Wazzup Pilipinas!
The ASEAN Foundation and SAP SE recently announced a strategic
partnership to create positive social impact in South East Asia. This joint
effort will focus on areas of Education, Volunteerism and Entrepreneurship.
Through this partnership, the ASEAN Foundation and SAP aim to support the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in building a cohesive regional
community and deliver inclusively-shared economic benefits by encouraging
strategic and innovative participation of youths and social entrepreneurs.
The Memorandum of Understanding between the two
organisations is a part of SAP’s Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) policy to equip youths with the skills they need to tackle society’s
problems and thrive in the digital economy; build the capacity of innovative
social enterprises that put young people on the path to successful careers and
build a skilled workforce for the IT sector with training and workforce
development programmes. Key initiatives that will be executed under this
agreement will focus on
driving digital literacy to support sustainable growth for the communities that
the programmes aim to benefit.
“A sustainable ASEAN community lies in the
hands of ASEAN’s youth. I believe that our joint initiatives with SAP will
increase the involvement of ASEAN youths in national and regional activities to
give them an opportunity to actively contribute to the ASEAN community,” says
Elaine Tan, the Executive Director of the ASEAN Foundation.
Youth empowerment has been a salient
topic in ASEAN since the Declaration of Principles to Strengthen ASEAN
Collaboration on Youth that was presented in Bangkok in 1983. “The three
initiatives under the ASEAN Foundation and SAP partnership have touched upon
five priority focus of the most recent ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2016-2020 which
include youth entrepreneurship, youth employment, youth awareness, youth
volunteerism and leadership, as well as youth resilience,” Elaine added.
“ASEAN represents not just one economic
community; it also represents one social community. As ASEAN celebrates 50
years of deepening unity and rising prosperity this year, we are excited with
the opportunities that are in store in this Growth Frontier region. With almost
half of the region’s population being under 30 years of age by 2020, there is a
growing pool of talent that we can invest in and work with for a better future.
Through our joint initiatives with ASEAN Foundation, we aim to help prepare
young people for the digital economy and support ASEAN drive sustainable
socio-economic growth in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” said Mr. Scott
Russell, President and Managing Director, SAP South East Asia.
He added, “SAP’s vision is to help the world
run better and improve people’s lives. This is our enduring cause. In service
to this higher purpose, we are investing efforts in our Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) programme to equip youths with the skills they need to
tackle society’s problems and thrive in the digital economy. I believe that
this partnership will help scale our CSR efforts to create greater reach and
positively impact lives in this region".
Under this agreement, the ASEAN Foundation and
SAP will roll out three initiatives in 2017 to address the ASEAN’s economic,
environmental, and societal issues, through three focus areas of education,
volunteerism and entrepreneurship.
Education
Targeting tertiary students across all 10 ASEAN
member states from any discipline, this data analytics competition – “ASEAN
Data Science Explorers” aims to enhance awareness and appreciation of the ASEAN
community amongst young people through digital literacy intervention. By learning
and using the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud tool, the initiative encourages
participants to deliver data-driven insights for ASEAN across six United Nation
(UN) Sustainable Development Goals, namely (1) good health and well-being, (2)
quality education, (3) gender equality, (4) clean water and sanitation, (5)
decent work and economic growth, and (6) sustainable cities and communities.
The competition will be organized across all ASEAN member states with a
regional final taking place in Jakarta, Indonesia in November this year.
Volunteerism
In collaboration with United Nations Volunteers
(UNV) programme and the Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development of Germany, ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN Foundation and SAP along with other partners have
launched the Youth Volunteering Innovation Challenge (YVIC) in ASEAN. Under the
theme “Impact ASEAN,” the initiative supports young volunteers throughout the
ASEAN countries in their journey to catalyze youth-led innovation for social impact
and sustainable development. YVIC will provide entrepreneurship knowledge and
skills through national workshops. The national workshop winners will be
awarded micro-grants to prototype their ideas and later participate in the
regional mentorship orientation in Bangkok, Thailand. In addition, employees
from SAP will be volunteering their time to provide guidance and support to
refine and scale up the youth’s Impact Projects.
Entrepreneurship
Through structured capacity building and
mentoring initiatives planned through local and overseas missions, high
performing employees from SAP will support social impact intermediaries through
mentoring and pro-bono consulting. The programme in association with several
partners will impact close to 20 social enterprises across Cambodia, Indonesia,
Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in 2017.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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