SAP Social Sabbatical 2019 Jordan: A journey of a lifetime
SAP Social Sabbatical: Bringing people together to help society & the world run better
When I applied for SAP’s Global Sabbatical Program one year ago, I wanted to participate to learn, grow and challenge and discover myself further than I ever had before. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be assigned to Amman, Jordan for 4 weeks as part of the Social Sabbatical program. It was an incredible 4 weeks of learning and meeting folks who were dedicated and passionate about their work and craft. Along with 11 other fantastic colleagues from across the world, we supported 4 different organizations in the work they were doing: to grow the Jordan economy via the development of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem and to equip the next generation of Jordanian with 21st-century skill-sets.
The place:
Jordan officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an Arab country in Western Asia, on the East Bank of the Jordan River. Amman, the capital of Jordan, is a modern city with numerous ancient ruins. Atop Jabal al-Qala’a hill, the historic Citadel includes the pillars of the Roman Temple of Hercules and the 8th-century Umayyad Palace complex, known for its grand dome. Built into a different downtown hillside, the Roman Theatre is a 6,000-capacity, 2nd-century stone amphitheater offering occasional events.
We visited few places on the weekends like Mount Nebo, Petra, Wadi Rum, Dead Sea, Jerash & downtown in Amman. If you are interested in archaeology, you will find a lot of places having ruins of Roman & Nabataeans time.
The Team:
The best thing about the SAP Social Sabbatical is the concept of the program. For a given project, 12 SAP employees from different SAP location in the world get selected to work. What amazes me here is all 12 SAP employees do not know each other when they get selected for the project. The SAP Social Sabbatical team make sure to have the right balance of individuals in a team which includes an employee with different experience and gender equality. For our project in Amman, we were working for 4 SAP Social Sabbatical non-profits as a group of 3 team members for each of them. We were asked to name our team with a motto. We named our team ‘Team Rainbow’ and our team motto was: Use our diverse and unique experience to impact, empower, and learn from others, uniting around common goals to produce a sustainable outcome.
My team has Mika, financial & pricing expert from Vienna, Austria and Claudia, a senior software engineer from Palo Alto, USA. To be honest I did not know both of them before we got introduced. What a lovely person both of them to work with. I enjoyed my time with both of them and learned a few important things from them.
The Work:
The SAP Social Sabbatical non-profit established in 2004 to help promote technology entrepreneurship in Jordan. The center plays the role of a national center of excellence for entrepreneurship. They want to help change the mindset of youth so they can explore and consider becoming an entrepreneur in the future. The SAP Social Sabbatical non-profit works in close collaboration with universities and entrepreneurship-focused organizations across Jordan to help them establish their own entrepreneurship centers, as well as acts as a key leader and resource in the space for individuals and groups. The center is mainly focused on university students and pre-startups to graduate entrepreneurs who can further grow their businesses and become the future success stories of Jordan.
The Journey:
Week#1:
I personally like winter season and February gave me perfect weather in Amman where the temperature was mostly under 10 degrees. We had our orientation session the next day we arrived at Amman. And we had a great day attending the orientation where we got to know each other very well, though it was not sufficient to understand the team in the first go. We played a game of Architects and Engineers, which was a team building game, where the one team (engineers) is working together to design structures, and other teams(architects) explain how to build the structure. It was fun. The next day we had meetings with our respective non-profits. Where they gave a detailed overview of their non-profits and what is the roadmap of the organizations.
Next day we arrived at our non-profit and met the staff there. This week was very important for us, as we need to gather information about the organization we are working for. To know about the history, their work and programs, and the issues they are facing. Unfortunately, we were only 2 as one of the team members fell sick and could not catch the flight to Amman.
The goal for us to ask, ask and ask for this week. We asked so many questions to them, conducted interviews with different stakeholders and the university students, reviewed fundraising efforts done is past, identified the challenges. After analyzing all these, we came to the conclusion as a team that only providing the fundraising opportunity to them (which was our initial SOW) will not help the organization to sustain, hence we changed our SOW to provide an overall sustainability plan for them. The entire week was very hectic as well as challenging for us. But we got to know more about the non-profit and their history which helped us later to recommend the right proposals for non-profit. Over the weekend, we visited the Dead Sea and Mount Nebo, had delicious food and was ready for next week deliverables.
Overall first week, we spend time understanding the SOW of non-profit, getting adjusted with the team, completed our weekly team meeting so that we can raise any concerns if any to make sure we have a final SOW to work upon, exploring the common daily needs like supermarket, laundry, food around the hotel and planning for the weekend trips. And most important, we plan for next week’s deliverables.
Week#2:
Our team member, who was sick has joined us. The week started and ended like in no time. The entire week we were busy doing research on fundraising opportunity, looking for the available grants which can help the organization in future, met old directors to understand what they did earlier to make the center successful and now what are the challenges. Also during the week, we designed the framework for sustainability strategy which is very important at this time for us, as we have only one and a half week of time left. Completed our weekly team meeting, we also planned our this weekend trip and we were ready to explore Petra & Wadi Rum.
Few of us started for Petra on Thursday night, as we wanted to see Petra by night and it was the best decision. Wow, the look of the ancient architecture, a piece of mesmerizing local folk music, a chilling night at Petra and lip snacking food. Next destination Wadi Rum.
I have never seen the desert, and I always wanted to visit. Wadi Rum gave me perfect weather to explore the desert at night. We were in a desert camp, having tasty local food cooked under the ground. An adventurous desert safari (after a lot of prayers, so that we don’t get rain during the safari J), exploring the sand mountains and the different sand colors in a different part of the desert. Wow, our adventurous weekend ended.
Week#3:
Week 3 was mostly for us to ramp up on the sustainability strategy for the non-profit. We gathered a lot of information about the work culture, history of the center, people’s thought about the center for future success, fundraising opportunity both locally and globally. And by the end of weekdays, we were almost done with our planned work and ready to deliver SOW. The weekly team meeting was fun, as we were asked to share our experience with the team and one thing which we learned, one thing we miss and if we ready to go home. I was very emotional as I enjoyed my stay with an incredible team, the bond we made with each other.
This weekend we went to Jerash. The history of the city is a blend of the Greco-Roman world of the Mediterranean Basin and the ancient traditions of the Arab Orient. The earliest Arab/Semitic inhabitants, who lived in the area during the pre-classical period of the 1st millennium BCE, named their village Garshu. The Romans later Hellenized the former name of Garshu into Gerasa. Later, the name transformed into the Arabic Jerash.
Week#4:
We are now at the end week of our Social Sabbatical program. We need to give the final presentation to the clients about what we did, the challenges we faced, the experience and learning working with our non-profit. All the presentation went smoothly, all our 4 sub-teams did a tremendous job, we gave a lot of proposals to them which surely will help them in the future to sustain for the long run. And help in the growing economy of Jordan.
We did our final dinner together before we started for our destination.
Ending a story is harder than writing the beginning. I can’t believe it’s over. After four weeks of intense efforts, today each sub-team in the SAP Social Sabbatical 2018 Jordan gave their final good-bye.
The Food:
Making this as a separate section, because the food we had during our stay in Amman, Jordan was simply awesome. The word cannot describe those lip-smacking food we had, hence sharing the pics.
