CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa : Social Entrepreneurship

Junior Achievement – HP Responsible Business Award – Example Slovakia

jeanne2007 — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:19:00 GMT

My colleague from Slovakia, Roman, summarises his JA-YE experiences. Enjoy! Jeannette

Junior Achievement – HP Responsible Business Award – Example Slovakia

How I participated in the JA - YE – HP Responsible Business Award programme

When I found the invitation to participate in the HP Responsible Business Award programme in my company mail in January, I was surprised and did not have any idea about what it was all about. However, focus on the education of young people and the education system as such made me think. For many years I have worked at the university; my children attend primary and secondary schools and therefore I can keep a good track of education in general. We’ve got used to the fact that our school system is built on a principle of punishing mistakes. When we were little and learned to walk, we used to fall. People around us encouraged us, saying: “Nothing happened, never mind, it will heal up, do not be afraid!” So we fell and cried and then we stood up and tried it again. And suddenly we got it. We learned from our mistakes and today we walk and only a few people remember their first tumbles. When we go to school, our trials and tribulations are ’marked’. There is nothing wrong with the marking process as such, but they are noted … JA-YE is interesting because it uses an education system built on a different principle.

Junior Achievement (JA) - What does it mean?

JA provides young people in Slovakia with above standard economic education through practical programmes. Thanks to the interconnection of an entrepreneurial sector and professional approach, the students have the opportunity to participate in ethical decision-making and orientation in a free market economy, even before entering the working process. The programmes support economic and business thinking and offer preventative solutions for youth employment. I found out that, for three years in succession, HP and Junior Achievement Young Enterprise (JA-YE) – the biggest student network focused on business education – had organised the HP Responsible Business Competition. Secondary students participating in the programme ‘Applied Economy’ learn how to manage a business responsibly, simulating a real company with everything that belongs to it.

Student Company Fair

The Student Company Fair is a climax of the work created by the student companies within the education programme ‘Applied Economy’. For students, it is a unique opportunity to present the results of the work that they had been doing for the past months: existing business activities, products, services, approaches to company management, selected marketing strategies and financial management. The competition has several categories and includes a special category awarded by Hewlett-Packard– the HP Responsible Business Award – an award for the student company that carries out responsible business.

My participation in the Fair

This year I had the privilege of participating in the Student Company Fair as a member of the jury. I have participated in several fairs in Slovakia as well as abroad. However, I did not know what to expect from a Student Company Fair. But I had big expectations. The fact that 150 young people were willing to work outside their obligatory school subjects was an indication of their enthusiasm, passion, new ideas and solutions. 28 student companies from central and eastern Slovakia presented skills that cannot be easily achieved at ordinary schools. These included the basics of marketing, management, economics, wages accounting and taxes. They also demonstrated their presentation skills, winning support for their own business intents. They showed leadership and - the most important thing - they showed how young businessmen can discover a new world, assume responsibility not only for their own lives, but also for the lives of their close friends, and how they can perceive activities in a broader context - in the context of school, town, country or on a global level. The participants presented a broad scale of activities, services and products. This year student companies organised social events, entertainment programmes, programmes for elder people, Christmas, St. Nicolas programmes, angel letters. The assortment of services included an operation of school buffets, laminating works, organising sport and tourist trips, advertising and decorative items (e.g. arranging t-shirts, paintings on glass and bottles). In the area of products we could see many souvenirs, paperweights made of coloured stones, decorative items made of secondary materials, paper, wood, photo frames and coloured stones. There were also environmentally friendly products: a press for PET bottles, products from used paper. At the Fair we could also taste sweets and drinks. The broad spectrum included artistic activities – we heard guitars and singing; we saw dance performances and an extraordinary interest was taken in an original movie about a young drug addict returning to ordinary life.

HP Responsible Business Award - awarded to the company EQUALITE

The HP Responsible Business Award was awarded to the company EQUALITE from Dubnica nad Váhom, which introduced a prototype of simple equipment intended for the multiple reduction in volume of PET bottles. There are already similar products on the market. But this solution is interesting because the product itself has been made of waste material. A strong focus on ecology was also presented by another product – a hand-knitted basket made of waste paper. By its size and design, this basket is suitable for storing small items, such as sweets. The company captured our attention by its professional and responsible approach to business. The creation of their business vision, strategy and philosophy was inspired by 14 management principles according to Henry Fayol. Right from the beginning they presented their business in an international context. They actively participated in the project ’Global Active Schools’ - a partnership between organisations in seven countries (Austria, Czech Republic, England, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Thailand). The aim of this project is to combine the unique potential of schools in solving current world problems. I am convinced that representatives of the company EQUALITE have an opportunity to represent the principles of responsible business with dignity on an international level.

