Wow, time goes by quickly! As I look back on an exciting year, I would like to review some highlights of CSR at HP EMEA and I would also be keen to hear about your 2008 highlights. I think we can be particularly proud of what we have achieved with our partners in the areas of education and environment this year.

We have worked with WWF for more than a year now to investigate how information and communication technology (ICT) can help to combat climate change. This summer we published the ‘Low Carbon IT Solutions’ guide which summarises how carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can be reduced by using HP products.

A second environmental highlight is our e-waste project in Africa. ICT products can help to reduce carbon emissions but, at the end of their lifecycle, reuse or recycling is a critical factor in reducing the environmental burden. During the year we joined forces with the Global Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF), the Swiss Institute for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) and Recover-e-Alliance, Wasteplan and the Salesian Institute to investigate state-of-the-art recycling practices of electronic equipment and to evaluate further methods of how recycling processes can be approved. This is an exciting project and I hope to share updates with you early next year.

Talking about Africa, I would also like to highlight our collaboration with UNESCO. We have been working with UNESCO for a couple of years to alleviate brain drain in Africa. My colleage Arnaud introduced you to this programme some time ago. We are working with five universities in Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe to connect researchers who have left Africa with researchers who are still on the African continent to exchange knowledge and foster relationships.

Let me turn to our education highlights, which are also the result of strong partnerships. Our GET-IT (Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT) programme has really flourished in 2008. In addition to a successful partnership with MEA-I, we have also been working with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) since May to expand our GET-IT programme in Africa. With such a strong and reliable partner at hand, I am sure we can provide a lot of young graduates in African countries with useful business and IT skills which will help them to establish their own small enterprises and develop their job careers.

In the Autumn we successfully organised our first annual GET-IT conference in Brussels. As Daniela has summarized, the conference was a great success and we received valuable feedback from GET-IT participants, our partners and local non-governmental organisations. We have set high targets regarding GET-IT for the coming year. I am eager to reach all of them and I promise to share our achievements with you.

These are just a few of our highlights for 2008. If you would like to read more about our 2008 achievements, please go here.

I hope you have enjoyed our blogs in 2008 and I would like to invite you to send me any suggestions of what you would like to read more about in 2009.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA