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Borderless Blog - International Corporate Volunteerism
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The Future of Efficient Mobility: IBM Executive Service Corps in Rosario, Argentina
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Known as the “Chicago of South America”, Rosario is Argentina’s third-largest city and is growing fast. Located in the Pampas, the breadbasket of Argentina, Rosario is only a four hour drive from Buenos Aires. The city lies on the banks of the Parana River, the cornerstone for the city’s connectivity, tourism, recreation and booming trade, and is well known for its urban green spaces, public monuments, parks, and plazas, and well-regarded for its quality of life, eclectic architecture, and natural beauty. Argentinians consider the city very progressive, and for a long time, it has pioneered sustainability programs and private-public partnerships that have now become models for many other cities in Latin America. Read More >>
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Linking Projects, Driving Impact
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This October, CDC Development Solutions (CDS) sent a team of 13 IBM Corporate Service Corps Volunteer Consultants to Arequipa, Peru for 30 days. During that time, the CSC team had the opportunity to work with five different local organizations including OGD Arequipa, a destination management organization, CESEM, the non-profit arm of the local Chamber of Commerce, Peru 2021, a Peru-wide organization aligned around corporate social responsibility, and El Taller, an NGO improving the local capacity of Arequipa via innovative capacity building. Read More >>
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Reintegrating Employees After a Volunteer Overseas Assignment
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As 2012 quickly comes to a close and another great year of ICV programs wrap up, it’s a good time to think about the “now what?” Virtually without fail, our pro-bono consultants report in their post-assignment surveys that their time on project was a life-changing and transformational experience. They return to their daily lives more energized than ever to make a difference in the world. After providing their employees with such a transformative experience, companies sometimes struggle to capitalize on this passion, and even risk employees looking elsewhere for fulfillment. Here are five ways to better engage your high-performing employees upon their return: Read More >>
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New IBM CSC Video: A Culture of Service
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Stan Litow of IBM recently posted a video on the Citizen IBM blog that highlights the Corporate Service Corps projects in Nigeria and Brazil. We at CDS are honored to work with a company named the Number 1 most community minded company by the National Conference on Citizenship and Points and Light, a ranking largely driven by the company's innovative CSC progam. Check out the full video below.
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The First IBM CSC Team Kicks Off in Senegal!
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On October 19th, the very first IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) team was deployed to Senegal! The 14 person CSC team has been nicknamed a “mini United Nations” as participants hail from Brazil, USA, England, Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, India, Japan, and Singapore. Though from very diverse backgrounds, the participants connected immediately and were eager to begin their month-long assignment together. Read More >>
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What is PepsiCorps Doing in New Mexico?
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Most of CDS’ International Corporate Volunteer programs undertake projects in emerging markets around the world, but more recently, we have been developing a number of U.S.-based programs to support communities in need. This year, PepsiCo continued their leadership development program, PepsiCorps, to support an international clean water project based in Bhorugram, India while also undertaking a domestic project in Albuquerque, NM. Read More >>
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Jacarandas in Full Bloom: SAP Social Sabbatical Team in Pretoria, South AfricaDaniel Elliot | October 16th, 2012 |
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“The team has been here for two days, and they have already changed the way we think,” said Ilze Meintjes, Executive Director of Employment Solutions for People with Disabilities, an organization that gives disabled individuals an opportunity to work for a living. “They have breathed fresh air into our organization.” Read More >>
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VolunteerMatch Webinar: Pro Bono Service on Steroids
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Earlier this week I had the pleasure of partnering with VolunteerMatch to host a webinar discussing International Corporate Volunteer programs with Pascale Sejean, founding member of PepsiCo's ICV program, the PepsiCorps. We've seen ICV programs grow immensely over the past few years, and I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to share why more and more companies are sending their top talent on pro bono assignments to local markets around the world. Listen below for the full webinar, and click here for the feature slides.
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Video of SAP's Social Sabbatical: The Belo Bunch
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With SAP wrapping up its first Social Sabbatical program, we’ve got a great video that shows the team in action and chronicles the work they did supporting local organizations in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. SAP is sending more teams to India and South Africa this October, so check back for more updates!
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ICV Conference Video Interviews: Ernst and Young's Lisa Nussbaum and Tyler Schleich
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Mark your calendars! Our 4th Annual International Corporate Volunteerism Conference will be held on April 11-12, 2013 in Washington D.C. Be sure to read about our sponsorship opportunities, and in the meantime, check below for some video interviews from last year's conference, where we sat down with Ernst and Young's Lisa Nussbaum and Tyler Schleich to talk about their company's Corporate Responsibility Fellowship program.
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The Pfizer Foundation in Chile and Mental Health
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A day in the life of a regular mental health caregiver in Chile needs more than 24 hours. A “normal” day for the men and women who work assisting mentally challenged children and adults in caregiving institutions begins hours before breakfast time. Usually, most of them live far from work, come from low-income segments with limited education, endure overcrowded public transportation on a daily basis, and receive low wages for a job that is emotionally stressful and physically challenging, all of which leads to high turnover in the industry. Read More >>
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Pfizer Volunteers Assisting Caregivers, Senior Citizens, and Cancer Patients in Chile
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I am a Senior Program Manager at CDC Development Solutions which is an NGO based in Washington, DC that designs and implements programs that leverage corporate employees to support local businesses, nonprofits, and governments in emerging markets worldwide. Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to manage Pfizer’s 4th International Corporate Volunteerism team in Latin America. The selected city was Santiago, Chile, and the volunteer team, known as Pfizer’s Global Health Team (GHT), was comprised of 12 top talents representing 9 countries in Latin America. The team worked with three non-governmental organizations for three weeks, improving the delivery of health services for three target groups in greatest need in Chile: health caregivers, senior citizens, and cancer patients. Read More >>
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Leveraging Private Sector Knowledge and Experience in the "Third Sector"
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Belo Horizonte, Brazil is best known as the bar capital of the world, but I swear that’s not the reason I have been there three times so far in 2012. As a Program Manager for CDC Development Solutions, I am responsible for helping corporations run their international corporate volunteer programs in developing countries around the world. I have had the honor and privilege to help SAP launch their endeavor into the ICV world this year with their first pilot program in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I got to spend the first week with the Belo Bunch (the name they endearingly gave themselves) earlier this month, and the experience was nothing less than profound and inspiring. Read More >>
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CEICV Program with IBM CSC in Astana, KazakhstanTanya Gapeka | August 3rd, 2012 |
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My third trip to Kazakhstan flew by pretty fast. I was travelling there this time around for the launch of the IBM Corporate Service Corps Kazakhstan projects on July 16. In this program, crème-of-the-crop employees of IBM are deployed on month-long assignments to provide assistance to socially-important causes in emerging economies. This team is different from the previous CSC team that worked in Kazakhstan in 2011, in that their goal is to provide technical assistance under USAID’s Center of Excellence for International Corporate Volunteerism (CEICV). The CEICV partnership between IBM and USAID aims to both increase the sustainability of assistance impact and to further promote International Corporate Volunteerism as a way to extend the amount of highly skilled technical assistance to local organizations. You can learn more about the CEICV here. Read More >>
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The Path to Leadership: PepsiCo Associates Volunteer in Ghana
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This article originally appeared on Triple Pundit, on August 2nd 2012. International Corporate Volunteer (ICV) programs are often highlighted for their potential as leadership development programs. We don’t spend a lot of time, however, discussing exactly why these programs are so influential in bringing out the best in already top performing employees. Using PepsiCo’s PepsiCorps program as an example, I thought I’d break it down. As a quick background on PepsiCorps, a team of eight PepsiCo employees – selected through an application process – traveled to Ghana for four weeks in October of 2011. While living and working together in Denu, in the Volta Region of the country, the team was divided into two and worked four days a week on two projects: supporting the district water boards to improve management of clean water resources and working with local communities to promote eco-tourism as a means of generating additional resources for clean water and sanitation. On Fridays, the PepsiCorps team visited local primary and junior high schools to support hygiene education. So how do these projects develop leaders? Read More >>
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Recycling Lives: Redemption Amid the Rubbish
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This article originally appeared on SAP's Forbes Blog by Evan Welsh, volunteer participant for SAP's Social Sabbatical program. Catadores are the heart and soul of ASMARE, an association of hundreds of recycling professionals located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the reason the organization was created 22 years ago. They are also the reason that I’ve spent nearly four weeks in southeastern Brazil, creating an internal and external communications plan for ASMARE with two fellow SAP colleagues – Lena, from product development in Germany, and Jan, from internal education in Canada. Read More >>
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No, Thank You. I Am Working: Brazil's Hands-On Environmental Solution
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This article originally appeared on SAP's Forbes Blog by Evan Welsh, volunteer participant for SAP's Social Sabbatical program. The third largest city in Brazil, Belo Horizonte (BH), is no different than any other city or town in the world in that it produces tons of trash each day. Unlike other places, BH boasts thousands of “catadores,” who remove the garbage, usually at night when there is less traffic, cart it to a central collection facility that is crawling with rats (but there are enough dogs to chase them away), and separate by gloveless hand their massive load into reusable recyclable materials – paper, cardboard, plastic, etc. While there is no exact translation of “catadore,” since it’s a Brazilian profession, the Portuguese word roughly translates to garbage collectors or collectors of recyclable materials. Read More >>
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SAP Social Sabbatical: Turning Trash into Treasure
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This article originally appeared on SAP's Forbes Blog by Evan Welsh, volunteer participant for SAP's Social Sabbatical program. After spending a week working at ASMARE, an association of “catadores” or garbage collectors in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, I have come to truly appreciate the staff’s unrelenting commitment and passion to reduce poverty and homelessness. By providing meaningful employment to many of the city’s outcasts and neglected, whose livelihood depend on collecting and separating garbage, ASMARE is more than just an employer to its nearly 200 official collectors. It’s a provider of hope and a path to a new life that includes housing and access to healthcare and education. Read More >>
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SAP Social Sabbatical: Belo Bunch Ready to Make an Impact in Brazil
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This article originally appeared on SAP's Community Network by Brittany Lothe, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP. Any guess what SAPers Monika Bloching, Olena Demeter, Judy Hoffman, Heike Kolar, Tijs Van Lier, Jan Seger, Michael Wachter, Andre Wagner and Evan Welsh have in common? Let me give you a few hints:
The SAP Social Sabbatical is an innovative learning opportunity for SAP high potential employees to contribute their time and talent to working with entrepreneurs and small businesses in emerging markets, a primary area of focus for SAP’s social investments. Read More >>
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The Role of Skills-Based Volunteering in Global Development
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This article originally appeared on CSRWire. It is the first in a six-part series highlighting innovative trends in skills-based volunteering from pledge companies of A Billion + Change, a national campaign to mobilize billions in pro bono and skills-based volunteer services from corporate America. Skills-based volunteering is on the rise. In 2011, four times as many companies sent employees to volunteer professional skills in countries such as Ghana, India and Nigeria compared to just six years ago according to the CDC's 2012 International Corporate Volunteer Benchmarking Survey. Volunteers – and their employers – often call the experience life changing. NGOs, nonprofits, government agencies and other organizations say expertise in areas such as technology, supply chain management and marketing allows them to advance in ways they otherwise never could. Read More >>
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International Corporate Volunteerism: A Game Changer
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This guest blog article, by Paul Klein, Founder of Impakt, originally appeared on Forbes. In 1960, President John F. Kennedy proposed “a peace corps of talented men and women” who would dedicate themselves to the progress and peace of developing countries. Today, the Peace Corps has company. The IBM Corporate Service Corps(CSC), PepsiCorps and Pfizer‘s Global Health Fellows are at the leading edge of a new wave of social change called International Corporate Volunteerism (ICV) that has the potential to be a game changer in the development sector. Read More >>
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International Corporate Volunteering: Experiential Learning Advances Diversity And Communications
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This guest blog article, by Alice Korngold, a leading CSR consultant, originally appeared on Fast Company. “In spite of there having been a translator to help facilitate conversations, I have never been so keenly alert to my client’s body language and every nuance of expression, as well as my own,” explained Susan E. Wedge, partner, IBM’s Global Business Services Public Sector, about her experience as a member of a pro bono consulting team deployed by IBM to help Bucharest, Romania’s civic government to create a Smarter City. Read More >>
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Seeking Insight for Innovation
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This guest blog article, by Laura Asiala, Director of Corporate Citizenship, Dow Corning, originally appeared on Dow Corning's Citizen Service Corps website. “Discover; Serve; Innovate” became our theme for the Citizen Service Corps as we developed and launched our first group in 2010. I’ve mentioned before the importance of understanding the order of that priority, and for us, it was driven by innovation. With that clarity, it was easy to see that we would need a direct link to our business development group, known at Dow Corning as the “Business & Technology Incubator,” and we had it, in the person of Chip Reeves, manager of Discovery in the B&TI. Read More >>
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ICV Conference Preview: Key Components of Learning Development Part 1
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This guest blog article by Matthew Farmer, keynote speaker at CDC Development Solutions’ 3rd Annual International Corporate Volunteerism Conference and Managing Director of Emerging World, is the first in a three-part series. Emerging World works with global corporations to design and manage learning experiences across Africa, Asia and Latin America. I‘m really looking forward to April 12th and being part in CDC’s International Corporate Volunteering conference. Emerging World works with global corporations to design and manage learning experiences across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Making sure we gain maximum business benefit for these experiences is out top priority. At the conference, I will be outlining Emerging World’s six steps to achieving impactful learning from an international corporate volunteering program, based on the experience we’ve had with clients such as Microsoft and Ernst & Young... Read More >>
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George Washington University Capstone Adventure - Part 2
International Corporate Volunteerism | March 20th, 2012
This is Part 2 of an on-going series of guest blog articles written by a group of students at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, who are completing their capstone project with CDS in India. Click here for Part 1.
Namaste from Mumbai! Our team has spent a busy few days interviewing client organizations and exploring the lasting impacts of international corporate volunteer (ICV) assignments. In our short time here, we’ve met with a striking diversity of Indian organizations working in a variety of sectors:
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An Important Lesson About Relationships: Never be Surprised by Surprises
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This guest blog article, by Laura Asiala, Director of Corporate Citizenship, Dow Corning, originally appeared on Dow Corning's Citizen Service Corps website. It turns out Dr. Phil Mirvis was right: relationships are one of the most important things we gain through an international corporate volunteer (ICV) program, like the Dow Corning Citizen Service Corps. In 2010 we were just getting started, and I had written a brief for CDC Development Solutions for our first program that was very broad.. As a specialty materials manufacturer, we were looking to immerse ourselves in under-served markets: no desk jobs for us! No teaching (well, at universities anyway). No information technology system or data base development. We wanted to be in the field. And, we wanted to work on projects that would lend us the greatest amount of insight for our future business: renewable energy, affordable housing, sustainable agriculture, and/or sustainable transportation. Read More >>
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Our Story: Starting an International Corporate Volunteer Program
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This guest blog article, by Laura Asiala, Director of Corporate Citizenship, Dow Corning, originally appeared on Dow Corning's Citizen Service Corps website. I am often asked how the Citizen Service Corps got started at the Dow Corning Corporation. The truth is that there isn’t one answer. While many individuals have answers and worked hard to finally bring this idea to fruition, these are my recollections. In the summer of 2009, then Dow Corning CEO, Stephanie Burns, returned from a meeting at GlaxoSmithKline where she was a member of the board energized by a presentation she had heard regarding their new international corporate volunteer program, PULSE, presented by Ahysia Posner Mencin, Ph. D. We sat discussing the program and its approach with vice president Marie Eckstein, and I mused, “I’ve often thought a service-learning approach would help us to see opportunities at the ‘Base of the Pyramid.’” Stephanie turned to me, pointed, and said emphatically, “I want that.” Read More >>
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International Women's Day: Empowering Women in Business
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In celebration of International Women’s Day CDS would like to highlight the work of two organizations in Morocco that are empowering women in business. “This is a place where women can come – and celebrate themselves – openly and have other women celebrate them.” Manal Elattir, a young and ambitious social entrepreneur from Morocco, tells us as we sit and listen to describe why her and a group of dedicated women were working tirelessly afterhours as volunteers to help build L’Association du Réseau de femmes pour le Mentoring/ Networking (MWM). Read More >>
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George Washington University Capstone Adventure - Part 1
International Corporate Volunteerism | March 8th, 2012
Quantifying impact is the bane of many industries' existence - CSR, impact investing and development NGOs striving for more rigorous program assessments come to mind. Until two months ago, we had only vague ideas about how difficult it is to turn anecdotes and output measurements into impact values.
We're four graduate students in international development at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. During our final semester, we complete a capstone project that is essentially pro bono consulting for a development organization. Having formed a team based on our mutual interest in private sector engagement in development, CDC Development Solutions (CDS) was top on our list of organizations to approach with our proposal.
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International Corporate Philanthropy Day and Skills-Based Volunteerism
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Community service is nothing new to corporate America – spending a day contributing to the betterment of a community is an excellent way to build teamwork and re-invigorate staff. Painting a school or cleaning a park are necessary activities for our communities to be their best – but are they the best way for corporations to positively engage? Increasingly the answer is no, there are much more impactful and sustainable ways for this interaction to occur, namely skills-based volunteerism. Read More >>
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3rd Annual ICV Conference: Revisiting 2011 & A Preview of What's to Come
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CDC Development Solutions’ 3rd Annual International Corporate Volunteerism Conference is just 2 months away. We are hard at work confirming a great line up of speakers and sponsors in the public and private arenas. With this year’s expanded agenda, the Conference will include interactive sessions that will look at how different companies derive business value from ICV programs. This includes linking ICV into your core business, integrating HR and leadership development into an ICV program, learning the public relations and media strategies of industry experts, as well as an update on the Center for Excellence in International Corporate Volunteerism (CEICV) and an intro to the Global Health Fellows Program II. Read More >>
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How Dow Corning Uses Innovation to Further CSR and Business GoalsAmanda MacArthur | February 7th, 2012 |
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This article originally appeared on Triple Pundit, February 7th, 2012. View the original article. In the 21st century marketplace, innovation and the need to constantly seek out new ideas is critical – as we’ve seen across industry sectors, stagnation is the one of the fastest ways to lose customers and forgo potential profit. This is true in the mature markets for that require either completely new products or adaptation of existing ones to meet emerging consumer demand – whether it’s repackaging products to reach the market at the base of the pyramid or it’s redesigning a battery to withstand power surges and disruptions. Read More >>
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The Right Stuff: How To Select Local Partners for ICV Programs
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As implementers and managers of International Corporate Volunteer (ICV) programs, one area where we have not spent a lot of time on is how we identify our local partners. My colleague, Jailan Adly, in her post from Coimbatore, India correctly stated , “The key is to partner with organizations that have the capacity and innovation to capitalize on the resources they receive from their advisors.” I would like to spend some time explaining how we embark on identifying partners with these attributes and developing fruitful working relationships. Read More >>
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A Win-Win-Win (Win-Win...)
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An NGO, Business Against Crime, in Mpumalanga South Africa reported: “While the corporate teams were here, our networking web expanded and still does so today… The greatest impact was expanding the network that our company depends on -- including partner funding possibilities. The ICV teams had amazing people and negotiation skills. It made approaching organizations like our local government far easier.” It was great to see the Wall Street Journal article, Doing Good to Do Well by Anne Tergesen (1/9/12, B-7), which clearly illustrated the multifaceted benefits companies such as IBM, Pfizer, FedEx, Intel and others receive through International Corporate Volunteering (ICV). As a win-win-win partnership, it’s also critical for us to look at the many benefits to the local organizations who host these volunteers. Read More >>
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IBM Coimbatore: ICV Success FactorsJailan Adly | October 14th, 2011 |
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One of the key elements to a successful International Corporate Volunteer assignment is matching the highly-skilled volunteer advisors with highly-impactful organizations on the ground. Through its management of ICV program, CDS has found that the opportunity for deep private sector engagement in development lies in strong public sector partners. This does not mean that they should only work with large NGOs or organizations - it is not the size of an organization that matters - but the quality of its leadership and services. The key is to partner with organizations that have the capacity and innovation to capitalize on the resources they receive from their advisors. In Coimbatore, India IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) is partnering with three organizations that exemplify this success factor. Read More >>
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IBM South Africa: Enhancing Education
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I recently traveled to South Africa to the launch the 8th IBM Corporate Service Corps team in that country and was impressed to see how the Corporate Service Corps is being utilized to further expand IBM’s public sector relationships in South Africa while still providing needed assistance to local communities and organizations. The IBM team of 14 employees are based in Polokwane, South Africa for one month and are working on various skills- based projects with 3 organizations: UNDP, The Limpopo Department of Education, and the Peakanyo Manufacturing Co-operative through the Limpopo Business Support Agency. Read More >> |
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The Misconceptions of Skills-Based Volunteerism
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A couple of Fridays ago, I had the opportunity to lead a “tabletop discussion” on International Corporate Volunteer (ICV) programs at the Society for International Development’s World Congress. Our table seemed to gather all kindred souls—development professionals who had worked with volunteer advisors on skills-based assignments within international programs, and who had found the volunteers to be excellent resources. As the conversation progressed, we all acknowledged that we were fighting an uphill battle to convince the development world that volunteers really provide value. One participant asked me why I thought that was the case. I did not have an easy answer, since the ongoing resistance to volunteer assistance appears to defy reason. Over the past few weeks, I gave that question lot of thought and there are several answers that came to mind. Read More >>
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International Corporate Volunteerism Builds Better Leaders
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"By placing future leaders into an unfamiliar situation, the (assignment) forced us all to stretch and learn a great deal of coping, leadership and team work skills. With all the ambiguity with the SOW, we each learned how to deal with the unknown productively, rather than looking for excuses and being stalled. These are crucial learning points for an organization's future leadership team and being in a completely different culture also forced us to re-evaluate our assumptions and perceptions on things we took for granted. Bottom-line is we all came out of this learning experience more equipped to lead a global multi-national company.” --ICV participant, Immediate post-assignment survey The above quote is from a participant in one of CDS’ International Corporate Volunteer Programs. I think it does a great job of highlighting how these types of programs encourage professional and personal growth... Read More >>
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Sustainable Value Creation and Corporate VolunteerismAmanda MacArthur | June 22nd, 2011 |
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I recently had the pleasure of attending the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy conference in New York City. This year’s theme was Sustainable Value Creation – how companies can have a positive impact on the communities in which they operate, on their employees and on the environment without out sacrificing the bottom line. What struck me most was the variety of ways in which companies were creating sustainable value through programs that that not only targeted external communities, but also engage their employees and made them feel proud to be associated with the business.... Read More >>
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