My impressions

Our company HP actively participates in programmes called JA-YE. I think that, as consultants, we have a big responsibility to guide our future businessmen and employees to focus on broad IT opportunities in the company and the extraordinary meaning of socially responsible behaviour in this area.

Final reflection

After the Fair I had mixed feelings. On one side I had a very good feeling that there are still many enthusiasts among teachers who are willing to devote themselves to teaching young people beyond their ordinary obligations. There are still some people who consider their job as their mission. You might say: “It is their job, they get money for it”. It’s true. But the people concerned also know that social recognition on the lowest level and economic recognition corresponds with social prestige. After the Fair I realised that urgent changes must be made. We - individuals, employees of successful companies, managers of the same companies, society, political parties and government – can make changes. It's not just about money. It is about our culture, our attitude towards ourselves and the problems that surround us.

Roman Kazicka, Solution Architect, HP Software & Solutions, HP Slovakia

If you want to save the world, become an entrepreneur!

jeanne2007 — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:25:00 GMT

During last week’s European SME Week, JA-YE (Junior Achievement Young Enterprise) and the European Commission launched the education campaign ’Your World – Your Buiness’ to inspire school students across Europe to become responsible entrepreneurs. “If you want to save the world, become an entrepreneur”, was how Tom Dodd from DG Enterprise summarised the mission of the campaign during a press conference. ’Entrepreneurs are the world´s change makers. They are responsible for innovations. And they need to take more responsibility in society”.

It’s easy to say, but how do we attract more youngsters to pursue social and environmental business ideas? Well, we probably need to start pretty early to shape the attitudes of the next generation of business people, which leads us to focus on schools. This is why DG Enterprise is collaborating in this campaign with JA-YE – the largest student network organisation in Europe, to address entrepreneurialism in schools. Offering targeted education programmes for different age groups, JA-YE together with employees from established enterprises like HP has been teaching students to become successful in business for several years.

But this is only one side of the story. Financial success is of course key for any entrepreneur to survive in global competition. But how can an entrepreneur come up with a successful and sexy business idea that is fun and also helps to successfully differentiate a company? This is where values and social and environmental business aspects come into the equation.

Working with JA-YE, HP launched the ’HP Responsible Business Competition’ in 2006 to motivate more students to develop responsible business ideas and to award best practices. On a yearly basis, the most exciting student ideas are selected as part of an online competition and during a European competition. So far more than 60,000 students have participated in the competition. Together with other successful young entrepreneurs, the winners of the 2008 HP Responsible Business Competition were invited to Brussels last week to present their business idea to an EU audience.

The first best practices are in place but, as part of the campaign, the EU is of course looking for many more. This is why in the coming weeks an education package for teachers, including a brochure and video materials available in 24 languages, will be distributed to 60,000+ schools across Europe. Following the teaching exercises at schools, students will be asked to participate in the Responsible Business Competition to be awarded for their most responsible ideas.

It is pretty inspirational and definitely entrepreneurial that the European Commission launched the campaign ’Your World - Your Business’ last week. Such out-of-the-box thinking from the Commission is required to highlight positive aspects of doing business and to further strengthen Europe’s competitiveness in a challenging economic environment, where entrepreneurs are pressured even more to preserve and create jobs.

Congratulations to the Commission and to JA-YE for launching this excellent campaign! We are keen to get additional comments on this approach and of course to further raise awareness. Now it’s your turn!

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

European SME Week: JA-YE and European Commission launch campaign for young entrepreneurs

Daniela.Opp — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:58:00 GMT

I would quickly like to draw your attention to this year’s European Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Week in Brussels which is taking place now up until 14 May. During the European SME week there will be over 1000 events in over 35 countries. You cannot miss it.

My colleague Jeannette Weisschuh was attending one of the events yesterday: the launch of the initiative ’Your World, Your Business’. This initiative was developed by the European Commission and Junior Achievement Young Enterprise (JA-YE) Europe to encourage young people to become creative, dynamic and responsible entrepreneurs of the future. You can find additional information on ’Your World, Your Business’ here.

Students participating in the ’Your World, Your Business’ campaign are asked to submit their ideas to the JA-YE Europe and HP ’Responsible Business Competition ’. Through this competition we want to encourage young people to consider social and environmental responsibility as they build their own small enterprises. Last year’s winner, the Austrian student company Infotainment , were on hand at yesterday’s launch to share their experiences with the audience. Students can submit their business ideas at www.responsible-business.org/europe/.

I strongly believe that, in the current economic climate, entrepreneurs are even more important for job preservation and creation. We should try to support entrepreneurship wherever we can. Another one of our social investment programmes, the HP Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT (GET-IT) does exactly that. We specifically target young graduates and unemployed youth to join the programme so that they can learn how IT can help them in building their own business.

