Not all Classrooms have Four Walls
We never stop learning, whether it’s as we progress through formal education, develop our careers or experience life’s challenges. In grade school, we went on school trips or field trips. Most were day trips with a few multi-day trips as we progressed through the higher grades. Trips were to aquariums, factories, farms, fire stations, government buildings, museums, police stations, roller coaster parks and zoos. As students, we counted down the days to field trips — it was an opportunity to get away from the normal routine and have fun with friends. But there was a purpose to these trips — put into context the fundamentals about science, business, animals and more to increase classroom engagement back at school.
Unhu Begins
After 3 months of conference calls, emails, text messages and video chats — the 12 member SAP team arrived safely in Harare, Zimbabwe. The journey to Harare was long — multiple days, flights, delays and layovers but everyone arrived with a sense of excitement. Within days, the team had established a comfort and familiarity as if we have known each other for a long time. The team members come from various job functions: bid management, consulting, customer support, education, marketing and product management. As individuals, SAP has fostered our growth and learning to allow us to master our respective areas of expertise. Now we step away from what got us this far, our daily personal and professional commitments, to embrace the spirit of the Social Sabbatical and the purpose-driven promise. Up until this point, SAP linked us together. Now we need to become Team Unhu and the goals we identified. The first days in Harare were focused on our new surroundings: the city, the culture, the experience and the people. Getting used to power outages, water shortage and the economic conditions. Our sabbatical implementation partner PYXERA Global and SAP Sabbatical Mentor have been instrumental in the preparation. The social learnings of an emerging market, blended with our professional skills, hopes to bring the human and emotional connection necessary to turn the vision of “help the world run better and improve people’s lives” into action.
The Human Connection
The Zimbabwean experience and its people have been friendly and welcoming. On the first full day in Harare, the team went to the supermarket. A few of us had finished our purchases and were waiting outside for the others. A young Zimbabwean man approached us and asked in a friendly manner: “Why are you more wealthy than we are?” The question surprised us and we replied, “None of us choose where we were born.” Then the young man asked, “Then it’s a blessing?” Before we could answer, the security asked the young man to move along. The word “wealth” has many meanings, but often refers to money. There’s also social wealth (status), time wealth (freedom) and physical wealth (health). The mission of Young Africa, the social enterprise my sub-team is working with, is to empower young people with change-making potential, hope and opportunity for a better future. Maybe even to help find the personal meaning of “wealth”.
Have Lasting Impact
In one of the first pre-work briefings, Team Unhu was asked to identify a set of Social Sabbatical goals. The first goal was to have lasting impacts for the social enterprises and for each other — while having lots of fun doing it! When I was asked, “What do you hope to bring to a social enterprises via the sabbatical program?” — it was easy to answer. I went through my professional skills, technology expertise, previous volunteering experience, etc. How these skills allowed me to take on more complex roles, with greater responsibility, demonstrate my passions and values for both technology and people while being in harmony with the SAP strategy. But just like the school trips long ago, in the first days in Harare, I am also thinking of the key learnings that I hope to take back to my personal and professional life. There was a purpose for this trip.
More to come on this journey, to help the world run better and improve people’s lives!
