Many years ago, Albert Schweitzer said, “You must give some time to your fellow man, even if it’s a little thing, do something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it”.
It is with these words that the Boston Chapter of SIM created its Outreach Program. Our members had risen through the ranks, assumed positions of IT leadership and the field had been good to us. So, it was time – time to ‘give back’, to help others less fortunate than we are.
With this direction, a committee worked defining just what we wanted out of this new Chapter activity. Mission statements, strategies and goals were all laid out so we could measure our success--because we were not to going to fail.
To date we have selected three Outreach Partners – Year Up, Teen Voices and Common Impact. They are different while being similar – they can use our help, expertise, experience, funds and counsel. They need help from not just the leadership of your Chapter; they can use the help of each and every member. A little help from each member would make a big difference to these wonderful organizations.
We have described below our current Outreach Partners – their stories and the kind of support and assistance our members can provide. Please read and consider being one of the ‘privileged ones’ of the Boston Chapter.
Tech Boston
In February 2008, the Board and Outreach Committee approved our newest outreach partner. TechBoston is a department in the Boston Public Schools that supports advanced technology courses designed to equip students with high tech skills essential for success in careers and post-secondary education. Over 4,000 students and 300 teachers have participated in advanced tech skills training courses offered by TechBoston. Read more about its programs at www.techboston.org.
Felicia Vargas, TechBoston Director, sees invaluable benefits ahead: “The partnership with SIM Boston will help us to achieve our mission of inspiring public school students in Boston to become the next generation of technology leaders.” Les Ball, SIM”s Outreach Committee Chairperson, offered: “In SIM’s annual survey, recruiting, developing and retaining IT talent ranked as the #1 concern and our partnership with TechBoston targets opportunities for students exploring early
career choices.”
This organization was our first Outreach Partner. Year Up is a one-year, intensive training program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate apprenticeship. We began by helping Year Up get connected to our members and their organizations and later by providing help in various ways. Today, the Boston Chapter provides the Don Brown Memorial Scholarship so a student may attend the program as well as providing briefcases to all students as they head off to their internships. Members also ‘step up’ by being mentors to students and speaking at Friday luncheons in the Year Up classrooms. Other members provide opportunities for Year Up students to work as interns in their organizations with most eventually being hired by the company. In every interaction our members come away being rewarded for taking the time to help our first Outreach Partner. Check it out at www.yearup.org or call Kevin Barry at 617-542-1533.
The mission of Common Impact (http://www.commonimpact.org) is to strengthen high-potential nonprofit organizations by helping companies deploy their human capital more strategically in the social sector. Through Common Impact, employee-volunteers from leading companies including Analog Devices, Fidelity Investments, Cisco Systems, State Street and others have provided IT, Marketing and HR solutions to more than 100 high-potential nonprofits in Greater Boston and New York City. These engagements have returned over $6 million in net new resources to the social sector – a 7:1 social return on investment. The partnership with Boston SIM led to the creation of an Executive Coaching volunteer program. In 2007, Common Impact matched eight SIM members to different nonprofits to spend a couple of hours a month providing guidance on a specific problem – e.g., updating the IT strategy, selecting a software vendor, or navigating the recruiting and hiring process for an IT Director. If you would like more information on becoming an Executive Coach or getting your company involved with an IT project at a non-profit organization, please contact Lesley Edwards at ledwards@commonimpact.org or 617-868-1014.
Teen Voices (teenvoices.com) is an intensive journalism and technology development program for teen girls in Bostonwhose mission is to provide valuable career and leadership skills to underprivileged inner-city teen girls. These girls create Teen Voicesand Teen Voices Online, two internationally distributed print and online magazines reaching 50,000 readers and receiving 7.6 million hits from 98 countries annually. With our Chapter, Teen Voices has extended the Technology Training component of its program to include tutorials on web design, web-publishing and desktop productivity tools. SIM has also worked with Teen Voices on an advisory basis to better use technology to expand the content and reach of their online publications as well as to effectively use technology to improve operational effectiveness.
SIM members who wish to “give back” and get involved with Teen voices can: 1. Volunteer to help Teen Voices redesign their website; 2. Teach a hands-on technology class in topics such as Content Management, Web Design, Photoshop, Microsoft Office Tools; 3. Sponsor a site visit to your company; 4. Provide an individual charitable donation; 5. Reach out to the Charitable Giving arm of your company to provide a tax-free contribution to Teen Voices; 6. Teach staff members to more effectively evaluate data captured online for strategic planning purposes; and 7. Train staff on template-based web content editing. For information contact Jenny Armory at jenny@teenvoices.com.
Members and friends of Boston SIM can also contact Les Ball, (lesballscituate@gmail.com or any other member of the Board of Trustees to learn about how you might become involved in any of these very worthwhile programs.