For the fourth consecutive year, we  awarded the ‘HP Responsible Business Award’ to a student company in Europe last weekend. This year’s winner is the Lithuanian student team Greblys Company, which won the award for their environmental education offering. Congratulations to the team of five secondary school students!

The HP Responsible Business Award is given to the student company who has proved to be  the best at integrating strong financial performance, social responsibility, environmental excellence and innovation into their business plan and operations. The award is part of the HP Responsible Business Competition, an extension of the existing JA-YE Annual Company Programme which gives secondary school students the opportunity to prepare for working life through the experience of running their own company.

My colleagues and I spent this past weekend in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where we formed a special jury to interview this year’s 32 student companies that participated in the JA-YE Annual Company of the Year Competition. These companies are already winners in their own right, because the European Finals of the Company of the Year Programme only invite the national finalists. This year, it was especially difficult for our jury to judge the 32 companies as the majority of them fulfilled the criteria for our award, these being: 

• Social responsibility: meeting the wider concerns of stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, customers and local communities.
• Environmental excellence: preventing pollution, optimising resource efficiency and developing products with minimal environmental impact. Note: This is not just about producing a ‘green’ product. It’s also about how the environmental impact is reduced in operations and during the product lifecycle (from design to manufacturing and end-of-life/recycling).
• Innovation and Strong financial performance

So, at the end,it was a tough call and after two days of evaluating company reports, interviews, stage presentations and visiting stands at the fair, the Lithuanian students  convinced us of their comprehensive approach that incorporated both social and environmental responsibility. 

The team created a book and three computer games which are designed to help young children learn the basic principles of recycling in an easy and enjoyable way. Their products are unique to the Lithuanian market as environmental education through books and online games is unheard of. Greblys also sold the books to the main recycling companies, which then sold or donated them to customers and schools. Make sure you check out their website www.eko.mokinukai.lt.  As you can imagine, the team was over the moon, as no Lithuanian team had won a European student company competition before. The team will be rewarded with HP technology.

The HP Responsible Business Competition not only includes this award but it also has an online ideas competition. You may have read the blog from my colleague Ulrike Haug. This year, record-beating results were reached with over 300 students submitting their ideas.

Other elements of the competition include an online certification via the Responsible Business Website and school visits by HP employees. Overall, more than 100,000 students have benefited from the HP Responsible Business Competition since its inception in 2006. This year many HP employees volunteered their time  to work with these students and to be present at their schools. This is a great motivational activity that we, as the CSR team, can offer to our em ployees. So really, this is a win-win situation for both HP employees, the students and their teachers.

And just one further point,, I’d like to let you know that our colleagues in North and South America have seen the benefit of this kind of entrepreneurship skills education initiative and they have been deploying this programme in the Americas this year as well.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments, EMEA