Creating a classroom to inspire learning with Breakthrough Silicon Valley

[Former Member]

As part of SAP’s Month_of_Service, I led a team of volunteers on a project with Breakthrough Silicon Valley, which supports students from low-income backgrounds in preparing for their college educations.

On October 5th, colleagues from SAP and our valued customer Clorox volunteered their time and energy on at Franklin-McKinley School in East San Jose. Seven of us converged at Franklin-McKinley on a sunny Monday morning.  We immediately felt energized by the youthful exuberance of the kids playing basketball on campus.  Christina Castro and her colleagues from Breakthrough Silicon Valley first gave us an overview about their mission of helping to inspire and prepare low income kids for the pursuit of higher education.  These important activities take place in the portable classrooms, which we helped to clean up and decorate, so the kids would have a comfortable and motivating environment to work in.  We cleaned the windows, shades, tables, and bookshelves … with the team’s muscle power aided by Clorox’s powerful cleaning products, the classroom soon became clean and sparkling!  We also applied SAP’s engineering talent to set up the computer lab.  Now the kids have the benefit of proper computer systems and can learn to be digitally-savvy.  All the team members contributed to decorating the walls with pictures, success stories, and role models.  In a short few hours, the portable classroom transformed into a beautiful place, highly conducive to setting the kids up for success.

This project was a very rewarding experience. Our efforts helped Breakthrough Silicon Valley create a clean, comfortable, and fun learning environment where high school students will be spending time on SAT/ACT practice tests, college application preparations, and after-school coaching.

Breakthrough Silicon Valley works with many students who will be the first among their families to go to college.  By spending a day helping a school, we are gratified that we could make a meaningful contribution to this very worthy endeavor.  We had fun, got creative in our work, enjoyed this time together as colleagues, and Breakthrough Silicon Valley appreciated our contributions and SAP's community_giving to their mission.