Global Engagement Forum:Online

The PYXERA Global Engagement Forum chronicles the stories, strategies, and impact of innovative leadership and tri-sector collaboration around the world. This platform seeks to capture the ground-level impact of these approaches, providing an avenue through which beneficiaries and implementers alike can showcase their impact. Through stories, case-studies, and convenings, the Global Engagement Forum aims to elevate the ways in which individuals, corporations, and social enterprises champion a better future for our world.

Content from this campaign

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

Igniting Opportunity for Cape Town’s Youth
South Africa is home to some of the world’s best universities, but the average young South African likely won’t step foot on any of the country’s prestigious campuses. The legacy of apartheid has perpetuated an economic and education system inaccessible to the vast majority of youth. According to the Public Council of Higher Education in South Africa, only 16 percent of black South Africans go to college—the country is 80 percent black. Access to tertiary education has emerged as a common issue of discourse in South Africa’s political and social landscape as students across the country protest rising tuition costs and unequal access.

Health & Healthcare

Investing in Scale
In 2012, the Barry and Marie Lipman Family Prize named iDE as its inaugural prize winner. Each year, the top award is given to one organization that exemplifies leadership and innovation in the social sector, with a special emphasis on impact and transferability of practices. The Prize recognized iDE’s unique, market-based approach to addressing the global challenge of poor water and sanitation. Two other honorees, Komaza and MedShare, were also recognized in 2012 as game-changing organizations.

Social Impact & Volunteering

Inspiring Learning and Discovery
This is part three in a series highlighting the SAP Social Sabbatical for global engagement in Cape Town, South Africa, which focused on bridging the digital divide in the city’s most underserved communities. Stay tuned for part IV, out next week. Read part one and two here.

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Walking into the Cape Town Science Centre (CTSC) on a busy weekday morning can result in a bit of sensory overload as children of all ages run, skip, and hop around the massive warehouse located in the Observatory neighborhood of Cape Town.

A bottle rocket zooms on a zip line overhead, leaving a group of students giggling at their aeronautic success in its wake. A defiant announcement of “check” comes from the teenager dragging his Bishop with two hands across the giant life-sized chess board on the floor.

Sustainable Development Goals

Applying Human Centered Design to Solvable Problems
The amount of post-harvest loss (PHL) in countries of the Global South is familiar to many by now. In Africa alone, 50 percent of fruits and vegetables, 40 percent of roots and tubers, and 20 percent of cereals—all of which are staple foods—are lost after harvest or during processing. Fortunately, solutions to PHL exist and with pilots underway attempting to introduce low-fidelity technologies into the equation, the future of reduced PHL looks promising. While PHL is a solvable problem, the timely diffusion of applicable technologies into the local context remains challenging. And the negative repercussions of insensitive approaches of noble intent should be identified and avoided early in the process.

Responsible Business & Employee Engagement

Rebuilding the Talent Supply Chain
The American Dream has always been fueled by opportunity—the opportunity to create a life better than your parents had, the opportunity to reinvent yourself, the opportunity to live out your fullest potential. The American Dream is tightly woven into the fabric of our country; inextricable from what it means to call oneself an American. But the American Dream is facing a new challenge, and if not addressed properly, millions may lose out on the opportunities America has always afforded her people.

Events, Media & Communications

The CollaborateUp Formula
The CollaborateUp Formula for forming, managing, and scaling partnerships outlines the deliberative steps needed to approach multi-stakeholder challenges for which there are no obvious responsible parties. The Formula combines a wealth of partnership-building experience, adapted rapid development tools, and elements of the Lean Startup methodology, to give practitioners the agility to identify and pursue a path forward, no matter the context.

Health & Healthcare

A Pluralistic Approach to Non-Communicable Diseases
More than five years have passed since the 2011 United Nations high-level meeting on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs). NCDs such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease are a leading cause of mortality worldwide, responsible for more than 30 million deaths annually. These diseases alone place an enormous burden on health systems, representing $2 trillion a year in health costs, and the projected toll in lost economic output by 2030 is a staggering $47 trillion. Beyond the impacts on economic output, NCDs will continue to deepen poverty and impede our collective ability to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

Skating to Success in Harlem
In our current political climate, characterized by confusion, vitriol, and disruption, practicing servant leadership is more important than ever. Servant leaders are those who place the needs of the group ahead of their own and use empathy to create environments in which everyone can thrive. At the PIMCO Foundation, this philosophy is visible in our volunteering initiatives and in the focus of our grant making. In our view, an ethos of caring for others is the cornerstone of healthy societies. We firmly believe that volunteering builds this spirit of community empowerment; it can be transformative. In my own experience, it has both moved and molded me. It has been my privilege to work with others who embody these same values.

Responsible Business & Employee Engagement

Building a Township Tech Hub
This is part two in a series highlighting the SAP Social Sabbatical for global engagement in Cape Town, South Africa, which focused on bridging the digital divide in the city’s most underserved communities. Stay tuned for part III, out next week. Read part one here.

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Climbing the wooden staircase to the top of Lookout Hill, one finds sweeping panoramic views of the Cape Flats area skirting Cape Town. Khayelitsha, the second-largest and fastest-growing township in South Africa, sprawls to the east; the township of Mitchell’s Plain rolls to the west. At the base of the hill, strategically situated between these two underserved communities, is the Khayelitsha Bandwidth Barn, a startup incubator and accelerator serving community entrepreneurs.

Social Impact & Volunteering

Bridging a Digital Divide
Cape Town is a city of contrast. Around every neighborhood corner is a history lesson in the European, African, Indian, and Malaysian influences that give meaning to South Africa’s epithet of ‘rainbow nation.’ Even the city’s landscape can feel like a convergence of worlds, from the windswept Cape Flats to the dramatic peaks of Table Mountain, to the rocky coastline where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. This rich diversity in history, wildlife, culture, landscape, and industry gives rise to Cape Town’s characterization as the ‘world in one city.’ But nowhere does this ring so true as when a 10 minutes’ drive from the palm-lined streets of the city’s posh urban center finds you on a shanty-lined street in one of the city’s sprawling townships.
PYXERA Global

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