The ASEAN Foundation and SAP has formed a strategic partnership to further positive social impact in the ASEAN region. This joint effort focuses on areas of Education, Volunteerism, and Entrepreneurship. The collaboration will engage youths and social entrepreneurs to contribute to ASEAN’s vision of an inclusive people-centred and people-oriented community.
This agreement will focus on driving digital literacy to support sustainable growth for the communities that the programmes aim to benefit. This newly formed strategic partnership has been in place for less than a year but has seen some significant positive impact across the ASEAN community.
The SAP Social Sabbatical (SoSa) programme is a collaborative programme between the ASEAN Foundation and SAP, with support from Pyxera Global. This programme aims to build the capacity of innovative social enterprises from ASEAN countries. 31 SAP employees from various offices across Europe, America, and Asia, got to work directly with selected ASEAN social enterprises for two weeks up to one month.
During this period, they consulted and mentored the social enterprises to solve operational challenges and helped deliver a business plan to each of the social enterprises to solve pressing business issues and set them for sustainable growth.
VIET NAM: 3rd to the 21st of April 2017 |
(i) Saigon Children’s Charity |
a UK-registered charity that aims to eliminate poverty through education |
(ii) Teach for Vietnam |
a nonprofit organisation under the umbrella of Teach for All |
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(iii) G.A.P. Institute |
a social enterprise that aims to train youths in language and professional skills |
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(iv) XanhShop |
a social enterprise that helps farmers and producers develop eco-friendly products and encourages them to practice natural farming. |
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INDONESIA: 25th of April to the 5th of May 2017 |
(i) Campa Tour and Travel |
an Indonesian tour company that partners with local operators and service providers to provide high quality tours for individuals and larger groups |
(ii) Javara Indigenous Indonesia |
a self-sustained organisation working from sustainable production to sustainable distribution of community made, organic products |
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(iii) Prestasi Junior Indonesia |
the national branch of Junior Achievement Worldwide based in Boston, USA. They introduce innovative, experiential learning initiatives to schools from junior to high school level |
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(iv) Mien R. Uno Foundation |
a non-profit organization that focuses on training and developing young people through entrepreneurship training. |
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MYANMAR: 14th to the 28th of October 2017 |
(i) myME (Myanmar Mobile Education) |
a social enterprise that provides education in a mobile classroom to children who are forced to work at teashop restaurants to make a living |
(ii) KT Care |
a non-profit organisation that provides education, health and emergency preparation and relief services by empowering local expertise to do so |
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(iii) Phandeeyar (creation place) |
an innovation lab that is spearheading the development of |
“…to tackle the mismatch of information and lack of coordination between production and sales departments, SAP employees developed a simple yet practical approach which is to use a dashboard. This dashboard can be seen by all Javara workers which really helped to improve our internal coordination.”
Suprapto
Chief Operation Officer
Javara
Based on the questionnaires completed by ten representatives from seven enterprises/organisations and interview with three of them, all seven selected enterprises representatives perceived that the programme was useful and helped them run their enterprises better.
All of them mentioned that the programme was relevant to what they expected. Moreover, they also believed that they were able to leverage the expertise and experience shared by SAP employees to strengthen their organisations. Additionally, they felt that the way SAP employees transferred their knowledge and experience and interacted with them was effective, allowing them to digest the knowledge they shared more easily.