Social Sabbatical: It all started with an email.
I have a bad habit of checking my work email even on weekends. I’m working on changing that, but thankfully I was, because I got the best news that Sunday morning! So I applied for the program, went through series of interviews, and out of around 1000 people who qualified this year, 120 would be able to participate. I am extremely grateful to have been selected and just in time for SAP’s Month of Service!
If you made the cut, you would have to dedicate time out of your working hours for pre-work activities and meetings, on top of your already demanding job. I’ve had some challenges as the meetings were scheduled during the night time for me. I had to juggle being in two shifts for 6 weeks, fly 36 hours to get to Brazil, and endure a massive jet lag when I arrived due to the 12-hour time difference.. but when you’re passionate about what you do, these things become relatively easier.
So what exactly is Social Sabbatical for Global engagement? I first heard about the program from a colleague who participated in Cusco, Peru in April 2017. She has always inspired me, I consider her my professional mentor and a very dear friend. It is an honor to follow her footsteps.
This program has been running successfully for 5 years now, bringing in highly diverse teams of SAP employees in-country for 4 weeks to contribute their time, skills, talents, expertise and know-hows in solving business challenges. 12 individuals from different nationalities and board areas within SAP get allocated into teams of 3 to work with several non-profit organizations or social enterprises.
It is great pleasure to be working with Mathias Braje and Oussama Ben Chikh Souguir. Mathias works in our Germany headquarters as the head of Corporate Continuity, major part his of responsibility is ensuring the safety and welfare of traveling employees and responding to crisis situations. Oussama works in our France office as a Senior Account Manager, his job plays a huge role in getting customers to renew their SAP engagement. I am from the Philippines working in the Customer Technical and Functional Enablement areas, managing teams of talented consultants who offer solutions and best practices to ensure customers get the most out of our product and ultimately that their businesses are successful.
The three of us have been assigned to work with Fundação Catarinense de Assistência Social (FUCAS), a non-profit organization providing social assistance services through their two programs: Campeões nas Quadras e na Vida (Champions in Sports and in Life program), which provides cultural, sports, leisure, recreation and digital inclusion activities for young people to develop values such as respect, cooperation and empathy, and strengthen community ties; and Programa de Capacitação (Capacity Building program), aimed to develop personal and professional competencies of young adults to prepare them into the labor market as apprentices.
Our aim is to help FUCAS with their organizational alignment and strategic planning. Our arrival has been timely, as October is when they do their annual planning. The FUCAS team, from their President down to the youngest kid, have been very warm and welcoming. Everyday, we come into their headquarters where we can see the youth in action — playing sports, dancing, doing arts and crafts, and you can feel how passionate these people are with what they do and it motivates us every single day.
I will try my best to write more in the next coming weeks. I am not a native English speaker nor a blogger, so it is quite a challenge for me to express my thoughts in writing. This blog post alone took weeks to publish! We are tasked to blog and/or post on social media the events as they unfold during our Social Sabbatical assignment. Rather than feeling obligated, I will take this as a learning experience, hopefully getting to hone my writing skills.
