The completion of SAP’s Social Sabbatical Program last year has resulted to better equipped social enterprises, now ready to further improve on the quality of education. Two participating enterprises of the program, Teach for the Philippines and Silid Aralan (SAI), have reported significant improvements in fulfilling their roles as quality education providers for the unprivileged.
With the current demands, challenges, and barriers to growth, the year long program, which ran last year, aimed to aid local social enterprises overcome the hurdles of providing sustainable business models for demanding educational needs. As reported, the program helped SAI and Teach for the Philippines integrate more efficient internal and external business processes. Saving ample time and effort, the integration of the business models translated to more time for the management to focus on other pressing tasks.
SAI: Recruitment and Resource Management
Prior to undergoing SAP’s Sabbatical Program, Arcie mallari, founder and executive director of SAI, shared that the organization faced initial issues on recruitment. Adding to this was the struggle of not being able to maximize knowledge and skillsets in the management of the enterprise’s resources.
Chosen as an organization beneficiary of the SAP Sabbatical Program, key improvements that benefited SAI included added insights on their resource management as well as the identification of crucial operational areas that needed more support. These, among others, aided the management in the distribution of talents and the optimization of their resources.
In the spirit of collaboration, SAP employees volunteered in the Sabbatical Program to work hand in hand with SAI to be able to develop a operating framework marked with sustainable organization. With the all new systematized and effective set-ups for tutoring, SAI now features better academic offerings for both low performing and underprivileged students.
“SAI has plans to expand our organization and business. We aspire to develop learning hubs across the country by the year 2020. This year, we are putting up learning hubs in seven regions from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. This endeavor was made possible partly because SAP Social Sabbatical team helped us improve our business model. Through the program, the SAP employee volunteers helped us develop a ‘Franchise Kit’ that we present to potential partners. They had also linked us to possible sponsors. Now, SAI is also more financially stable,” added Mallari.
Teach for the Philippines’s organization Evolution
For Teach for the Philippines, SAP provided a brand audit that was specially targeted on building and marketing the enterprise’s brand. As the nature of Teach for the Philippines involve enlisting young professionals to tutor students in public schools, especially those in remote areas, co-founder and CEO of Teach for the Philippines, Clarissa Isabelle Delgado shared how the brand review allowed them to grasp new ideas on how they can further evolve and promote the enterprise’s advocacy.
The learnings from the Social Sabbatical program exposed Teach for the Philippines to new branding and marketing systems that permitted them to better communicate their message, objectives, and advocacies. These included ways on how they could encourage more conversations and convince more volunteers to join their educational mission. “It was helpful to have a third-party review our processes. The full brand review allowed us to have a new baseline to jumpstart conversations among our team on how we want Teach for the Philippines to evolve and improve in our communications – internally and externally,” added Delgado.
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Both SAI and Teach for the Philippines are leading enterprises that have strong educational advocacies targeted for poor and low performing students. SAP Social Sabbatical is part of SAP’s efforts to help social enterprises reach their goals and advocacies. The SAP Social Sabbatical is a unique program for its employees to assist emerging markets and social enterprises with their time and expertise.
“SAP has long been dedicated to creating ways to help relevant social organizations, in any way that it can. SAP Social Sabbatical is our way of contributing a lasting impact to the society. This is also a big help to our country, especially in further improving education,” said Ryan Poggi, managing director, SAP Philippines.