Social Impact in Jordan
Purpose:
Helping the world run better and improving people’s lives was the driving force behind my desire to participate in the Social Sabbatical. I can never truly articulate in words the lasting impact of the Social Sabbatical program for both the volunteers and receiving non-profit organizations. I truly believe that small gestures can have a profound impact on people’s lives and can proudly say that SAP has been helping social enterprises around the globe run at their best.
SAP’s Corporate Social Responsibility focuses on 3 strategic pillars that foster digital inclusion and create opportunities for all people by:
- Building digital skills
- Accelerating the best-run non-profit organizations
- Social enterprise and connecting employees with purpose
Within each of these 3 pillars, there are programs that embrace the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing primarily on:
- Quality education (SDG 4)
- Decent work and economic growth (SDG 8)
- Partnership for sustainable development (SDG 17)
The Host Organization:
For my Social Sabbatical I had the immense opportunity to work in a 4 week long project with ReBootKamp (RBK) along with two other SAP colleagues, Gayatri Gopal and Fabian Kegel. RBK is located in headquarters in Amman, Jordan and it is a non-profit organization that provides an immersive computer programming training being the only institution in the Arab world producing Silicon Valley-trained engineers. Its fundamental goal is to arm youth with the mental tools they need to wage peace which fits into SAP’s 3 strategic pillars. RBK cohorts have a very unique target group set up where half are local Jordanians and the other half are refugees, with 50% of the cohort being female. Their intention is to create a diverse environment to allow innovation and break gender and refugee stereotypes. RBK’s coding boot camp runs for 16 weeks where the first 4-weeks is part of a preparatory phase followed by a 12-week immersive phase. RBK’s graduates gain future-proof skills such as autonomous learning, conflict resolution, creative problem-solving, strong interpersonal skills, among others.
The Project’s Scope:
My team’s project scope addressed two different challenges. The first was to enable RBK to establish a sustainable inflow of applicants to fulfill their international growth strategy of the organization. The second goal was to enable RBK to increase funding from international development (lending) organizations. In order to arrive at our project deliverable, we spent extensive time doing research, conducting interviews and facilitating design thinking sessions to collect the most relevant pain points and gaps that needed to be addressed. By the end of the project we provided RBK with a comprehensive data analyses that contributed to a marketing and communication strategy plan we delivered. RBK is at a critical development stage and I truly believe this project was an essential milestone that will contribute to increase their impact in Jordan and the region.
The Program’s Benefits:
The unique set up of the Social Sabbatical creates a triple impact — for the clients, participants and SAP. The daily interactions between the project team members and the organization’s staff offered nothing less than constant learning and knowledge sharing which alone is already a growth experience. In addition, the journey through the project offered us the opportunity to learn different business models, local cultural and economic insights to challenges that RBK faced daily. This experience required us to be creative, innovative, flexible and work together towards the same goal. A valuable and remarkable thing to me personally was to remind RBK about their purpose and together assess what were the potential steps they could take to get where they wanted to be.
Multiplier Impact:
Finally, this experience pushed us outside of our comfort zones and provided profound personal and professional growth in the process. It is clear to me that together we can make a bigger impact than individually. When we work together we can bring so much more to the table and maximize social progress around the world. Let’s reject business as usual and be the change we want to see in the world!
