Reinventing IBM’s corporate giving

Celia Moore

At three sites in Italy teachers are working with teachers in Pennsylvania, USA on a new teaching and learning model to integrate information technology into classroom practice. In Ireland, teachers are collaborating with colleagues in West Virginia to drive up the standard of literacy at primary school level. Reinventing Education is taking root in Europe.

This year 15 museums in Europe will install kiosks giving access to a virtual tour of the hitherto inaccessible collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Other museums will install TryScience.com, a new education website which captures the resources of many of the world’s leading science and technology centres, and also provides the professional science community with a platform to develop joint tours and exhibitions

These projects are just part of IBM’s global corporate community relations (CCR) programme, also being implemented in South America and Asia. IBM introduced a global strategy for CCR in 1994, bringing it into line with IBM’s core business operations, which had been restructured as global units. The new strategy was led by Stanley Litow, recruited  by IBM Chairman Louis V Gerstner Jr as Vice President for Corporate Community Relations. IBM’s strategy aims to make a more significant and lasting impact on social concerns that are also important to IBM’s business, and to produce a stronger return to the business through enhanced brand reputation and leveraging of business opportunities.

IBM’s strategy is based on three key principles:

 
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