A Geneva-based IT company receives the first DSF label

Put your money where your mouth is! This could be the creed of Moroccan engineer Jamal Bencheikh. Bencheikh is founder of ilem SA, a data-processing services company that seeks to connect trade with sustainable development. The young director of this service company, established in Geneva in 2001, is the first private entrepreneur to obtain the digital solidarity label. This distinction is conferred by the DSF to all private companies that adopt the «Geneva principle», the Fund’s financing mechanism.

It was through a call for bids from the City of Geneva (founding member of the DSF) for data-processing services that Jamal Bencheikh discovered digital solidarity. The condition posed by the local authority is that the winning bidder pays 1% of the amount of the contract to the DSF. The director of ilem SA sees here the possibility of applying concretely his strategy of sustainable development. «It was the crossroads between an opportunity and our identity», explains the director. «The term solidarity is dear to us; it is part of our company culture». Indeed, Jamal Bencheikh forgets neither that he comes from a developing country, nor that he opened his business following the restructuring of the data-processing department of a large Swiss company. For him, open-mindedness must inspire his activity, leading to true development project based on human values.

Jamal Bencheikh wants to go further in his collaboration with the DSF, by developing a data-processing project in the social area, based in an emerging country. The balance between economic growth and the safeguard of values appears to him to be the true challenge. «Trade must be made intelligent and responsible; we cannot think locally any longer. The development of others is part of us, thanks to a more balanced competition, the opening of new markets, of new exchanges. It is no longer possible to think that in order to gain, others must lose. Even at the local level, even on a modest scale, solidarity has a positive return». Sounds a little like that famous maxim, «think globally; act locally».