| As one of the four BRIC countries, Russia is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, experiencing just over six percent growth in its GDP over the last five years. We speak to HP Russia’s managing director Owen Kemp about the role HP’s social investment programmes have to play in this extraordinary market.
Q. What is the overall scope of HP Russia’s social investment activities?
A. In Russia, our social investment focus is split between philanthropy |
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Owen Kemp, managing director, HP Russia
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projects and education-related initiatives. In philanthropy, we support a number of non-commercial organizations, like Junior Achievement (JA), Children of Russia, Art Partnership and others. Some of them have nationwide visibility. For example, JA Russia is the second largest country organisation after the US, with 7000 schools participating in JA modules or programmes across Russia. With all of these organisations we either try to engage our employees in community projects (lectures to children with JA, doing art therapy at the children’s oncology centres together with Art Partnership Children of Russia, etc.) or do some joint projects in support of education. That’s what we did for example in a joint project with Children of Russia – we provided equipment for virtual classrooms at oncology hospitals that children who are long-term patients can use. Our support aims to help children progress with their education by following the national curriculum via e-learning and distance learning solutions that Children of Russia helped organise.
In education, we are closely aligned to the government’s focus on education, as it is one of four areas for the Russian government that receive priority funding.
We successfully launched GET-IT last year working with a number of local, established partners. We also continue our work through MAP centres, offering basic IT and business skills training to help micro businesses become sustainable and more effective.
Instrumental to the overall success of the education support programmes that we conduct in Russia are our close relationships with a number of important technical universities and research institutions that receive grants from us, involving equipment, cash and technical expertise and support. For example, we just announced the launch of the “Russian Institute of Technology” programme, which aims to support higher education and the development of IT specialists in Russia. We will establish Technology Centres at five Russian universities and will provide IT equipment and advanced IT training.
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Q. Can you give an example of a project that has earned the recognition of your stakeholders?
A. I think the Digital Forum is a good example of how we are able to make a successful contribution that is being recognised by other important stakeholders.
The Digital Forum is an event we host twice a year, which brings together organisations that have received an HP grant in the past or are currently being supported through an HP grant. This is the third year we are hosting these meetings.
Each event has a different agenda and the objective of the event is not only for us to keep in touch with current and previous grant recipients, but to allow each of these organisations or teaching institutions to connect with each other and build their network.
We always have a mix of formal presentations on relevant subjects while allowing sufficient time for mingling and getting to know one another better. The subjects are chosen based on suggestions and feedback received by the Forum. At our last event in December, 31 organisations attended, 15 of which were new members.
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Q. What kind of insights do you gain from attending the Forum from the HP side?
A. We ourselves also derive direct insight from the forum – for example, we realised last year that Chess is making a strong return to the national curriculum and is popular when teaching young people.
Russia has a great tradition of producing some of the finest Chess masters in the world and research has shown that Chess can help improve the ability to calculate, reason logically and understand abstract concepts and generally concentrate in young people by up to 30 percent.
IT and IT literacy can benefit from this link with what really is a national passion. There are some great Chess programmes that allow beginners to learn and practice Chess even if they do not have anyone who can teach them. It’s also a great way to get introduced to using a PC.
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Q. Do you have any examples of the impact your social investment programmes have on HP’s business as well as on society?
A. Yes certainly, overall, I would say that many of our contracts have been facilitated by a sense of goodwill that comes from our social investment in Russia.
If you take the public sector, for example, it represents a large share of our overall market in Russia. In order to access this market and its opportunities, a committed, long-term social investment strategy is an absolute necessity. Corporate giving that only involves donating equipment is usually seen as tokenism by the public and government agencies.
To demonstrate real commitment to Russia as a country and its needs as a society, multinationals must make investments into social causes that go beyond equipment donations.
In this context, our approach to social investment has given us access to a number of opportunities that we wouldn’t have had, were it not for our comprehensive strategy in areas that are at the top of the government’s national agenda for the next ten years. These areas are education, research capability in IT and technology, and alleviating the most pressing social needs.
In many cases, we are fortunate to benefit mutually from relationships with organisations we give grants to or support in other ways. We can always learn more about what’s needed for a specific science education application or what education users might have trouble with currently. IT and technology often can offer solutions to problems that people are struggling with, such as access to information and skills.
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February/March 2008 issue |
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Global Citizenship Reports 2006 (*) |
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Printable version
