SAP's Social Sabbatical Initiative reaches Gujarat

SAP's social sabbatical program has reached Gujarat. It is an innovative learning opportunity for SAP employees across the globe to contribute their time and talent to helping entrepreneurs and small businesses in emerging markets.

Under this program, SAP India recently initiated a campaign for fostering  entrepreneurship in Northwest India. As part of their social sabbatical support campaign, SAP has partnered with NGOs to offer one-month consulting provided by a multidisciplinary team of SAP executives from different parts of the world. The team will review their work processes/ structure and increase the impact and scale up projects.

Four non-profit organizations on the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar axis, Gujarat, received SAP consultancy team for welfare work in partnership with Pyxera NGO. One-month project will increase the number of lives impacted by the following NGOs:

-          Ashray Incubator promotes the development of technological start-ups and social entrepreneurs. The hardest challenge that this NGO has today is finding a structured way to measure and report the projects' impact. The SAP team will help it develop this methodology.

-          Another incubator to be supported by Social Sabbatical is CIIE, acronym for Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship. This center has already incubated more than 100 start-ups and provided mentoring to about 5,000 start-ups. The CIIE's greatest demand is reviewing its work processes in order to be able to increase the impact and scale the existing projects.

-          NEEV, the third NGO participating in the project, comes from the academic world. Structured by IITGN - Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, NEEV focuses on providing entrepreneurship courses and basic concepts of business management, mainly for young people and women. In addition, the NGO also offers vocational courses and professional placement to fathers and mothers of families in the region. "I used to work in a beauty salon, now I own the salon and have employees. I hope that the NEEV's work reaches more people," said Laxmi Sharma, entrepreneur and owner of a salon in on the university campus, in Ralaj.

-          SEWA Manager ni School is the fourth non-profit organization advised by SAP in the region. The newly founded SEWA will go through a project to review processes and develop reports for its stakeholders. One of its entrepreneurs is Hansiba that employs dozens of craftspeople who make craft pieces using original fabric and sewing, respecting and maintaining the local culture.