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

HP Employee Jury Selects German Student Company as Winner of HP/JA-YE Responsible Ideas Contest

ulrikehaug — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:23:00 GMT

Together with Junior Achievement Young Enterprise (JA-YE) Europe we’ve just announced the winner of the HP Responsible Business Ideas Contest: The German student company ‘solAround’.

The secondary school students from Peine were selected for their initiatives to promote the use of solar power in their community. Among other things, the team designed a portal to introduce investors to people interested in renting out their roofs. They also organised a solar fair, produced a magazine and designed a game. You can read more about the students and the ideas contest in JA-YE’s announcement.

I’ve been reviewing the submissions made for the HP Responsible Business Ideas Contest for the last three years and I have to say I was extremely impressed with the quality of work this year. It was quite difficult to select a winner given the wealth of ideas and business concepts that incorporated social and environmental criteria.

We had more than 300 student companies and individuals participate in the award which has been running for three years in Europe. JA-YE formed a jury to preselect the best entries for each of the 10 participating countries - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia and Slovakia. I was part of the HP Employee Jury that selected the Top 10 entries shown below:

solAround Germany
Peace Tree Israel
Watt Portugal
Better Windows Russia
Petra Systems Poland
Equalite Slovakia
Navem Romania
Ekoefekt Poland
AquaBiz Russia
Kaseton Poland

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes

CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa : social investment, HP Business Ideas Contest

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

HP Employee Jury Selects German Student Company as Winner of HP/JA-YE Responsible Ideas Contest