Posted by
Nicole Catapano in
In the current climate of local, state, and federal accountability amidst many economic challenges, K-12 school districts are often left to fix new and ongoing problems with little or no resources. At the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex Board of Cooperative Educational Services (WSWHE BOCES), we aim to assist school districts in identifying concerns before they become problems, and utilizing limited resources in the most efficient and effective ways.
In 2009, WSWHE BOCES Data Analysis Services began offering predictive analytics assistance to the 31 component school districts that serve more than 42,000 students in upstate New York. Through data modeling, our office helps district staff weed through years of data housed in many different places to discover the most significant predictors that will guide student learning. Using IBM analytics software, this process can be updated on a regular basis and new data can be incorporated to improve model accuracy and predictor selection.
The result for districts is that they are able to focus on skills that have the biggest impact on overall performance for certain students. Data conversations are streamlined and resources can be allotted for materials or training that will help teachers address the skill areas identified. Also, working with sharper focus, teachers and administrators are able to coordinate efforts across grade levels – assisting students as they advance through school and transition to post-secondary pursuits.
The main objectives of this work are to increase student achievement on annual assessments and improve graduation rates. Early results are promising. After one district targeted early literacy across four elementary schools for one year, English Language Arts proficiency among third graders increased from 56 percent to 71 percent.
As more school districts implement strategies based on predictive analytics, the positive impact on student learning outcomes will become more apparent, and stakeholders will agree that district expenditures have been allocated to yield the most successful results.
Nicole Catapano, Ph.D., is the Data Analysis Coordinator for the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex Board of Cooperative Educational Services in upstate New York.
Related Resources:
Download the WSWHE BOCES Predictive Analytics Case Study
New Technology Helps Ontario Food Banks Deliver
Posted by
Marie Kenerson in
For many years, doctors and medical volunteers have spent countless hours in Haiti providing health care to those in need. Yet, even with the decades of effort by such committed people, this work has not moved the needle for health care enough.
Haiti is one of the world’s most extreme medical environments. The statistics are staggering: the maternal mortality rate is 1 in 16, and the mortality rates for hypertension and stroke are the highest in North America. Throughout the past decade, as the nation has faced natural and political hardship, it has been clear that the familiar health care models of “hit and run relief” and “drive-by medical tours” do not work in Haiti. The presence of an estimated 4,500 non-governmental organizations and 10,000 charities working in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake underscores the fragmentation, redundancy and waste that are inherent to the current disjointed means of support. There is indeed a simpler, more inclusive and effective way to solve systemic, chronic health problems.
We founded Colleagues In Care to help answer this very call to service and change for the destitute poor in Haiti. As Chief Collaboration and Learning Officer for Colleagues In Care, I have witnessed, first hand, the power that comes from creating a single, vital global health network. Through engaging the best medical minds in the world, while focusing on purpose, participation and performance, we are helping transform the working medical blueprint in Haiti – “CollaborHaitian!” We are changing the rules of the game!
Colleagues In Care needed new cloud-based, crowd-sourcing, social and mobile technologies, and enhanced learning tools to truly make a difference. We needed to develop adaptable “best possible practices” for quality protocols of care and for sustained collaboration and learning on a global scale.
In line with the “CollaborHaitian” initiative and using cloud computing technology from IBM, doctors, nurses, medical personnel and other partners – including IBM employees – are connecting with one another. They are sharing best practices, tools and knowledge. And the emerging insights are being used within the community as a whole, and more importantly, by the vast number of volunteers and practitioners on the ground in Haiti.
Using the IBM SmartCloud, Colleagues In Care is creating a grassroots movement to transform the future of health care for the underserved – anywhere in the world. This Haitian model will be easily replicated and tailored to assess and address the medical issues of any area affected by poverty, limitation and extreme need. The cloud computing technology from IBM has given us a means to recruit, introduce and connect the world’s most renowned specialists with local health professionals. Colleagues In Care forges agreements with leading organizations to gain access to U.S. protocols, standard order sets, and clinical pathways, as well as medical educational content.
This collaboration and conversation not only bridges the gap between local and global expertise, but also inspires the co-creation of a “Best Possible Practices Model” (BPPM). With BPPM, we and our panel of volunteer specialists are able to offer specifically designed care that honors local circumstances and unites evidence- and reality-based medicine. The result is pinpoint focus of resources and care on highly critical illnesses, diseases and medical conditions – helping to reverse the dire health and health care of the underserved inHaiti.
