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In this article, I will be focusing on how Sogeti colleagues are contributing their expertise to a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project initiated by Sogeti. To explain this I will elaborate more on a CSR Case that I have been working on recently as a Product Owner.
Case Study: the NOMI App
In the area of CSR we sometimes receive unusual requests. Requests that cannot be fulfilled by utilizing standard solutions and services available for most of our customers.
Samantha and Alica, two vibrant teenagers and former patients at the Princess Maxima Center Hospital, came with this unusual request. They wanted to communicate with their peers about their sickness and it seems that there were no proper apps available at that moment. But what were they specifically looking for? All these were the starting point for the development of the NOMI app.
The NOMI app is developed in close collaboration with the KiKa foundation, the Nomi foundation, Sogeti and the Princess Maxima Center Hospital. This is a new hospital in Utrecht, the Netherlands where children with cancer are being treated by various specialists working closely together.
Today everyone is connected through social media. Sick children who are staying in a hospital for a longer period of time, however, are often lonely They stay in their rooms alone and will have a lack of communication or contact with others. This particular lack of contact is definitely not stimulating the healing process. Some may want to find a buddy or a friend who understands what they are going through, while others may just want to chat and play together online. With the NOMI app, we support the possibility of creating connections through a secure social platform. It is our ambition to turn this into a national platform, where children with chronical diseases are able to communicate with each other. However, before a national launch, we will start with a pilot in the Princess Maxima Center Hospital.
Unleashing the creativity and inner child
NOMI has started off as an internal project in our Digital Business Line. This was how I have participated in the project at the end of 2018. From that moment onwards I decided to contribute my expertise as Product Owner by professionalizing the project organization and working on the preparations for a pilot.
CSR projects like NOMI forces us to think out-of-the-box coming up with other solutions and new ways of collaboration. NOMI has unleashed the creativity and inner child in me. It has been a very refreshing experience and resulted in finding true passion in my work. I see the same passion with other Sogeti colleagues who have contributed to this project. Being able to do this is something characterized as part of the culture within Sogeti and we should cherish it.
Experimenting in our MakerZone
Since June 1st Sogeti the Netherlands has started with the MakerZone. In this environment, we bring together internal projects with the goals of creating more exposure and speeding up innovation. Projects in the MakerZone are experimental and (in some cases) have a social impact.
I strongly believe that the MakerZone is the ultimate place to experiment further with projects like these. This enables us to keep on inspiring Sogeti colleagues and proving how we can make technology work.
The NOMI project has been one of the first projects to start in the MakerZone and reaches a new phase. For me the time has come to move on to another assignment. I would like to thank all colleagues who have been contributing and wish you all the best with the next phases of the NOMI project in our MakerZone.
