North America Kicks off 2013 with Bold Goals
In setting the strategy for CSR for SAP North America for 2013, the team spent several months meeting with nonprofit consulting organization FSG. FSG is an SAP global partner, who helped shape our global strategy about 2 years ago, and we began working with them for US and Canada specific programming.
The result of months of work has finally come to light as SAP North America created a plan to align globally with our CSR areas of focus on STEM Education and youth entrepreneurship for students ages 12-24, to ramp up our technology donation and employee engagement offerings, and to launch a signature initiative aimed at creating IT Career pathways for students in order to increase the pipeline of prepared future talent for technology jobs.
“Essentially, we’re building SAP high schools,” said Jackie Montesinos, head of CSR for SAP North America. “OK not SAP-branded or specific ‘shops’, but we’re following a model pioneered by IBM in NYC on creating 6 year high schools 100% tied to a technology curriculum as part of learning, with the goal of hiring these students to come work at SAP or at one of our partners, and we’re really excited.”
The schools will feature four years of high school learning and 2 years college, incorporate college credit throughout the entire process, as well as, mentoring, internships, career days and more with SAP employees. SAP’s goal is to open 2 schools in the fall of 2014 in NYC and Chicago and scale that curriculum and model across locations in the US and Canada with several nonprofit partners.
“We’re partnering directly with the NYC Department of Education and several nonprofits as we take on the challenging task of revolutionizing learning in North America,” Jackie said. She concluded “I was at an event at the White House recently where one of the President’s Chiefs of Staff said to me ‘SAP is taking a big swing’ and I truly believe we are.”
Batter Up!
For the SAP North America CSR plan, nonprofit partners can visit our SAP JAM group and browse the "Content" section for the plan.