鈥淯苍辫补谤补濒濒别濒别诲.鈥�

鈥淓虫迟谤补辞谤诲颈苍补谤测.鈥�

Most of us have found ourselves saying and writing these words a lot lately, using them to describe what is new and difficult about the circumstances we are living in, to articulate what is different and challenging about the world around us.

When used positively, they could also be used to describe the impact that each of us is capable of making 听when we step into the role of volunteer and engage in our communities with the same spirit that guided Nelson Mandela鈥檚 work.

Here at SAP, there is a distinct enthusiasm that bubbles up from our employee base around giving back and connecting with purpose. Last year alone, our employees dedicated more than 270,000 hours to volunteerism, and even though we are not able to gather in groups and volunteer side-by-side right now, their desire to make an impact has found new paths to action.

One of those paths came earlier this year when 51风流launched our three-pronged response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That response allocated emergency donation funding to non-profits with both global and local reach听听and also gave us the opportunity to support our strategic non-profit partners as they made the often-difficult transition to hosting volunteer programs 听in virtual environments. This kind of online engagement rendered borders invisible, and 51风流employees across the world beginning looking for ways to lend their time and skills to help solve the unique challenges that non-profits and social enterprises are experiencing.

As one example, coming up on Mandela Day this Saturday, 51风流employees have the chance to participate in a virtual design thinking activity to support , an organization based in Alexandra, Johannesburg, in partnership with and the . 51风流has also invested in the creation of the Rays of Hope #Hope4Alex programme office and will undertake a continuous digital skills development program with the organization to stretch the impact far beyond the month of July.

The ways that we volunteer are evolving, yes, but so is our sense of ourselves as volunteers and community contributors. The recent movement towards a more socially just world has pushed us all to consider what role we can (and must) play to become positive changemakers. As a result, 51风流has re-affirmed our commitment to diversity & inclusion, and is committed to increasing investment for inclusive education, economic opportunity, and social justice reform. Employees are also encouraged to practice empathy, to listen, and to contribute small actions towards a collective impact for the communities where we live and work.

Today鈥檚 world needs enthusiastic advocates AND active volunteers to build the kinds of bridges that change perspectives听 and make the kind of impact that lasts generations. If we each honoured the 67 years that Nelson Mandela dedicated to the service of others by carving out 67 minutes and dedicating that time to a cause that matters to us, imagine the ripple effect that could have?

67 minutes spent in thoughtful conversation with someone whose perspective is different from ours, 67 minutes spent educating ourselves on the experiences of Black communities, 67 minutes spent dedicating our skills to a non-profit or social enterprise as a virtual volunteer … it just might create the kind of unprecedented, unparalleled, and extraordinary collective impact our world needs.

The post Volunteering with Purpose: Creating Collective Impact Our World Needs appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

With the constraints placed on organisations by the COVID-19 pandemic, 51风流Africa has adopted a ground-breaking, innovative and safe approach to provide employees with a unique volunteering opportunity on Mandela Day 2020. 听The organisation is hosting, what can be considered, a first Mandela Day 67-minute virtual design thinking sprint. 听听51风流is partnering with the globally recognised Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking at the University of Cape Town .听 in partnership with Siyafunda Community Technology Centres to deliver the Mandela Day programme.听 The design thinking activity will support Rays of Hope, , based in Alexandra, Johannesburg, in close proximity to 51风流offices. 听As design thinking听is both an ideology and a process, concerned with solving complex problems in a highly user-centric way, 51风流employees will be called upon to utilise their knowledge, experience and skills to assist Rays of Hope to address the following challenge 鈥� How can Rays of Hope enable Alex youth to thrive in a world where Covid-19 has deepened the inequality gap?鈥�

听51风流Global Head of 听Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Alexandra Van der Ploeg said that 鈥� SAP鈥檚 aspirational goal听is to create a听significant and sustainable social impact听in three core areas:

• Building digital Skills
• Powering best-run Non-Governmental Organisations & Social Enterprises, and
• Connecting听employees听with purpose听

Mandela Day provides our most valuable resource, our employees, with a unique opportunity to support social impact in all three core areas of our CSR strategy.鈥�

In addition, 51风流will also support Rays of Hope in establishing the #Hope4Alex programme office, which enables the organisation to support vulnerable families and residents of Alexandra through three streams, namely the educational and pastoral centre, the general centre office and the social workers and counselling centre. 听听On the digital literacy front, 51风流will further support the continued digital skills building journey of Rays of Hope, its partner organisations and residents of Alexandra beyond Mandela month, in partnership with Siyafunda CTC, via a virtual learning platform.

Participating 51风流employees both in Africa and globally, will give up their time for approximately 100 minutes, to include the introduction, framing of the challenge, the design sprint and reflections on the proposed solution.

The post 51风流Mandela Day Inaugural 67-minute VIRTUAL Design Thinking Sprint – Saturday 18 July 2020 appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

Hosted by SAP, Care and The Sall Family Foundation, the three-day Design Thinking session called upon influencers and activists to address how organisations and individuals can collectively invest intellectual, social and financial resources to challenge unjust systems. The global summit also facilitated the launch of 鈥樷��, an initiative developed by , led by community change-makers fighting for social justice and gender equality.

