Goodbye 2007- welcome 2008! - CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa -
CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa » Goodbye 2007- welcome 2008!
Goodbye 2007- welcome 2008!
I would like to use the turn of the year to look back at some of the highlights of 2007 and look forward to an exciting year 2008.

My colleague Rita Sully has already summarized the most significant highlights in 2007 on her blog: Corporate Social Responsibility in APJ. I do not want to repeat her points and I therefore focus on our Global Citizenship achievements in 2007 in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

2007 started with a great compliment: In January we received the AXA Sustainability Award for HP´s CSR strategy for our long term commitment on CSR.

2007 was dominated by discussions and publications around climate change. I am sure it will continue to be discussed in 2008. Our partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has progressed a lot last year. Together with experts from WWF we focus on how ICT solutions can help to combat climate change. The highlights of 2007 were the various internal events at HP sites in different EMEA countries to raise awareness of the problem of climate change and to encourage our employees to be part of the solution.

A second initiative which is worth mentioning is the launch of our electronic waste project in Africa in collaboration with the Global Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) and the Swiss Institute for Materials Science and Technology (Empa). The project aims at a blueprint for electronic waste management in Africa. I will surely keep you up-to-date how that project processes in the course of 2008.

Besides our environmental activities, I would like to reflect on an important milestone in 2007 within Social Investment. Unemployment is most acute for the age group that represents our future. We believe that micro-enterprise development is one of the most effective ways of creating jobs. Therefore we launched our ‘Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT’ (GET-IT) programme in May which aims at supporting the development of business and IT skills to foster the creation of entrepreneurs and to address the problem of unemployment and low economic growth in the region. In its first year GET-IT aims to reach 6,000 graduates through its 35 training centers in EMEA. In 2008, the plan is to extend the GET-IT centers to all together 70 training institutions to deliver training programme to 15,000 students in approximately 30 EMEA countries.

2007 has been an exciting year with progress within our partnership projects and the launch of new programmes in the area of environment and social investment. We continued our work with Junior Achievement Young Enterprise (JA-YE) and we just recently signed an official partnership with UNESCO. I am looking forward to more exciting projects and activities this year. Welcome to 2008!

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA
Posted 01-30-2008 8:52 AM by BlogArchive
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