Daring innovators: IBM’s first Corporate Service Corps in Canada
On September 28th, 15 IBMers from seven different countries who volunteered for the IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) Program met in Halifax, Canada, with one common goal: to help the local organizations overcome their most pressing community issues.
The IBM CSC initiative is one of IBM’s global Corporate Social Responsibility programs. Every year, IBM officials from around the world volunteer to travel to a new community and provide pro-bono consulting expertise to local stakeholders. For one month, the IBMers work with public sector institutions, universities, governments, and non-governmental organizations to contribute to the community’s social and economic development.
Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) implements and facilitates the CSC program, meaning that IBMers are connected by DOT with meaningful and impactful opportunities to be daring social innovators in local communities — applying their skills and knowledge in support of local organizations facing complex challenges.
For the CSC Halifax deployment (IBM CSC Canada 1), 15 IBMers worked in close collaboration with the Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship (COVE), Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS), and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. The focus of work for each of these organizations ranged from topics such as ocean innovation and commercialization, accessibility of education programming, optimizing processes for immigrant services, and scaling the Homework Hub Math Program.
The recommendations provided by the four sub-teams included: Rebranding the Ocean Sector & Developing a Framework for a Youth Internship Program, Improving Accessibility of Education Programming to Youth with Disabilities, Optimizing Organizational Processes for Immigrant Services, and a Community Engagement Strategy to Scale the Homework Hub Math Program.
Check out some of the tweets and social engagement from partners and IBMers participating in the IBM CSC Canada 1 deployment, and learn more about the month the IBM team spent in Halifax below!
Planning & Pre-service Period: July-September, 2018
Kick Off Ceremony: October 1st, 2018
The IBM CSC Canada 1 host organizations welcomed the IBM team and expressed great excitement for the joint effort to contribute to local community development in Halifax!
As the implementation partner, DOT was honoured to be part of this first experience in Canada!
Even Halifax Regional Municipality Mayor, Mike Savage, and The Honourable Stephen McNeil, Premier of Nova Scotia joined the Kick-Off Ceremony celebrations and shared their excitement in receiving the team of IBM volunteers.
The IBM CSC 1 also received lots of media attention!
Deployment Period: September 28-October 27, 2018
At the beginning of the implementation period of the program, the group of 15 IBMers were divided into subgroups to complete their community program projects. Throughout this period, the IBMers conducted many on-site field visits, interviews, and meetings to come up with suitable solutions for their host organizations.
Community Service Day: October 20, 2018
For the deployment’s Community Service Day activity, the IBM CSC Social Hackathon, the IBM CSC 1 team spent one day with two local social institutions, hopeblooms and the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, to collaborate on developing creative tech solutions to community challenges.
Closing Ceremony: October 26, 2018
The end of Halifax deployment culminated in the Closing Ceremony event in the Atrium the NSCC Technology Campus on October 26, 2018. Each IBM CSC sub-team had the opportunity to present an executive summary of their recommendations to the host organizations.
The success and future impact of these projects would not have been possible without the dedication and support of the CSC team and local stakeholders, or the IBM Canada team who supported the IBM CSC 1 team in every phase of the program.
Thank you IBM CSC Halifax team for your impactful work!
DOT is one of IBM’s implementation partners for the CSC and SCC programs. The DOT-IBM partnership started 10 years ago and, to date, DOT has implemented 95 IBM deployments in 22 countries.
