The first ISO Prize was awarded earlier this week to Hulda Oliveira Giesbrecht for her work with small businesses in Brazil.
Opening up the world of standards was a key theme at this year’s ISO General Assembly in St Petersburg. Many of the discussions focused on how we can help people both to use standards and get involved in their development, and Hulda was rewarded for doing just that.
She was recognized for her work with micro and small businesses in Brazil, through the non-profit organization Sebrae where she works as a technical analyst.
Hulda Oliveira Giesbrecht receives the ISO Prize from Past President Boris Aleshin.
Sebrae’s mission is to help improve the competitiveness of small businesses and to foster entrepreneurship. This will help strengthen the national economy as small businesses make up 99% of all Brazilian enterprises and contribute to 25% of the country’s GDP. The organization provides support on many levels, for example with information technology and accessing finances. However, the project Hulda has been leading over the past few years concentrates on access to innovation and technology, through standards.
Access to technical knowledge
For Hulda, one of the biggest challenges for micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in Brazil is access to technical knowledge and this is where she believes standards can help.
“Standards represent the cutting edge of technical knowledge. If MSEs can have access to these documents and know how to use them, they can bring this knowledge into their business,” she explained, after the awards ceremony. But, she said, standards do not always address the sector specific needs of MSEs and they find it difficult to get involved in the process in order to shape it.
Therefore, five years ago Sebrae (working with ISO’s Brazilian member ABNT) established a project to help MSE’s better understand the benefits of using standards, identify their standardization needs and help them to get involved in the standards development process.
This project resulted in the identification of new areas of work and the establishment of ten new project committees in ABNT to develop standards that address the sector specific needs of MSEs, she explained.
Giving an example, she highlighted work that had been done to try to improve the efficiency of bee keeping and honey production.
“We started working with people in the bee keeping sector and we learned that there were problems with how to make beehives, which species of wood to use, and the size and shape of the hives. We worked with many parties to define a standard, most efficient way of making these hives. This knowledge is now available to bee keepers around the country, to help them improve their performance. Now the funds some Brazilian banks give out to these farmers to support their activities are tied to using this new standard. We have seen the honey yield go up significantly since introducing this standard,” she explained.