Continued Corporate Social Impact with a Valued Partner
Zendesk, a company providing software-as-a-service products, is a Team4Tech corporate partner, supporting our work accelerating impact for education-focused NGOs. Since their first engagement with Team4Tech in 2021, Zendesk employee volunteers have contributed to meaningful social impact through many exciting projects all over the world, including:
- Improving employment opportunities for women in Uganda
- Supporting a youth development organization in Cambodia
- Co-designing operational solutions for an education-focused NGO in Brazil
In 2023, Team4Tech worked with Zendesk on five virtual volunteering projects totaling 707 volunteer hours—three shorter workshop-style Design for Impact projects, and two longer-term, targeted Strategic Pro Bono projects. In our Design for Impact workshops, volunteers prototype solutions to an NGO’s challenge in a large group during a short-format design sprint. With Strategic Pro Bono projects, volunteers build NGO capacity with training and tech solutions, engaging with smaller teams over several weeks. Both project types challenge skilled volunteers to learn and apply a human-centered design approach, hone their communication and leadership skills, and connect with their colleagues in new ways.
Recently, Zendesk volunteers lent their skills and experience to support Reap Benefit in India and CASME Education (Centre for the Advancement of Science and Mathematics Education) in South Africa.
Giving Indian Youth the Power and Agency to Create Change in their Communities
Reap Benefit is an NGO that encourages youth across India to identify and propose solutions to civic and environmental issues in their communities. Students are empowered to take a hands-on approach to addressing a range of issues from waste management to water conservation.
Team4Tech facilitated a collaboration between Reap Benefit and Zendesk volunteers to improve their curriculum and scale their impact. The project team leveraged their expertise to bring Reap Benefit’s curriculum to life through technology, transforming existing static PDFs into interactive WhatsApp chatbot lessons and lesson flows. This innovation will support Reap Benefit in enabling personalized learning at scale, working towards customizing Reap Benefit’s lesson sequences to student responses. By creating a more interactive and personalized learning experience, Reap Benefit intends to scale their outreach from 60,000 to 4.5 million youth over the next two years!
Implementing Coding and Robotics Clubs for South African Learners in Under-resourced Schools
An NGO dedicated to improving the quality of education in the fields of science and mathematics, CASME operates with the belief that education in these areas is crucial for the development and economic growth of South Africa. CASME provides teacher support and development, programs in schools, and educational research. They work closely with teachers to enhance their skills, especially in teaching science and mathematics, improving student engagement and understanding in these subjects. CASME’s efforts are aimed at addressing educational disparities and promoting excellence in science and mathematics education, particularly in under-resourced and rural schools.
One of CASME’s goals was to establish coding and robotics clubs to help build students’ technical skills. To make progress towards this goal, Team4Tech assembled a team of employee volunteers from Zendesk to collaborate with CASME and create a detailed implementation guide. The guide includes practical strategies and adaptable lesson plans tailored for low-resource settings. Use of this guide will enable many CASME students to gain new skills and competencies.
This work and the impact that these projects are enabling for both organizations underscores how technology, when thoughtfully applied, can accelerate educational and social initiatives. The solutions created by the Zendesk volunteer teams will have a lasting impact on both CASME and Reap Benefit and the students they serve.
Our partnership with Zendesk is just one example of how Team4Tech creates engaging employee volunteering opportunities that make a real difference for education-focused NGOs globally. These collaborations with the incredible Zendesk volunteer teams are great examples of how technological innovation and corporate social responsibility can tackle complex challenges like education inequality.