Friday, November 21, 2008

Tech Citizenship

N.E. tech firms redefine 'community' in volunteer work

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Like many altruistic businesspeople in the early stages of their careers, Erica Topolski faced a dilemma when she joined IBM  Corp. — how to fulfill her philanthropic goals while building a career in the for-profit world.

Little did Topolski know, her employer had a solution. Dubbed the Corporate Services Corps and launched in 2007, IBM has taken a page from the Peace Corps, sending employees for one-month stays in developing countries where they apply their business and technology expertise to local nonprofit organizations.

By the end of this year, the Corporate Services Corps will have sent 600 employees in 20 teams to destinations around the globe, including Tanzania, Romania and Vietnam. Each team is made up of employees from throughout IBM, including software, hardware, administration and marketing, and each is assigned to work with in-country nonprofits, applying their own expertise to help the organizations succeed.

Topolski, a member of IBM’s media relations team in the Lotus software division in Cambridge, was one of six New England-based participants on a team that recently returned from Ghana. While there, she worked with a local group called Aid To Artisans Ghana, helping develop video, photography and communications activities aimed at capturing the stories behind the local handicrafts — an important part of the region’s export business.

“The biggest reason I applied to the program was because I wanted to make a difference,” she said. “But the biggest difference between this and other volunteer programs I have been part of is that it was very business-focused, so I was able to use my business skills to (help).”

Being a global technology company, many of IBM’s corporate outreach efforts are focused on, not surprisingly, technology around the world. But the idea of “acting globally” has become a trend not limited to an organization the size of Big Blue.

AIDS clinic in Ghana, vaccine in Mali
Providence, R.I.-based biotechnology firm EpiVax Inc., is working to develop a vaccine for HIV and AIDS.  The company has received more than $3 million from the National Institutes of Health, which will help the research, but founder and CEO Anne De Groot has also established the GAIA Vaccine Foundation, a nonprofit organization in the West African nation of Mali to help distribute the vaccine — at no cost — when it’s finished. In addition, her group there last June opened the first AIDS clinic in the region located within a neighborhood, rather than at a hospital.

IT consulting firm Virtusa Corp. is another example of a firm with a global reach: It is based in Westborough but originally had a base of operations in Sri Lanka as well. Since its founding in 1996, the company has retained a presence in Sri Lanka and has continually provided free software and training to local Sri Lankans from grammar school to university-level and in the general community. In the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the company also developed an open-source disaster relief management software platform, which has been released, for free, to the open source community. That software has subsequently been used in other relief efforts, such as in Pakistan during the earthquake in 2005 and the mudslides disaster in the Philippines in 2006.

Virtusa was recently selected as one of 11 finalists for the U.S. Secretary of State’s 2008 Award for Corporate Excellence, given for superlative corporate citizenship overseas, joining the likes of Google Inc., Starbucks Corp. and Microsoft Corp. as a nominee.

Thinking globally, smarter locally
While international philanthropy allows companies to make a difference in other parts of the world, executives point out that the global connection also aids in creating better, more well-rounded employees.
“We find that when we engage in these efforts, our employees are the main players, taking time off to lecture and to help,” said Keith Modder, president of Virtusa’s Asia operations. “What’s more, by giving back, some of the regions are producing talent and resources that Virtusa can use in the future.”

That’s not to say acting locally is no longer a viable approach to philanthropy. In fact, according to Maura Banta, regional manager for IBM’s corporate citizenship affairs, the Corporate Services Corps and other international  activities began as local efforts. “We often try things locally and then make them global, so there has to be a balance between acting locally and globally,” she said.

For Topolski, who called her adventure in Ghana a “life experience,” the program brought her closer to her employer.

“It really made me proud to work for a company that takes its global responsibility seriously as well as provides something (altruistic) for my career path,” she said.