rural development and lasting territorial peace that empowers local communities to decide how funds should be invested in their territories.

GTE’s participation in Colombia’s Works for Taxes program allows income taxes to be invested directly into priority areas, within the communities in the area of influence of GTE’s operations, that address social inequality—such as food security, health, education, and road enhancements.

Since 2018, Gran Tierra Energy has invested more than $3.6 million USD in the PDET municipalities of Putumayo. In 2023, GTE identified four new Works for Taxes projects that are to be developed over the next two years. The projects, with an aggregate value of $14.2 million USD, were chosen by local communities in consultation with GTE employees, and are awaiting final Government approval. The projects will be implemented in Villagarzón, Mocoa, Puerto Asís, Orito, and Valle del Guamuez municipalities, and are estimated to benefit more than 22,000 people.

One example of a previous Work for Taxes project implemented by Gran Tierra Energy included providing cafeteria upgrades to hundreds of local schools. Through this project GTE provided kitchen equipment including refrigerators, freezers and ovens as well as tables and chairs for 152 school cafeterias through the WFT program. These projects benefitted over 12,000 students and teachers, supporting increased food security for local students, as the participating schools now have the ability to store and prepare nutritious food, keeping students in school longer.

Other projects include improving sanitation infrastructure in multiple communities, and upgrading roads to connect thousands in the rural communities between Campo Alegre and Puerto Vega-Teteyé.

“As a rural community, Works for Taxes is so important to keep the benefits here, and allows us to focus on improving our transportation infrastructure. The project has had a huge impact, and we are looking forward to extending this collaboration to continue changing the lives of our people and helping them envision a different future.”

SEGUNDO RUBIEL SOLARTE

President, Jac Santa Maria Medio

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