The “power of community” speaks volumes for our organization. We are bringing a world of medical expertise to Haiti, and through these virtual relationships, we address health care issues with an immediacy that is unprecedented. Our tools enable us to offer on-site practitioners an arsenal of resources and support that has never before been available with such efficacy. Practices may be fine-tuned and implemented in the moment of need while insights and solutions may be presented as training tools for others. This model feeds itself, and growth becomes automatic as knowledge is shared freely and new conversations are sparked.
The common passion for service within the diverse network of people – each offering distinct knowledge, experience, perspective and vision – becomes contagious within the system. Colleagues In Care is helping take medical volunteerism to another level: colleague to colleague. We’re helping to transform good intentions and volunteerism into tangible outcomes. We are co-creating social value!
Marie Kenerson is Chief Collaboration and Learning Officer of Colleagues In Care, a global health network of doctors, nurses, medical personnel and other partners working together to provide quality health care services, telemedicine, knowledge and training to aid the poor and help alleviate suffering. Marie has combined organizational learning principles, dialogue skills and collaboration strategies with new IBM cloud and social network technologies to “crowd-source” a network of top medical professionals and volunteers from around the world in order to co-create and deliver localized best-possible medical practices.
Related Article:
Posted by
Chris Pinney in
With input from IBM and nine other leading companies, the Council on Foundations has just launched an ambitious initiative to revitalize and redefine the roles of corporate foundations and philanthropy. Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value establishes a roadmap to help those involved in corporate philanthropy to dramatically increase its social and business value by moving away from “philanthropy as charity” and adopting a 21st century model based on leadership, innovation, and creation of sustainable value.
Our report is the result of an 18-month study that engaged corporate philanthropy practitioners and external stakeholders throughout the United States in a discussion of the challenges and opportunities facing corporate philanthropy in the 21st Century. Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value addresses an environment in which society is looking to business for leadership on social issues as never before. A 2009 Waggener Edstrom Poll found that 60 percent of consumers now believe that businesses are in the best position to create positive results on social issues. By contrast, only 14 percent of respondents believed that governments can drive positive results.
Sixty-four percent of respondents to a 2010 Edelman survey stated they believe it is no longer enough for corporations to give money. Corporations must integrate good causes into their everyday business, said those surveyed. As companies work to meet this challenge through strategies such as “shared value”, philanthropy must redefine its role to support this transformation. Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value establishes goals for this transformation, identifies the challenges to be addressed, and details potential leadership opportunities.
Key initiatives include:
- Creating a new narrative for corporate philanthropy as social investment
- Developing an inclusive protocol for philanthropic investment
- Professionalizing the practice of corporate philanthropy
- Improving collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing
- Mobilizing grassroots leadership
As a global leader of corporate philanthropy’s transformation from “checkbook charity” to creating sustainable value, IBM has played an important role in the development of the Council’s agenda. IBM initiatives such as Corporate Service Corps, Smarter Cities Challenge, and Supplier Connection are powerful examples of how a commitment to service can help solve society’s challenges while creating lasting value. The Council on Foundations looks forward to continuing to work with IBM as we support and encourage the evolution of corporate philanthropy.
Download Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value.
Chris Pinney is project lead for the Corporate Philanthropy 2012 project and author of Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value. Mr. Pinney is a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program and Senior Vice President of the Alliance for Business Leadership.
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Good Corporate Citizenship Sustains Our Society Through Changing Times
Posted by
Barry Mittelman in
Small businesses employ half of all private sector workers in the United States, pay 44 percent of America’s total private payroll, and have generated 65 percent of net new jobs
in the U.S. over the past 17 years. That’s why expanding the growth potential of small business is so important to the U.S. economy, and why Latin Business Today and IBM have created a number of small business programs which support small businesses.
Latin Business Today has collaborated with IBM to aid in providing unique and relevant content on innovation and best business practices to the Hispanic business community – delivering on our mission to accelerate the rate of growth for Hispanic-owned small and medium sized businesses in this challenging economy. Latin Business Today’s content for the Hispanic section of the U.S. SME Toolkit website complements our ongoing efforts to engage our audience through original features, small business success stories, and insights from mentors from a variety of business disciplines.
