I love summer. It’s a great time to reset, enjoy quality time with family, and get out in the community. Before summer here in the Northern Hemisphere drew to an end, our Dell leadership team stepped away from the office to volunteer with local Dell Youth Learning partners around the world, and we met some amazing young students with talents and skills way beyond their years.
Michael Collins, vice president of Sales for EMEA, spent time with students in South Africa facilitating arts and crafts, IT training and sporting activities during the Dell Circle of Excellence volunteer day. Michael’s leadership team, Forrest Norrod and I had the chance to help high school robotics teams sharpen their presentation skills before an upcoming technology competition. And, our CFO Tom Sweet participated in the opening of a new solar-powered, cloud-based collaborative classroom in India as part of the APJ Finance Development Summit.
From Left to Right: Michael Collins with two SHAWCO students at the Dell Circle of Excellence volunteer day. Michael Dell with Lady Cans Texas First Robotics team, winners of the “Dell Leaving Your Legacy Challenge.” Tom Sweet breaking in the new Collaborative Classroom at the Government School in Jeevanbima Nagar, India. Rich Rothberg, John Swainson and Suresh Vaswani talking robots with The Thinkery’s Tech Reach students. This young girl developed a robot that helps keep squirrels out of your yard!
Also this summer, our Dell Youth Innovation Advisors, 12 student leaders and entrepreneurs under the age of 22, had a chance to meet with the STAR House Foundation in Atlanta during ISTE, the largest K-12 conference in the US. The group had a chance to learn more about the STAR House Foundation’s after school tutoring and mentoring programs for at-risk children and provide ideas for addressing their key challenges.
At Dell we invest in these students because they’re our future leaders, thinkers and innovators. Early access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education develops skills needed to thrive in a rapidly changing workplace and creates a more diverse pipeline of talent for our industry. In the video below, hear what young ladies supported by Skillpoint Alliance in Austin, Texas have to say about why STEM is important to them.
We recently issued our FY15 Youth Learning grants. We have fantastic partners enabling digital literacy all around the globe. Through these partnerships, we provide access to technology and education to underserved communities where we live and work with the ultimate goal of impacting 3 million youth by the year 2020 and inspiring the next generation of technology leaders.
