Technology for Collective Wellbeing

Salvatore De Caro, Signavio Presales Director EMEA South at SAP, participated in Rising Youth by coordinating the team of SAP experts (in all four editions) that trained students on the value of emerging technology. The short-term goal was to encourage students to work in teams to develop innovative ideas and prototypes to present at a final hackathon as part of RomeCup. The medium-long term objective is to involve and raise the interest of the younger generations on topics concerning technological innovation and sustainability.

How was your skills volunteering experience?

Volunteering is a way of life for me.

Since I was young, I have always been involved in initiatives promoting community wellbeing and over time I have continued to cultivate them without ever losing the desire. The key is the desire to actively participate in the life of the country and make an active contribution to society. Initially, I dedicated myself to initiatives to raise awareness on environmental problems. This helped me understand what it meant, in concrete terms, to be interested in issues that affect collective well-being. When I discovered that the company where I work, SAP, had a corporate social responsibility programme, I joined immediately. The activities converged on the field of education and secondary school students. I joined comes because I am aware that volunteering is a fully bidirectional exchange, a mutual enrichment. Even the process of transferring my knowledge alone implies a process of internalizing the company mission. It’s an activity that however acquires an even stronger value thanks to what we receive from the students.

Was there a particular episode that impressed you?

I remember two episodes: one involving a colleague from SAP and the other involving the students who participated in the project. The evening before one of the Rising Youth events, a colleague asked me to replace her because she was sick. Despite this, the next morning she preferred to hold the course anyway! This makes me think that when people choose these activities, they are extremely motivated and determined. The role of a competent volunteer is precisely this: choosing to do a job based on deep motivational drives. As for the students, I always notice that in the final stages, when it comes to proposing their ideas for the RomeCup hackathon, competition and a great desire to win kick in. While during the sessions they may sometimes seem unmotivated, competition with their peers makes them combative. And the spirit of competition is nothing more than a desire to improve according to a virtuous circle. This determination, over the years, produces an increasingly higher quality in the proposals we receive for Rising Youth. In the last editions, we have moved from simple presentations to real prototypes.

What was your motivation for volunteering with the company? Have your motivations changed since you started? What are the most important aspects of this activity?

Thanks to Rising Youth, I can share the content of my work with students, but I also add the role of populariser of scientific subjects. We try to stimulate the students to ask questions and to delve deeper into the issues and, in addition, we can follow the fruits of this curiosity. It is as if we planted a seed and saw it sprout in the projects presented at the end of the course. We do not judge the works, in identifying the final winners, but we simply limit ourselves to awarding recognition. The winner is the team that has been able to internalize what was taught in the session and has been transformed into a project. By interpreting the 30 goals of the United Nations, we want to convey the message that technology must always find applications that start from the human being, in a key of sustainability and respect. Seeing how a practical application can be born from those seeds generates a very constructive return for us volunteers.

What professional skills did you share? And what personal resources were most helpful?

Working in the tech sector implies an ability to renew oneself, to solve problems, and to change one's own group over time. It requires fundamental skills for a managerial role. And, ultimately, building a volunteer group, identifying content and sharing it, activates the same skills. This is what I do when, together with my team, I have to develop a solution to propose to a customer. These are overlapping situations, which is why I consider volunteering in the company as training in business activities, also from a methodological point of view. Volunteering has also generated an impact on the ability to organise my time, to solve problems and to build an empathetic and collaborative climate with the people I work with, strengthening interpersonal relationships.

What is the impact on work and private life?

Naturally, a significant effort is necessary to manage my time even more carefully. However, this is not negative as, even in the office, breaks dedicated to other activities are functional to the work itself. Life must be lived fully. And the choices you make have an impact on your personal life. In particular, volunteering in the company has greatly influenced my eldest son, who has decided to actively participate in the company by dedicating himself to volunteer activities, which he has done since he was a teenager.

In terms of relations with colleagues, in general, participating is an excellent training ground for training in teamwork and developing empathy with others. This is especially true for junior colleagues, who train in public speaking and develop confidence. Personally, I have had the opportunity to meet, for example, external parties, and to also be recognized thanks to the communication activities around the Rising Youth project.

What could your company do to make corporate volunteering more rewarding?

SAP is a company that supports and promotes its founding values ​​at all levels of the organization. And “purpose” today represents a fundamental part of employee satisfaction. Think about how young people today are determined to work for companies that satisfy their values... SAP is very careful to this aspect and has built a community around its initiatives. There are periodic meetings in which opportunities are shared, and virtuous exchanges are generated between people. Employees pass information on to each other and interest arises around activities. Many initiatives are suitable for all profiles, regardless of skills, as in the case of volunteer projects dedicated to young hospital patients or social agriculture activities, which we have recently carried out.

What did this experience teach you on a personal level? Did you receive any recognition or certificates?

From an external point of view, I personally have obtained a lot of visibility in the press and on social media. Even in SAP, there has been an equally strong reputational reverberation. Just to give you an example, we have been awarded several times at internal institutional events.

The interview was conducted  by Onelia Onorati, Press Officer for the Fondazione Mondo Digitale.