The SME Toolkit is a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs needing advice on everything from creating a business plan to growing their business through the use of social media. Similarly, Latin Business Today has a growing team of mentors from various disciplines
who support Hispanic businesses on topics including: financial, legal, marketing, IT and strategy.
We also continue to support the Latin Scholarship Fund inaugurated by our predecessor, Latin Business magazine. Since 2005, the Latin Scholarship Fund has awarded more than 20 college scholarships to academically promising Latino students who might otherwise be unable to afford postsecondary education. Latin Business Today’s contribution to the SME Toolkit and support of young Latino scholars are two of the ways in which we acknowledge the connection between education and jobs, and between healthy small businesses and a thriving American economy.
Former IBMer Barry Mittelman is the managing partner and publisher of Latin Business Today.
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Posted by
Sujatha Sebastian in
The Business Outreach Center Network (BOC) is a community-based non-profit organization that works with entrepreneurs across New York City to start and grow successful small businesses. BOC offers free business counseling, technical training, small business workshops, and microloans from $500 to $50,000 through its affiliate BOC Capital Corporation.
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BOC Clients by the Numbers: |
BOC Client Miriam's Daycare
For more than 15 years, BOC has used a grass-roots approach to building community partnerships, leveraging neighborhood resources, disseminating knowledge, and facilitating access to capital for New York City’s small business owners. BOC has six sites across the city, its staff can counsel in nine languages, and more than 4,000 people per year benefit from its specialized programs, which include:
- Women’s Business Center
- Child Care Business Development Program
- Industrial Business Program
- Green Business Program
- Refugee Business Program
- Micro-loan Fund
A BOC Counselor Helps a Refugee Client with a Loan Application
BOC’s core value proposition is to help our clients identify their best next steps in building their businesses. Many of our clients are minorities, immigrants, refugees and others who face unique challenges accessing mainstream markets. Our work can include everything from explaining how to build personal credit to understanding business legal structures to creating business plans and marketing strategies and applying for financing. Technology is critical to enabling BOC’s individualized approach to each client. Specifically, we use technology to:
- Build the capacity of our counseling staff
- Deliver client services more effectively and efficiently
- Develop our clients’ technical skills to help them run their businesses better
In 2010, BOC became one of the first organizations in New York City to integrate an online platform to underwrite microloans on a network-wide scale. This technology has enabled BOC to streamline the micro-loan application process as its counselors guide clients through applying for financing with BOC Capital.
Technology also has helped BOC overcome language barriers with clients, and provide instruction online so clients can get the information they need on their own schedules and in easy-to-understand formats. We recently equipped our business counselors with tablets to make them more effective in the field, and are finding that the mere presence of this technology inspires questions from our clients about other aspects of the small business start-up process. We look forward to continuing discussions on using technology to help microenterprises with our clients, peer organizations, and potential partners.
Sujatha Sebastian is the Director of BOC’s Women’s Business Center. Having grown up in a small family business in NYC she firmly believes that microenterprises can help transform and empower communities.
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New Technology Helps Ontario Food Banks Deliver
A little over three years ago, a group of faculty members at the University of Virginia were meeting weekly to see what they might do to encourage awareness of issues of global sustainability among their students. The faculty members represented seven different schools and brought diverse expertise to the subject. But how to start was the more elusive question.
The new Vice President for Research, Tom Skalak, challenged the group to devise a simulation model that could be played as a game with student participants. The faculty were a bit skeptical of the idea, but thought it through anyway. It was decided that the Chesapeake Bay would make a good subject for this simulation game. The Bay represents a complex socio-environmental system, the University is located in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, and the Bay is under considerable environmental stress.
Thus was born the UVA Bay Game®. Mustering support from an outside consultant with experience in modeling environmental systems, and with the help of a team of systems engineering graduate students, the initial version of the Bay Game was launched on Earth Day 2009 with over 130 U.Va. students playing the game in the roles of crop farmers, land developers, watermen, and assorted regulators.
Built in a scant four months, Bay Game 0.9 had its bugs and glitches, but it validated the idea that a well-designed simulation game would achieve the goal of bringing students to an understanding of how complex socio-environmental systems give rise to often unanticipated outcomes. These outcomes are not predictable and would be different with every game play as different assumptions and decisions would lead to very different outcomes — a learning experience.
