A few weeks ago, twelve SAP employees from around the world set out on their journeys to Lusaka, Zambia as part of SAP’s Corporate Social Responsibility’s flagship pro-bono consulting program, the SAP Social Sabbatical (SoSa).
For the four-week duration of the program they provided sustainable support for the four social enterprises they had been paired with, experiencing the Zambian culture and country and forging lasting friendships from the people they met.
Meet Vitalite
Vitalite Zambia is a social enterprise that provides solar home systems and efficient appliances to rural and peri-urban communities in Zambia. Its mission is to positively impact lives and livelihoods by making quality products, services, and renewable energy accessible and affordable to all Zambian households.
SAP consultants Thais Druwe, Om Band and Tobias Hiob were tasked with providing a foundation for streamlining Vitalite’s operations, enabling it to grow revenues and ensure that its operational processes were scalable. Their scope of work spanned from creating a policy guideline to improve processes for National Sales and Services and providing general business advice to drive further scalability and growth.
While members of the social enterprise learned from them, the four weeks also offered valuable lessons for the SAP team. These included the benefit of ‘company dance-offs’ in establishing a positive culture, Zambians’ openness and positive mindset, the importance of putting the customer first and the true magic of creating trust in the team and how complementary strengths can go a long way.
As the SAP team noted, “our sabbatical with VITALITE Zambia re-invigorated our spirit to leverage business for good. It demonstrated how enterprises can create lasting community impacts and motivated a renewed focus on making a societal difference.”
Meet Genius Education
Genius Education Zambia is an EdTech social enterprise that exists at the intersection of science, education and leadership. Genius Education aims to facilitate, enhance and promote quality emerging STEM education by empowering the Zambian education system.
But despite six years of operations, Genius Education lacked essential financial systems, hindering its ability to launch social business ventures for sustainability and achieve socio-economic impact in Zambia. Therefore, the scope of work for the SoSa team was to make the social enterprise’s financial processes future-ready by implementing a financial system, conducting training and creating documentation. To ensure long-term success, a post-program implementation plan was introduced to cover ongoing support and outline a strategic financial model.
The SAP consultants Brian Vance, Julia Hasslinger and Kate Yambao worked hand-in-hand with the young and dynamic team from Genius making this a truly unique experience. The team of three said afterwards that Zambia was, “easily as the most welcoming culture we’ve ever encountered,” and that they experienced this every day at Genius. ” We know we will be forever changed by this experience and we’re so grateful for the learning, the sharing, the kindness, and the way (the people at) Genius opened their arms to us. At the end of the 4-week project, we’ve not only delivered our scope of work, but the greatest milestone is gaining a family at Genius Education Zambia.”
Meet Ebusaka
Ebusaka is a social enterprise that helps connect the many stakeholders in waste management with their app to help inspire cleaner cities starting with the capital, Lusaka.
The SAP consultant team, Dekel Liberman and Rana Hamzakadi took on the task to help the green tech start up implement project management and team processes, introduce branding and social media planning and support the Ebusaka team with an onsite media launch event that resulted in increased visibility in its target market. Ebusaka’s founders Muyunda and Michael opened their home to the team to conduct workshops and provide the consultants with a glimpse of what it takes to inspire clean cities in Zambia.
With only 10% of the country’s waste being properly collected and processed, there is still a lot to do in the Zambian waste management industry. And it takes inspirational leaders like Muyunda, who are ready to take on the challenge to shift towards a more sustainable and cleaner future.
Meet BongoHive
BongoHive is Zambia’s first tech and innovation hub which aims to assist scalable startups by providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and reduce the barriers to entrepreneurship.
To support BongoHive with making Zambia Africa’s next hotspot of innovation, SAP consultants, Suvarna BH, Mikhail Fedorov, and Eugenio Presno immersed themselves in BongoHive’s operations, exploring its mission, vision and efforts to empower the entrepreneurship ecosystem. The team of three offered their insights and perspectives that helped the organization influence its approach to creating impactful products and services.
“From brainstorming sessions to hands-on project work, their dedication and enthusiasm were palpable, inspiring our different units and igniting new ideas for future endeavors,” said Lukonga Lindunda, CEO of BongoHive in a recent LinkedIn post as they bid farewell to the SAP team. “Their
contributions have left an indelible mark on our organization, propelling us forward on our journey towards greater innovation and social impact.”
It’s All About The People
“It was inspiring to see the genuine dedication to doing good within this cohort, as they came together with a shared focus on making positive impact.” shared team mentor Elitsa.
Reflecting on his experience with BongoHive, Eugenio Presno said, “sometimes, when submerged in the day-to-day never-ending list of things to do both for work and for my family, it is easy to lose sight of what is important in life. This month has given me the chance to put my life and the lives of the people I care about in a different perspective.” He added, “In just four weeks, I have met, worked, and exchanged ideas with so many people that are trying to make this world a better place…. in Zambia I have found such passion, such energy to do good for children in schools, for the environment, for entrepreneurs with big dreams, or for people that just with a couple of lightbulbs are able to improve their lives so profoundly.”
Thanks to the #SAPSocialSabbatical consultants: Julia, Kate, Mikhail, Suvarna, Eugenio, Tobias, Om, Thais, Brian and Steffen, our amazing team mentor Elitsa and project managers from Pyxera Global: Nicholas, Daniela and Peter.
To learn more about the SAP Social Sabbatical program, check out #SAPSocialSabbatical
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