The Resilience of the Human Spirit
Traditionally, a sabbatical is a period of paid or unpaid leave that is granted to an employee so they may study or travel. This type of time off is common in higher education and in larger organizations. The SAP Social Sabbatical is not defined by an absence of work — but defined by the presence of it. It is designed to embrace the social learnings of an emerging market, blended with professional skills, in hopes to develop the human and emotional connections necessary to turn the vision of “help the world run better and improve people’s lives” into action. Sabbaticals are no longer another word for vacation but the new word for an active pursuit of purpose.
Months of preparation and work provided an amazing Zimbabwe Social Sabbatical experience — with great people, many memories, challenges, social impact and personal growth.
I am who I am because of You
It was an honor to participate in the 1st SAP Social Sabbatical in Harare, Zimbabwe. When I found out in July 2019 that I was placed in Zimbabwe, at first I was a bit anxious. Zimbabwe was once the bread basket of Africa. But it’s faced difficult times with gas, electricity and water shortages, a collapsed currency, unemployment and economic woes. Despite these woes, there remains hope of better times to come. Zimbabwean’s have a resilient spirit and it was inspiring to see. Resiliency found through connections: to community, inner strength and a sense of purpose bigger than current circumstances. The 4 NGOs the SAP Team worked with: The BOOST Fellowship, Impact Hub, Junior Achievement and Young Africa International — all have a common mission to empower young people with change-making potential, hope and opportunity for a better future. It was a privilege to bear witness to this process of turning difficulties into opportunities for regrowth. It also served as moments of personal growth and reflection. The goal of working together is to widen the circle of our concern so we can empower future generations and improve people’s lives.
Digital Innovation and the Human Connection
Young Africa International (YA) is the organization my colleagues Andre, Cindy and I were assigned to. YA seeks to train 500,000 youths in southern Africa by 2025. The target beneficiaries of YA’s programs are economically, socially and educationally disadvantaged youths aged 15–25 years, with a special focus on young women and youths with disabilities. The power of the human connection plays a key role in YA’s mission and digital innovation can be a tool to help them do many wonderful things.
Data pertaining to empowering youths is manually collected today in YA’s skills centers in 5 countries (Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia). This is a cumbersome task and leaves room for error. Furthermore, real-time information is not available and central staff are left waiting to receive data in Excel. To drive sustainable growth, new digital innovations are needed to solve complex challenges and increase social impact. The YA and SAP collaboration focused on helping accelerate the Move to Digital, in the area of student life cycle management, to enable better monitoring and evaluation. YA wants to know exactly what impact their skills training has on young people and to do so they need to move their success and failure stories to a digital platform. The new digital platform (centralized, near real-time and cloud-based system) will improve insight-to-action conversion for a greater real world impact. Compelling new insights from data can leave a lasting impression, motivate actions as well as better decision making about students and programs as the organization scales. We hope our contribution to YA’s Move to Digital will enable them to continue to bring about social change and a better future for the collective youth of the region.
Part of the Journey is the End
I believe what sets SAP apart is not our innovations, products or services but it is our people. That might sound cliche — but after 12 years at SAP, I have enough stories of the great people and how they have impacted my life and career. Team Unhu was no different. We started as 12 SAPers, all respective experts in our areas, who had never met until arriving in Zimbabwe. Within days, the team had established a familiarity as if we had known each other for a long time. As a highly diverse team we had to be resilient, step out of the comfort zone, to dedicate our skills, expertise, and know-how for this unique assignment. Throughout the next weeks, we collaborated, learned, worked, experienced the culture, shared meals, traveled, took endless photos and laughed a lot Together. The B’nB we stayed at, felt more like a home than a hotel. The journey changed strangers to teammates to friendships to sitting around a dinner table like family — sharing old stories and new learnings. The Zimbabwe SAP Social Sabbatical has come to an end but the connections and memories will continue to have lasting impacts. The SAP Social Sabbatical experience was not only a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but a great responsibility to deliver something that will hopefully change lives.
As this journey ends, it’s time for new ones to begin. Thank you for following along — to help the world run better and improve people’s lives!