Buoyed by the success of this the initial version, the faculty continued to work to improve the Bay Game adding more realism, richer graphics and data, and more role-types. Now in its third major release, the Bay Game has been played by undergraduate and graduate students; actual regulators, farmers, and watermen; at the U.S. House of Representatives; and with great reception from businesses. Executives from IBM, GE, Dupont, Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola, and Intel to name a few have played the Bay Game and derived insights leading to innovative solutions to the problem of water quality that their firms could act upon.
Building on this success, the University of Virginia team decided to investigate the underlying simulation model — highly aggregated in the Bay Game — and develop a much more detailed, simulation-only model. It became apparent that such a model would require enormous computing capacity to execute. That’s when we discovered IBM’s World Community Grid. U.Va. submitted a proposal to the World Community Grid and the proposal was accepted with two other proposals — both water-related.
The simulation model developed for execution on the World Community Grid is called Computing for Sustainable Water. Although this model was initially developed to study the Chesapeake Bay, it was designed for rapid deployment to other bodies of water. Computing for Sustainable Water was first announced to the public on April 19, 2012 . It runs on many of the more than 2-million computers volunteered by individuals in over 80 countries. Within one year, the results of more than 1.3 million separate simulation experiments will be gathered for analysis by the team of scientists at the University of Virginia.
This productive collaboration between the University of Virginia and IBM is an example of how to leverage the intellectual capital of both organizations toward solving one of the pressing problems of society. Even before all the results are in, we at U.Va. consider this a great success!
Gerard P. Learmonth is an associate professor of systems and information engineering at the University of Virginia
Related Resources:
Podcast with Dr. Learmonth about Computing for Sustainable Water project
Read the Press Release Announcing Computing for Sustainable Water project
More Blog Posts About World Community Grid:
Simpler is Better for Saving Our Waterways
Helping to Find Cures for Childhood Cancer
World Community Grid and the Greening of Information Technology
I’ll Take “Curing Malaria” for $1,000, Alex
Philippe Cousteau — environmental advocate, University of Virginia OpenGrounds Fellow and Azure Worldwide co-founder — writes about how World Community Grid is using donated, unused computing power to help save the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
As a social entrepreneur and environmental advocate, I know first-hand how easy it is to become overwhelmed by the challenges facing our world. How can I make a difference? Where do I even start? These are questions I ask myself frequently, and questions I know many others ask all around the world. Fortunately, one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned over the years is that big challenges don’t always require big complex solutions.
In fact, in many cases the answers might be right in front of us.
Such is the case with the Computing for Sustainable Water Project from World Community Grid and the University of Virginia. This project tackles a very big, very complex challenge: predicting the environmental and economic impact of human actions on critical water resources over the next 20 years. Before we look at the unique approach IBM and the University of Virginia are taking to address this challenge, let’s take a moment to look at
the importance of the undertaking.
My grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau and my father Philippe called Earth the “Water Planet” for a very good reason. Water, not oil, uranium or gold, is our most precious natural resource. In all of its forms, from salt water to fresh, water supports all life on Earth.
With an increasing world population and growing stresses from agriculture, pollution and development, water is quickly becoming one of our most endangered resources. Effective and smart management of our water resources requires targeted information and strategies today, not some point in the distant future.
This is where the Computing for Sustainable Water Project comes into play.
Based on the University of Virginia’s model that simulates the actions of the more than
17 million people living on the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, the Computing for Sustainable Water Project aims to provide insights that could be used to inform policies and decision making for major waterways and ecosystems worldwide. To do that in a timely manner, however, the University of Virginia and IBM teams would need to condense 90 years of computational research into just one year – an expensive and time consuming proposition.
Which brings me back to one of my original questions: Where do you even start? As it turns out, the answer was sitting on desks, counters and kitchen tables in homes, schools, businesses and offices around the world. Through a free application, the World Community Grid makes it possible for all of us to be part of the solution by powering the Computing for Sustainable Water Project through our computers when they aren’t in use. This is a relatively simple solution that’s fast, runs automatically and requires no time or effort from its volunteers. Best of all, it’s a great starting point for people to become engaged and involved in the stewardship of our planet.
It’s innovative partnerships and projects like these that give me the most hope for the future. My grandfather and father had a simple vision of creating a world where every child can breathe fresh air, drink clean water and walk on green grass under a blue sky. Sometimes, simple visions and simple solutions can be our most powerful tools of change.
