CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa : Africa

Nigerian team selected as winners of HP Responsible Ideas Contest in Africa

ulrikehaug — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:41:00 GMT

You might remember previous blog entries about the 2009 Responsible Business Competition that we’re running with Junior Achievement (JA) Africa.

The latest milestone of this initiative is the selection of the winner of the African Responsible Ideas Contest, which took place in September. I’m pleased to tell you that the student team Black Diamond from Nigeria won first prize!

I was one of the panel of HP experts responsible for judging the finalists from the three participating countries (we’re running this contest as a pilot in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa this year) and it was a challenge to pick a winner out of all of the inspirational ideas that were submitted. On the panel, we had employees from the participating countries, from the HP CSR team and also two judges who had actually run student companies in the JA programme when they were still in school.

Black Diamond convinced the jury because they combined both social and environmental responsibility in their business idea. They had organised a rock concert in their home town of Lagos and used this event to raise awareness about HIV/Aids. They are also planning to use the proceeds of the event to implement a recycling scheme in their school and eventually their community.

I really enjoyed being on the panel of judges and working with JA in the three countries. It’s encouraging to see the various kinds of entrepreneurship education programmes that they offer to young people. If you know of any entrepreneurship initiatives for young people in Africa, please share them by posting a comment.

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes, HP EMEA

GET-IT growth in Africa and the Middle East

Daniela.Opp — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:57:00 GMT

Since May last year we have been working with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to grow our GET-IT programme in Africa and the Middle East. GET-IT is part of HP’s social investment strategy aimed at innovating teaching and learning to help young entrepreneurs achieve success in their future careers. The programme provides IT equipment, a cash donation, IT training and also ‘train-the-trainer’ sessions for trainers from our respective local partner organisations.

So far, HP and its partners have rolled the GET-IT programme out to nearly 100 centres in 30 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reaching more than 43,000 people through online and offline training courses. The plan is to grow GET-IT even further to reach over 500,000 young people by end of 2010.

I am happy to tell you that we are now opening another 20 new GET-IT centres in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The centres will be in Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. This figure more than doubles our GET-IT community in Africa and the Middle East.

The need for IT and entrepreneurship education in these regions is particularly high. UNIDO constitutes a strong partner for HP and has done an excellent job in selecting our GET-IT partners in Africa and the Middle East. You can find the list of our new partners in Africa and the Middle East here.

Our partner MEA-I will be holding ‘train-the trainer’ sessions for the trainers of our new GET-IT partner organisations over the next three months. The sessions are called ‘Guidance Courses’. They are held over five days and offer instructor-led, classroom-based and high interactive training, incorporating experiential learning methodologies.

The goal of this course is to provide trainers with the foundations in technical and facilitation skills and the knowledge required to conduct the GET-IT curriculum and training for students. Moving forward, we are looking to bring parts of the ‘train-the-trainer’ sessions online in due course.

I will soon be able to update you with other great new developments with the programme, starting with advanced online tools and games through to our annual networking conference which be held in October. So, stay tuned for more information on our flagship progamme GET-IT.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investment EMEA

GET-IT: Africa highlights

Daniela.Opp — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:51:00 GMT

I have already written a couple of entries about our Graduate Entrepreneurship Training in IT (GET-IT) Programme. Since its launch in 2007 we have opened up 100 centres in 30 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa and have already trained more than 43,000 students. We recently published an article about three GET-IT centres in Africa in our Global Citizenship Bulletin. Instead of repeating the article, I would like to encourage you to read it here. It shows you the experiences and impressions of three different NGOs which offer our GET-IT programme. Each one is different, but they all have the same goal: To teach young school leavers and undergraduates business skills with IT. Happy reading.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments, EMEA

2008 – strong partnerships are a key success factor

jeanne2007 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:10:00 GMT

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