We sat down with Vanya Toseva, who is currently part of the HPE Pointnext Technology Services Operations and Enablement Partner Delivery team, to understand further the many activities and profound meaning of being part of the project, and this is what she had to share:
What does volunteer pro-bono mean, and how is HPE Gives Bulgaria doing this?
Volunteering pro-bono in practice means donating professional knowledge and skills, which are usually paid for, to benefit an NGO and its cause. HPE Gives Bulgaria connected Sofia Site Quality Council with Ideas Factory, where Valentin Melnikliyski, Lean Lead at HPE, volunteered to lead the work optimization for Ideas Factory. Ideas Factory is a Bulgarian non-governmental organization looking for creative and innovative ways to solve various social problems to impact society positively.
Can you tell us more about the program you created alongside Ideas Factory?
“Quality for good” is the outcome of our pro bono volunteering with Ideas Factory.
The program, which op optimized, is called "Grandma's Residence." Yes, it could be your grandma’s house. It started 6 years ago, and its goal is to connect young urban, creative people with the problems in Bulgarian villages. However, Ideas Factory could not deal with the complexity of the process, so they turned to HPE for help.
What was the goal of the program?
It was essential for the team to improve the basic format of "Grandma's Residence," a one-month residence where young people live in the countryside. The goal was to achieve more with less in the format itself and free up resources and capacity to implement other complementary initiatives and activities and build on this basic format. We believe that Ideas Factory and the HPE team managed to achieve just that.
The process of preparation for "Grandma's Residence" is, in fact, half as short now - much more orderly and much easier to perform. That’s the ‘Good’ we caused with our ‘Quality’ knowledge.
One of the main goals was not only to fix and improve the effectiveness of one of their initiatives but, on the contrary - to have a basis for them to use for their other activities.
How was the program perceived? What was the feedback you received?
Ideas Factory’s feedback for the “Quality for good”:
“What was extremely valuable to us was this external, objective point of view of your team and your colleagues, who guided us through the whole process. It was also valuable for us to see how good it is to have a partner next to you to rely on for advice, expert help, or feedback, for which we are extremely thankful.”
What message do you want to share with your colleagues, and what are your plans moving forward?
We urge you to be brave and generous with your knowledge and skills because they can be the real key to a lasting and sustainable positive change for our society. This was just the start of what we hope is a long-term initiative to volunteer with professional skills and share our knowledge and experience!
About the author:
Connect with Vanya on LinkedIn here and keep up to date with the latest career opportunities and HPE Culture by visiting HPE Careers.
DesireeCH
Employer brand and digital media evangelist. Proactively searching for new trends and best in class practices to find, converse, share, engage and refer potential candidates and bring the best Talent for the company.