Explorer, social entrepreneur and environmental advocate, Philippe Cousteau is the son
of Jan and Philippe Cousteau Sr., and the grandson of Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
In addition to his work in environmental education and media, Philippe is co-founder of Azure Worldwide, a strategic environmental design, development and marketing company. Projects include work in green site design/planning, eco-tourism and new media.
Through an alliance with the University of Virginia, where he is an OpenGrounds Fellow, Philippe is aiding in the development and promotion of the UVA Bay Game®, a revolutionary interactive game that simulates the impact of individuals and communities on the health of critical water resources.
Related Resources:
Read the press release about this announcement
More Articles About World Community Grid:
Helping to Find Cures for Childhood Cancers
World Community Grid and the Greening of Information Technology
How can information technology (IT) and data analytics help cities provide better qualities of life for their residents? Can a smarter approach to sustainability serve as a foundation to corporate social responsibility? Carnegie Mellon civil and environmental engineering professor James Garrett comments below on the connections among IT, data analytics, and building a smarter planet.
At a recent conference on computing in civil and building engineering, I made the point that the most pressing challenge for infrastructure over the coming years will be to determine more effective approaches to spending the least amount of money to deliver the highest quality services.
Consistent with IBM’s Smarter Planet vision, I see a huge role for information technology (IT) in addressing this challenge. We need to move to a model where the delivery, maintenance and management of roads, buildings, bridges, pipelines and other infrastructure is highly predictive and proactive, and where information is relatively cheap
to collect.
For example, data on the physical condition of a specific bridge can be collected from a combination of sources, including the data from vehicles that drive over them, weather databases – and any sensors on the bridge, including those used for purposes such as deicing. This data can be analyzed and interpreted, and then used to understand the current state of the specific bridge in addition to the trends and true causes of accelerated deterioration of that bridge.
This analysis will lead to a better understanding of how, how fast, and for what reasons a bridge is deteriorating, and will much better inform agencies about what actions to take.
It will also inform future design cycles and thus avoid similar problems.
Actual data could make it much easier to increase public support for more governmental funding for maintenance and upkeep. Until we make our processes for assessing and maintaining our infrastructure more rational and effective, it will be difficult to make the case to the public that they should allocate more money for repairs and improvements.
The Role of Technology
Our biggest challenge related to the role of IT is building predictive models of the usage, condition and trends of our infrastructure. IT can be based on extremely large quantities of actual data captured – or soon to be captured – from the thousands of infrastructure systems currently in use. However, drowning our infrastructure providers in data will make matters much worse than better. If they are not provided high-quality information and models of the current and future condition of their infrastructure systems – whether pipe networks, road networks, or bridges, fused from the many different sources of collected data in order to help them make decisions – they might as well not have the collected data in the first place.
Instead, we need data-driven, intelligent and automatic decision support tools that help highway departments, water authorities and other infrastructure service providers make the best use of every dollar they spend. In other words, such a system will make the management and operation of our infrastructure much more sustainable.
As engineers, we still face many challenges in our attempts to move toward this envisioned support for infrastructure providers. When it comes to maintaining our infrastructure, we cannot afford to continue business as usual. This has been made clear by continued infrastructure deterioration despite extremely large amounts of funding dedicated to its upkeep. Replacement without concurrent commitment to changing the management process is a short-sighted solution. It will only push the crisis 20 years further out.
James H. Garrett Jr., Ph.D., is Thomas Lord Professor and Department Head,
Civil and Environmental Engineering, at Carnegie Mellon University, and Faculty Co-Director of the Pennsylvania Smarter Infrastructure Incubator. Dr. Garrett also consults with government agencies and private sector companies on how to use sensors, data management and modeling, and analytics and intelligent decision support to manage infrastructure systems more sustainably.
Posted by
Margaret Honey in
Policymakers, educators and other stakeholders agree that all students – no matter where they live, what educational path they pursue, or in which field they choose to work – need to be science literate if they are to drive future innovation and to contribute to the rapidly changing global economy. To meet this charge, schools have been challenged to redefine mathematics and science education to support multiple strands of inquiry and exploration across the curriculum. The challenge is to offer tools that help students experience excitement, motivation and interest with respect to the natural and built world; develop and use scientific explanations, concepts and models; generate scientific evidence to understand issues; reflect on science as a way of knowing; participate in science practices (e.g., presenting their findings); and identify themselves as science learners capable of doing science.
