FOUR Philippine for-a-cause enterprises benefited from the strategic social-investments program of a global provider of enterprise application software that aims to address their respective business challenges.
Messy Bessy Cleaners Inc., Solar Energy Foundation, Hapinoy and Rags2Riches Inc. were assisted by 12 SAP employees from different countries in addressing their pressing business needs.
“SAP is committed to helping the world run better and improving peoples’ lives by making strategic social investments that have a lasting and sustainable impact on society,” said Darren Rushworth, managing director of SAP Philippines.
“Through the SAP Social Sabbatical program, our aim is to empower our best talents in skills-based volunteering. It is an important part of our social-investment strategy in order to support emerging entrepreneurs. At the same time, we recognize the potential this program holds for our employees across the globe to practice and hone their skills in diverse teams and markets,” he added.
With the help of implementing partner PYXERA Global, the Social Sabbatical program selects projects based on their strategic fit with SAP’s corporate social responsibility thrust to develop innovative social enterprises and the future work force.
Prior to their deployment in emerging markets, SAP employee-volunteers are offered with dedicated sessions on career and personal development as prework.
For 30 days, they shared their expertise in areas, such as strategy, marketing, information technology, human resources, finance and consulting, and guided the local social enterprises on issues pertaining to staff skills, capacity building and operational excellence.
“It has been a great pleasure and privilege for our team to have had the SAP Social Sabbatical team with us for a month. To have a team of outsiders look into our business, and in this case a team of experts map our processes, is extremely beneficial to our growing organization,” said Krie Lopez, founder of Messy Bessy.
For Solar Energy Foundation Philippines Chairman Jim Ayala, the SAP team helped them organize their Solar Library program that enables poor but deserving Filipino students to keep up at school by making solar reading lights available for them to bring home with their books.
They were assisted on the phases and activities of the program, as well as in creating a tool kit that will be accessible by project managers and community partners across the country.
“The tool kit is community-friendly and culture-sensitive, which is important for acceptance and sustainability. Their work will really help us accelerate the roll out of our Solar Libraries,” he said. The SAP Social Sabbatical was helpful for Hapinoy Team in various ways, according to Cofounder and President Mark Ruiz.
“[They assist us to] deeply analyze and strategize our social business model and operations, with very concrete outputs that can really help us catapult even further. But more than that, their interaction with team was extremely invaluable—they have helped us think and reflect on Hapinoy and our individual work with new, fresh perspectives,” he said.
On the part of Rags2Riches Inc., President Reese Fernandez-Ruiz expressed gratitude for the SAP fellows as they provided them with “process analysis and recommendations for sales and product design.”
Since its inception in 2012, the Social Sabbatical program has seen tremendous success and incremental response from both SAP employees and organizations in the entrepreneurial, social and education sectors in emerging markets.
“We hope to see this program grow from strength to strength in the light of its positive impact,” Rushworth said.