CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa : social investment, Education

Social Investment: What do we do?

Daniela.Opp — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:34:00 GMT

On this blog we always give you updates on our programme achievements. We decided to bring these updates together in a short article, to give you a great overview of our social investment approach and our main programmes. Click here to read the article.

I am looking forward to your comments to our Social Investment approach.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments, EMEA

New podcast and case study: HP’s International Institute of Technology reaches out

jeanne2007 — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:08:00 GMT

Since the launch of our International Institute of Technology (HP IIT) programme in Russia at the beginning of 2008, the programme has really taken off and is now expanding into other European countries. The IIT programme aims to support IT skills training in In Russia, 17 universities have been equipped with IT hardware, which has enabled them to offer 22 education courses and eight laboratory workshops. But we’re not stopping at Russia.

HP IIT is spreading its wings and is now also available in other European countries such as Bulgaria, Poland and the Ukraine. We recently published a case study about the Institute and talked to Igor Belousov, HP IIT manager and head of HP’s Open Innovations Office in Russia in a podcast about the success of HP IIT. You can read the case study here and listen to the podcast here.

HP IIT is a great way to teach students relevant IT-related business skills such as IT management and printing technology. It’s encouraging to hear the first results and feedback from participants. As an example, a member of the Russian Academy of Science has said that our IIT programme, with all its training facilities, is vital for some Russian industries. I will keep you posted on future evolvements of our programme.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

UNESCO´s multi-cultural happening on higher education

jeanne2007 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:03:00 GMT

This week in Paris UNESCO held one of their biggest conferences on higher education, gathering more than 1,200 thought leaders from around the globe.

The World Conference of Higher Education, or WCHE for short, has been pretty impressive in many ways. Ministers of Education and their delegations as well as academics from universities with multiple different cultural backgrounds discussed how to tackle the biggest challenges of teaching and learning in a more and more global world, taking into account the social, economic and environmental changes.

I remember one of the opening sessions on The New Dynamics of Higher Education and Research, where official representatives from China, India, Columbia, Senegal, Egypt and Romania addressed the issues of higher education from their respective backgrounds. Wow, what a variety of insights and experiences we were able to gather in this one session! We clearly realised that globalisation is one of the main drivers changing higher education and, to stay relevant and competitive in a global and rapidly changing marketplace, requires continuous education and training.

Most traditional universities are not designed for these new requirements yet. Information technology plays an increasingly important role in helping universities deal with the pace of change, to offer distance learning opportunities, to help them benefit from social media and cloud computing wherever, however and whenever online curricula and learning services are required.

In one of the keynote presentations, Michael Mendenhall, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer from HP, made it pretty clear that IT is significantly changing the education equation: "The last time we saw such a radical change was when monks writing with quills in monasteries were supplanted by Guttenberg´s printing press".

There are many IT projects out there already that address the new requirements in higher education. For example, in collaboration with UNESCO, HP is working on a project to set up the first e-infrastructure in Africa and the Arab region that will support universities running innovative education projects in their home countries and connecting them with experts from around the world with the help of grid and cloud computing technologies. For more information read our case study.

The UNESCO conference has clearly helped to raise issues, highlight best practices and stimulate expert debate to find solutions for the challenges of the future . I will be excited to see the results and agreed next steps resulting from the conference that will be summarised in a communiqué and published within the next couple of weeks. Let’s stay tuned!

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Lithuanian Student Company wins HP Responsible Business Award – my weekend in Rotterdam

Daniela.Opp — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:52:00 GMT

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

Innovation in Education: Our new social investment programme

Daniela.Opp — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:58:00 GMT

Here are two items of exciting news. This year we have launched a new social investment programme called the ’Innovation in Education Grant Initiative’. It is a competitive education initiative that invites secondary schools and universities in EMEA countries to submit proposals for their most innovative teaching and learning projects. I recently gave in an interview about the programme in our Global Citizenship Bulletin. If you are interested, take a look here.

The other item of exciting news is that, from this initiative, we have just selected the 50 winners who are to receive HP grants – 30 universities and 20 secondary schools. All the projects are exciting and fantastic. You find the details of the winners here.

If you have specific questions, do not hesitate to leave a comment.

Daniela Opp, Manager, Social Investments, HP EMEA

New podcast: Women on the move

jeanne2007 — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:43:00 GMT

We regularly make podcast interviews related to Global Citizenship topics in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I want to quickly highlight a recent podcast which we have produced with Gabriele Hecker, who talks about the projects she has done after receiving an HP Education Grant. All I can say is: Women are on the move…

Click here to listen to the podcast. Enjoy!

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA