Published
14 April 2008, 01:18 PM
Today I am reporting on a fantastic opportunity that was offered to me and one of my American colleagues. As part of the career development programme at HP, HP offers employees to take on “stretch assignments”. These are projects which offer additional experience and provide new insights and learning opportunities by taking HP employees beyond their current responsibilities and skills. I have been offered the opportunity to manage one of HP’s major social investment flagship programmes in the Asia Pacific region. The programme focuses on Microenterprise Development. I will manage it remotely from Europe while my American colleague stays in Singapore for 2 months to manage the day-to-day work for social investments.
As part of this incremental assignment, we went to Singapore for a week at the beginning of this month to participate in hand over meetings from my colleague, who has managed the programme until now. We will be supporting the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region until a permanent replacement for my colleague has been found.
I met with all HP country teams, from Australia, Japan, China, India, Thailand and many other Asian countries. I also talked to our external Centres of Excellence in Thailand and China. The experience has been fantastic so far and it has already been a great learning opportunity for me to understand the socio-economic needs of those local markets.
Whilst I can clearly see that the programmes HP offers are relevant across the globe, each country/region has its specific societal needs. It is important that our social investment programmes focus on those issues that are relevant on the local level. A one size fits all strategy is just not suitable. I share this valuable additional regional experience with my colleagues worldwide as we are currently defining our strategy for the next years.
The programme I am now managing in APJ promotes economic development by providing HP technology and training to non-profit organizations that use technology to bolster job skills, enhance employability and foster entrepreneurship. My colleague, who managed social investments in the past already did a great job in establishing this programme last year and I aim at developing the project in the following ways:
• Increase number of Microenterprise Development Centres from 17 to 35
• Deploy three Train the Trainer modules through our partner Micro-Enterprise-Acceleration Institute (MEA-I)
• Train a minimum of 400 entrepreneurs on the Microenterprise Acceleration curriculum
• Establish three Enterprise Leadership Centres
I am pleased to have the opportunity to help HP APJ to contribute to improving economic viability and quality of life for individuals and communities around the world through investments of HP resources and technology that support economic development, educational opportunity and environmental sustainability.
The economic development programme in APJ resembles our approach to entrepreneurship and education in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). I have been responsible for social investment in EMEA since 2006. During that time, we have focused heavily on Entrepreneurship skills training. So far, we deployed 44 MAP (Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Programme) centres and have advanced the programme further to address the high youth unemployment (17% in 2006 in the EU) with GET-IT (Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT). We have opened 35 GET-IT centres in 19 countries in 2007 and held three Master Training sessions in Europe, Africa and Russia. This year, we will be building up the network to 70 GET-IT centres in more than 25 countries.
Due to the synergies between the economic development programme in APJ and our entrepreneurship and education programmes in EMEA, my stretch assignment to AJP constitutes a clear win-win situation: I can contribute through my expertise in the Microenterprise skills development, which is very beneficial as we are growing the programme in 10 Asian countries (China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Singapore). And I myself will learn a lot about this fascinating and fast growing region as well as their societal needs and I will definitely use my experiences from APJ for my continuing social investment work in EMEA.
I would like to thank the regional and global management for this phenomenal development opportunity and I can only recommend for my other HP colleagues to explore “stretch assignments” as opportunities for growth. I am glad I am working for a company that has the capabilities to offer such type of assignments and opportunities to their workforce.
Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments and Economic Development, HP EMEA
In the photo below you can see Andrea Gonzales, Rita Sully and me (from left to right)
|
Information disclosed in this community becomes public.
Exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information.
HP reserves the right, but is not obligated to, edit or remove your comment if it contains personally identifiable information or other content HP deems unacceptable.
Opinions expressed are your personal opinions or those of the original authors, and not of HP.
Please see HP's web Terms of Use for more details.
