Young Thinker’s Program @ HOPE Foundation, Bangalore 17 June 2014
“The poor in India are not lazy, they just need the opportunity”, said Ian Correa from HOPE Foundation and this is a quote which will stay forever with me. Perhaps, if we just ponder over these words for a few minutes we will realize how we at an individual level can impact lives by just providing opportunity to the people who are seeking it – or atleast it will bring about a positive mindset shift . We must also realize that it is not ONE life we are impacting here, our actions can go much beyond that by impacting the lives of the immediate family of that one child. To emphasise on this point – we at HOPE Foundation met with atleast 4 students who have made it big in corporates like Goldman Sachs, Bosch, EMC2 etc. Were these students special? Of course. But we definetly cant overlook the impact HOPE Foundation has had on them.
Hear Usha tell her story
Hope Foundation School graduate inspires students – YouTube
We invited 3 students (including Usha) and Ian Correa to SAP Labs on 20 June for the mega SAP Faculty Day event so that they could share their stories with the 150 professors who had gathered.
HOPE Foundation https://www.hopefoundation.org.in/. They have been doing this incredible job of helping young childern, people and the vulnerable since 1991 and is part of HOPE Worldwide. The chapter in India is spearheaded by Ian Correa and his Joyce who have been relentlessly working in this field. SAP CSR has been supporting the NGO for quite a few years and one of the Computer Training centers is fully supporte by SAP CSR.
So what did SAP University Alliances do at their primary school in Bangalore – we taught a classful of students in the age group 10-15 HTML Coding. In 4 hrs flat these students where able to build static websites and believe you in me – some of these students had never seen Google!!
In parallel we had a Design Thinking session where we threw the marshmallow challenge to kids below 10 years! It was fun!
We will ensure that our paths keep crossing with these wonderful kids – we are already in the planning stages to visit the school again for the 2nd “Class” on coding!