Cisco Blog > Corporate Social Responsibility
April 1, 2013 at 11:45 am PST
Guest blog by Ntombozuko (Soso) Luningo
Soso Luningo is a trainer with the ICT Academy at CIDA City Campus in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she trains students on the Cisco Networking Academy curriculum
This is my first blog ever, long overdue since I am an expressive person. Everywhere I have ever spoken, the question has been: “Why don’t you have a blog?” Well there you go folks. I finally decided to write this blog because I am grateful to the Cisco Networking Academy for affording me the opportunity to have influence and make great contributions to the future of previously disadvantaged South African youth.
I have been involved in the Cisco Networking Academy programme from the “baby” (student) days of my career and I am now raising about 50 babies every single year as an instructor at the ICT Academy at CIDA City Campus in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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Tags: CIDA City Campus, education, ICT, netacad, networking academy, South Africa
March 26, 2013 at 9:40 pm PST
The field for this year’s DoGooder Video Awards is down to a handful of superb finalists. Now you can help choose the winners.
With great difficulty, the DoGooder team has narrowed an incredible array of funny, moving, and compelling videos that communicate important messages down to several finalists.
Voting is easy; just select your favorite video or videos in each category. Visitors can vote once per day through April 5, 2013. This is a great opportunity to get involved with cause video and have an impact on organizations doing crucial work.
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Tags: award, Cisco, dogooder, nonprofit, see3, social cause, video, youtube
March 21, 2013 at 5:05 pm PST
Even if you don’t read TMZ or People magazine, you may have heard that actor Matt Damon isn’t using the toilet until the World Water crisis is solved.
No doubt Damon has visited the bathroom dozens of times since announcing his “strike.” But through humor, he called attention to a serious problem that affects billions of people and likely prompted more than a few people to ask “what water crisis?”
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Tags: akvo, blue planet network, matt damon, Water, water crisis, water for people, water.org, world water day
This post was also published on the Huffington Post ImpactX
The term “shared value” was introduced in 2010 by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, co-founders of FSG, a nonprofit consulting firm specializing in strategy, evaluation, and research.
But what does it mean? Simply put, it is the concept that a company can enhance its own competitiveness while simultaneously alleviating social problems in the communities where it operates.
According to Porter and Kramer, one way in which companies can create shared value opportunities is to enable “local cluster development.”
“When a firm builds clusters in its key locations, they also amplify the connection between their success and their communities’ success,” Porter and Kramer wrote in the January-February 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.
I am a believer in this approach to creating shared value because it is the basis for the Cisco Networking Academy, our largest and longest-running corporate social responsibility program.
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Tags: cluster development, kramer, networking academy, porter, shared value
March 11, 2013 at 11:05 am PST
On March 8, NBCNews.com reported that the unemployment rate among post-9/11 U.S. military veterans was 9.4 percent in February, well above the national unemployment average of 7.7 percent.
Nearly 1 in 10 ex-service members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is hunting for a job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The NBCNews.com story mentioned how Cisco is partnering with software developer Futures, Inc. to connect the 200,000 members of the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to civilian jobs through a free, online tool.
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Tags: Afghanistan, iraq, jobs, military, unemployment, veterans