For this transformation to occur, the Carnegie Corporation’s Institute for Advanced Study Commission on Mathematics and Science Education argues we must move away from the current system of “telling” students about science to one that helps students gain critical problem-solving and inquiry skills in the context of relevant, real-world, interdisciplinary problems. While it’s clear from the Commission’s research that young people care deeply about contemporary STEM-related (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) problems and are motivated to solve them (e.g., health and global warming), many teachers see such investigations as daunting to implement. Furthermore, with rapid advances in science and technology, schools often have limited access to up-to-date resources, strategies and pedagogical supports to bring such relevant content into the classroom creatively.
Design-based teaching and learning can help teachers and students address the challenges of science literacy and offer a new and effective approach to STEM engagement. Design is a process by which people from diverse fields make decisions about the form, function, and use of materials to create artifacts, systems and tools that solve a range of problems, large and small. By focusing on design, one learns how to identify a problem or need, how to consider design options and constraints, and how to plan, model, test and iterate solutions to vexing problems, making higher-order thinking skills tangible and visible. Design-based activities can be intrinsically motivating to teachers and students because they engage the desire to make things and learn how things work. Design also responds to the interdisciplinary complexity of life, requiring that multiple areas of expertise be brought to bear on real-world problems, making it a natural approach for integrating STEM into all subject areas.
Teachers TryScience is a resource, developed by IBM in partnership with the New York Hall of Science and others, that is intended to help teachers introduce design-based science practices into their classrooms. The site contains engaging lesson plans; media assets, such as videos and podcasts that provide “how-to” tips and strategies for teachers; and collaboration tools that foster discussion and a sense of community.
Engaging in activities such as designing solar cars, creating water filtration systems and exploring possibilities for alternative energy sources all help learners develop a deep conceptual understanding of the knowledge and principles of a domain, and support the development of self-guided inquiry skills that are often difficult to teach. To teach STEM effectively through design, teachers need to experience the excitement of how design can be used to address 21st-century challenges, learn how to guide and facilitate such investigations with students, and gain strategies and resources that help them integrate design-based STEM teaching in the classroom. Doing this work while engaging with a larger and like-minded community of educators is exactly what Teachers TryScience supports.
Margaret Honey, Ph.D., is President and CEO of the New York Hall of Science.
Related Article:
Posted by
Nan Alpay in
Not so long ago, Facebook was considered a startup, so when we see great opportunities to stimulate entrepreneurship, we’re eager to help out. That’s why we’re excited to announce today that Facebook has joined Supplier Connection, a consortium of 15 companies committed to driving small business growth in the United States by amplifying access to their combined global supply chain.
We’re in good company, too. Caterpillar, Dell, John Deere, JPMorgan Chase, Kellogg Company, Office Depot, and Wells Fargo also announced their participation in Supplier Connection today, joining founding members AT&T, Bank of America, Citigroup, IBM, Pfizer, and UPS. Together, these corporations purchase more than $300 billion in goods and services annually through their global supply chains. Supplier Connection makes it easier for small businesses to get in on the action.
In New York City, Stanley Litow (left), President of the IBM International Foundation and Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Karen Mills (right) sign an agreement to launch Supplier Connection, a free web site that makes it easier for 50,000 small U.S. businesses to sell their goods and services to large companies.
Through the Supplier Connection web-based portal, small businesses have the opportunity to present their offerings to Facebook and other consortium members with the goal of winning contracts, expanding business and creating jobs. It’s a free and automated process that also enables small suppliers to learn from, collaborate with, and sell to each other so that they can become more competitive and successful in a bid with companies like ours.
Beyond this initiative, Facebook has found other ways to reinvigorate the U.S. economy:
- Our “Small Business Boost” partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business is training small business owners around the country to use Facebook to reach new customers.
- Facebook also collaborated with the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), DirectEmployers Association (DE), and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) to create the Social Jobs Partnership with the aim of facilitating employment for jobless persons through the use of social networks.
We know the challenge of providing economic opportunities and creating jobs requires innovative approaches by American companies across many industries, and we hope our involvement with Supplier Connection, coupled with other efforts, can help small businesses thrive and spur job growth for years to come.
Nan Alpay is Director of Global Source to Pay and Supplier Management at Facebook
Related Resources:
SBA Administrator Karen Mills: Making it Easier for Small Businesses
to Make it in America