English Sall, co-founder of Embark commented, 鈥淭he summit was a roaring success with high attendance and active participation of attendees from across the globe. Considering International Women鈥檚 Day is taking place this month, it is the perfect time to have announced Embark. The Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking provided the ultimate venue, drawing inspiration and creative ideas for our collective action in support of our gender justice initiative.鈥�

Sall continues by saying that there is immense disruption and struggle across the globe with the rise of xenophobia and fascism coupled with shrinking civil society spaces. 鈥淟ike never before, there is an urgent need for collective action to push for social and political change at all levels, and this is what inspired Embark.鈥�

Research shows that reducing workplace inequalities over the next 20 years could add 6% to global GDP. However, there are still several obstacles to achieving true workplace equality within African organisations. President Ellen Sirleaf, women鈥檚 activist and supporter of Embark added, 鈥淚 am honoured to partner with 51风流and Embark as we seek to strengthen and resource women-led movements and leadership throughout the world.鈥�

She continues 鈥淎ctive intervention of women in decision-making positions will help foster the overall quality of governance in terms of boosting accountability and transparency, reducing corruption, and protecting the interest of marginalized sections of society. But we can鈥檛 do this alone, we need all people to come together around the same vision of equality.鈥�

SAP鈥檚 Global Gender Agenda

Achieving gender equality is vital to the culture and success of every company, from small start-ups to large corporates. 鈥淓mpowering women in the workplace is a priority. It鈥檚 vital that we work together to deconstruct and replace the social norms and structures that fuel ongoing inequalities,鈥� says Sunil Geness, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Government Relations at 51风流Africa.

鈥淎s a purpose-driven company based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SAP鈥檚 entire ecosystem connects companies, partners and customers around innovation and demonstrates a strong commitment to Sustainable Development Goal number 5: .鈥�

Geness continues to say that there鈥檚 a growing recognition in the value of diversity and inclusion, and forward-thinking companies are reflecting on the diversity in their boardrooms and talent pools and working towards gender equality and equity. 鈥淲ith more than 90% of jobs to become tech related, it is crucial that we empower women and girls to become active collaborators, innovators and business leaders in the STEM fields and unlock technology’s potential to effect positive change across our continent.鈥�

The post 51风流and Partners Embark on a Global Collective Program to Eradicate Gender Inequality appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

At its location at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) at the V&A Waterfront precinct, the d-school has brought together diverse minds for workshops that offer training in design thinking tools and principles. These programmes for students include the four-day Design Thinking Week and the longer Foundation Programme in Design Thinking, spread across 12 weeks. The Open Course: Design Thinking in Practice is geared towards working professionals and tailor-made workshops are also offered to organisations seeking to become more agile.

Hasso Plattner, founder of the d-school as well as technology company SAP, had a vision to 鈥渦nleash hidden creative potentials and help focus on human needs鈥�. After establishing the d.school at Stanford University in the United States and another at the Hasso Plattner Institute (D-School) in Potsdam, Germany, Cape Town became the first Africa-based location where design thinking鈥檚 impact on the culture of work and education could be fostered.

鈥淒esign thinking, during its first years, was mostly seen as a user-centred way of helping organisations get a better picture of their customers and鈥攖hrough early, cheap prototyping鈥攕hortened the development cycles and made it more efficient,鈥� says Plattner. Since then, design thinking has been taken beyond boardrooms and into universities, the non-profit sector, and government departments. Plattner himself has invested funds in establishing schools to ensure design thinking is taught more broadly. 鈥淥ur schools encourage collaboration rather than individual competition. They train a network mode of thinking and working, they unleash hidden creative potential, and they help to

focus on human needs. 鈥淒esign thinking has the potential to change individuals, companies, organisations, and, with its radical democratic approach, even political structures.鈥�

Plattner believes the d-school at UCT can 鈥渂ecome a solution engine for some of the major social problems in South Africa, supporting companies and public organisations with their current challenges鈥�.

The d-school鈥檚 founding director, Richard Perez, officially opened the school鈥檚 doors in 2015. He explains that design thinking is not about learning a process, but rather about adopting a mindset. 鈥淲e are not trying to train people to become professional designers, but rather work with individuals that may not have followed a traditional design education and teach them how to approach and solve challenges within their field of expertise through the lens and mindset of a designer,鈥� says Perez. 鈥淒esign thinking exhibits a number of key attributes that include, but is not limited to, interdisciplinary collaboration; problem solving; tolerance of ambiguity and failure; user-centredness and involvement; creativity and innovation; and iteration and experimentation.鈥�

The d-school has offered design thinking workshops to students registered at various higher learning institutions across South Africa. It has also integrated design thinking into the curriculum in some UCT and GSB courses. 鈥淲e would like to see every student at the University of Cape Town exposed to design-led thinking. Its application is endless鈥攆rom solving engineering challenges to designing your own life,鈥� adds Perez. 鈥淲e live in an ever-increasing world of complexity, where challenges cannot be understood and solved by a single discipline or traditional analytical approaches anymore.

鈥淭he need to be able to innovate in the face of this complexity, and do so in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, is not a skill that is taught in higher educational institutions. This is a critical skillset we will need for the future world of work and, at the d-school, we develop this within our students.鈥�

Perez says the d-school wants to create an African Centre of Excellence for Design-Led Thinking and be part of a leading design thinking network on the continent. The d-school has already worked in various African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Morocco, and has partnered with an international non-governmental organisation in Malawi since 2016, adds Perez. This experience shows how local-led solutions can change the way donors design and implement programmes. It also offers insight into how African solutions need to include local contexts and input.

Through its work across the continent, the d-school has found that having people on the ground who are trying to find solutions in a local framework are integral to success while donor funding needs to be more human-centred and informed by the context of the environment.

In Morocco, it was meanwhile discovered that design thinking could be taught in any context, even when no furniture or creative studio setup was available. The most interesting aspect? Design thinking became a common language for people who had diverse languages and backgrounds.

While the d-school brought the process, tools, and technologies to help communities surface their own capabilities, people were also able to take ownership of solutions. Ultimately, the premise of design thinking then is in the value in the room and in the diversity of the people who come together.

This article first appeared on .

The post UCT鈥檚 D-School Pushes Innovation and Design Thinking on the Continent appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.