ATLANTA (September 13, 2018) —The poverty-fighting organization CARE announced it has been selected by SAP Concur, the world’s leading provider of travel, expense, and invoice management solutions, as a Community Impact Partner. SAP Concur awarded a $150,000 donation, which will support CARE’s education work around the world.
CARE’s education programs span 27 countries, engaging more than 1.4 million people each year by strengthening the quality of education, improving learning outcomes, furthering gender equity, and promoting the empowerment of marginalized adolescents, especially girls. CARE’s work takes place in the classroom, outside the classroom, and within households and communities.
With support from SAP Concur, CARE aims to bring a brighter future to marginalized girls around the world by enabling CARE to invest in projects like new accelerated learning centers, creating computer centers, providing scholarships for students and building capacities of teachers. The funding will help CARE achieve its broader goal of reaching 3 million out-of-school adolescents, particularly girls, in the next three to five years.
Specifically, SAP Concur’s contribution supports CARE’s Teacher’s Resource Labs (TRL) in India, a program that is working with the state government of Uttar Pradesh to make STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education accessible to girls across the state.
The funding will also support CARE’s Strengthening Opportunities for Adolescent Resilience or SOAR which provides a second chance for adolescents who have missed crucial school years because they were either forced to drop out or never had a chance to enroll in the first place. Adolescents are enrolled in a focused accelerated education program where they earn the equivalent of a primary school or basic education over a brief period, from six to 18 months, depending on the context.
“At CARE, we know that girls’ education is critical to fighting poverty,” said Heather Higginbottom, CARE’s chief operating officer. “We’re grateful that SAP Concur recognizes this too and is working with us to fund this important work.”
SAP Concur employees will have an opportunity to virtually mentor girls and support CARE India in pursuing operations in the state- scaled STEM resource centers: demonstrating new technologies to students, providing access to experimentation materials for teachers and children, and training support to teachers on learner-friendly teaching methods in STEM education.
“At SAP Concur, we believe that everyone deserves a place in the digital economy,” said Jenn McColly, Vice President of Employee Experience at SAP Concur. “We’re excited to work with CARE to grow access to STEM programming in underserved communities with a special focus on girls and leadership.”
About CARE
Founded in 1945 with the creation of the CARE Package®, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE places special focus on working alongside women and girls because, equipped with the proper resources, they have the power to lift whole families and entire communities out of poverty. That’s why women and girls are at the heart of CARE’s community-based efforts to improve education and health, create economic opportunity, respond to emergencies and confront hunger. Last year CARE worked in 95 countries and reached more than 65 million people around the world. To learn more, visit www.care.org and www.careindia.org