This post was written by Hilal Chouman, social media strategist for Cisco Networking Academy

Since late 2009, Cisco Networking Academy (NetAcad), one of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, has been present on various social media networks. The earliest presence was on the rising social network of that time: Facebook.

In late 2010, NetAcad’s Facebook page hit its first 100,000 likes. After this milestone, the Facebook page continued its growth, following the growth of the number of students in the NetAcad program.

Today, NetAcad’s Facebook page hit a half million likes (fans).

It is amazing how a social presence can accelerate in content and size, as soon as it grasps the right connection with the audience.

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Tags: Cisco CSR, Cisco Education, cisco networking academy, corporate social responsibility, education, facebook, netacad, networking academy, stem, Students

I had the privilege to shadow Kathy Mulvany from Cisco Corporate Affairs through the Connected Women Executive Shadow Program and wanted to share what a fantastic experience that was.  I shadowed her marketing strategy sessions as well as her next fiscal year planning meetings.  During our time together, I was most intrigued by the stories she shared with me from her recent trip to Africa, where she met a number of individuals who have been impacted by our social investment programs, including students from the Cisco Networking Academy.  Read More »

Tags: Cisco CSR, Cisco Education, cisco networking academy, global innovation in education, transforming education

After experiencing my first earthquake on the west coast many years ago, there was nothing anyone could do to convince me that an earthquake could be a good thing.  However, there is one group that is doing just that. The Tech Museum in San Jose has introduced a simulated quake that is a life-changing platform for children to learn about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Since January, The Tech Challenge has provided 1,400 students with ongoing STEM learning, culminating on Saturday, April 21. The annual team competition introduces the engineering design process to fifth through twelfth graders by solving a real-world problem through hands-on learning. The assignment for this 25^th anniversary year – “Shake, Rattle, and Rescue” – asks students to create a solution to help earthquake survivors cross a damaged bridge.

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Tags: Cisco CSR, communities, preparing students for the future, stem

“Roughly one-sixth of the world’s population, or 1.1 billion people, don’t have access to safe drinking water.”

“Eighty percent of diseases in the developing world are caused by contaminated water.”

“People in the developing world walk an average of 3.7 miles (6 km) a day to collect water for basic needs.”

These are just a few of the shocking statistics I discovered in the past week on Twitter, leading up to World Water Day--today, March 22.

But, I also discovered that by making a birthday wish, I could personally help solve this massive problem.

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Tags: Cisco CSR, corporate social responsibility, critical human needs, CSR, impact multiplied, Water, world water day

Recently, I participated in a conversation with our LinkedIn community on GETideas.org. The crux of the discussion was labels--should there be a universal taxonomy for terms such as Global Education, and would trying to foster global adoption of such terms speed up the transformation of the societal challenges we face today? It got me thinking about all sorts of terms that pop into our language stream. One day you’re talking about the “inequalities of the distribution of wealth and the effects of taxation on global markets;” the next day you’re texting an associate and summing up your thought stream with the word “Occupy”.

In my preparation for a panel discussion called Why enterprise Social Media Loves Social Good?, I poked around online to see if there was any consistency in the meaning for the term “social good”. Almost all the discussions and posts I found connected “social good” directly to its use within the business community. While businesses vary in their approaches to social good, this definition seems to be a common one: “A good or service that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way. Some classic examples of social goods are clean air, clean water and literacy; in addition, many economic proponents include access to services such as healthcare in their definition of the social or “common good”. (Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social_good.asp) Read More »

Tags: ATC21S, Cisco, Cisco CSR, corporate-socia-lresponsibility, CSR, education, employees, environment, global ed, good, Governance, impact multiplied, Social Good, social media, society, Value Chain