An Innovative Approach to Volunteering, to Benefit Rays of Hope

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

 SAP Global Head of  Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Alexandra Van der Ploeg said that “ SAP’s aspirational goal is to create a significant and sustainable social impact in three core areas:

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

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.”

In addition, SAP 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.   On the digital literacy front, SAP 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 SAP 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.