Have you been to the SME Week? We would love to hear what you think about it.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments, HP EMEA

New podcast: Promote entrepreneurial spirit

jeanne2007 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:00:00 GMT

As you know from former entries, we have many GET-IT centres across Europe, the Middle East and Africa that offer under - or unemployed young graduates with business and IT skills which will help them to find jobs. We recently talked to Erik Dauwen, Director of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship Belgium who is in charge of a GET-IT centre in Belgium. To listen to the podcast, click here.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

GET-IT – let’s walk the talk

Daniela.Opp — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:27:00 GMT

I am at Brussels airport, flying home after our first annual GET-IT Conference, which was themed around “e-skills development for young entrepreneurs” and I am still very thrilled and excited about the 2 days we have spent together. The event took place at the Brussels HP office on September 18-19.

As you probably remember from my earlier blog entries, our Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT (GET-IT) is designed for under - or unemployed youth (aged 16-25) in underserved communities. We want to develop their IT and business skills so that they become more qualified for employment and better placed to create their own business.

We decided to hold a conference for our GET-IT network to bring them together from around Europe, Middle East and Africa, to foster knowledge exchange and best practise sharing amongst the group and discuss together how to grow GET-IT further in the most meaningful way.

Prior to the conference, we requested feedback from our network and results from our first year show that overall, our 70 GET-IT partners trained over 8300 young graduates and around 40% found a job after having attendend the courses. Wow, I can only say – great results, if you ask me!

During the conference we had a great mix of GET-IT centers, who have joined the network in 2007, when we launched our social flagship programme, but also centers that joined the network this year. In total GET-IT centers from more than 20 countries participated. We had young entrepreneurs, who attended the GET-IT training, who are the living example that the training works. They were able to launch successful businesses, created jobs for others and are even expanding their operations internationally now. Watch our newly launched GET-IT video, which is posted on our GET-IT website http://www.graduate-training-through-it.net/. Overall we had 41 partipants from 20 countries.

I also learned a lot in the workshop sessions, where we brainstormed about how to increase the impact of the training. This session was very benefical as we are always aiming at developing this programme further for the best local impact. But we also heard very intersting perspectives from the European Commission officials, who discuss the crucial role of e-skills and competences for Europe’s future as well as best practises from our highly valued partners of HP like JA-YE that discussed how the GET-IT curriculum helps advance their existing graduate programmes.

We heard from UNIDO, with whom we formed a partnership to strengthen the GET-IT programme in Africa, that some ICT students have not gotten the chance to be in front of a personal computer for 3 years! It is time to change that!

But clearly, one of the highlights was to hear from the GET-IT centers themselves, how they address entrepreneurship skill training. Great best practise sharing. And it is rewarding to see that GET-IT is so modular, that it adds value to the economic development in each country. We are currently running the programme in 25 countries with 70 partners.

The success of this conference supports us in our goal to increase the GET-IT network further. We want to establish 30 additional GET-IT centres and reach more than 500,000 students in total by 2010 through our GET IT centre network. I know it sounds like a high goal but only high goals enable you to stretch and go even further. I guess it is like chocolate: if you had one piece you want more and more.

To reach as many students as possible with GET-IT have been working on a web portal and presented the BETA version to the conference participants. The portal enables even those students who cannot access a GET-IT centre to still benefit from the programme through various features like the online game or video clips. I am particularly excited about this web portal because it allows us to reach more students in need for entrepreneurship skills. And I am proud to be part of this programme.

Conference participants welcomed the portal and showed tremendous interest in it. We will have a lot of partners testing it now and we hope to get valuable feedback to further advance the game. I must admit that I am a little bit jealous that such entertaining education tools have not existed when I was a graduate. It is amazing how much easier it seems to be for young people to pick up basic business and entrepreneurship principles through such tools.

And last but not least, I am particularly proud about our participants’and partners’ feedback that HP walks the talk with its strong social investment strategy and programmes.

Daniela Opp, Manager, Social Investments and Economic Development, HP EMEA

Social entrepreneur of the year wanted - participate!

jeanne2007 — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:54:00 GMT

I would like to quickly draw your attention to Schwab Foundation and its “Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008” competition. For the last five years, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has nominated the Social Entrepreneur of the Year from a selection of finalists taken from 30 countries.

In several countries the competition is still open and I would like to encourage you to participate or to forward the competition to anyone who you feel should be recognized as a social entrepreneur. Click here to see where the competition is still running.

At this point I would like to say that I appreciate the work and engagement of all social entrepreneurs worldwide and I already look forward to the announcement of the finalists of the competition but at the same point I want to say that all of you are winners.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA

Use of light, not copper

jeanne2007 — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:11:00 GMT

I would like to point to an interesting blog entry by my colleague Jamie Beckett.She writes about how the use of light, instead of copper, for connections among blades, boards and chips could cut annual server energy consumption by 40 percent worldwide. It is worth reading.

Enjoy the blog

Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA