Social responsibility
Women@ALTEN
At ALTEN, we are committed to increasing interest in enginering and IT among women to promote a more gender-equal industry. This commitment is reflected through our internal network, Women@ALTEN, which is driven by our employees. Through the network, our employees actively work to strengthen women’s position in the engineering and IT industries while also serving as inspiring role models for young girls.
The purpose can be narrowed down to three main points:
- Build togetherness among all the women working at the various offices
- Attract more women to join ALTEN
- Inspire young girls to focus more on technical educations and careers
Easter and Christmas gift
Instead of giving gifts for Easter and Christmas to our clients, we choose to donate to charity. Every year we decide together which organization should receive our gift. Several years in a row we have voted for the Swedish Cancer Society and their important work to defeat cancer and support the most important cancer research in Sweden, to reduce the number of individuals affected and increase the number of survivors.
In 2022, we also chose to support UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and their humanitarian efforts to help refugees in need.
Engineers Without Borders
Since 2018, we are proud silver partners to Engineers Without Borders Sweden. The collaboration enables us to participate and contribute widely, in various projects, where our help is really needed.
During the ALTEN Day 2020, we performed the biggest workshop in ALTEN’s history when 900 colleagues brainstormed solutions to four actual cases from ongoing projects led by Engineers Without Borders in Tanzania and Nepal.
We did not only come up with solutions to the projects, we also created new relationships with colleagues from other offices who we don’t meet in our everyday work. It was amazing to be able to accomplish this kind of workshop and powerful to see this many people with a great level of competence work together for such a noble cause. The solutions and tips were documented and are now sent to Engineers Without Borders, which hopefully will help them in their ongoing projects.
During 2019, Engineers Without Borders investigated in strengthening their identity by an update of the visual profile. ALTEN had the great honor of being behind the development of the new identity, which was implemented in May 2019.
Through colors and shapes, the new visual identity aims at creating a connection to sustainability and engineering. The concept, which is developed by ALTEN, includes a new logo, typography, and graphical guidelines.
Caroline Bastholm, Secretary General at Engineers Without Borders, says that they identified a need within the organization to update the visual identity. The members opinion was that the current identity was somewhat difficult to work with, especially in international contexts because of the language in the old logotype which was in Swedish.
We are very proud of ALTEN’s Design & Visualisation department who have worked out the concept in this pro bono project.
ALTEN-employees were given the opportunity to support Engineers Without Borders in their project in Tanzania by participating in a standby support group.
In Tanzania, where the volunteers of the project were located, there are limited access to internet and other ways to find information. If they got problems, had questions or needed help searching for information, they contacted the competence group at home in Sweden.
Sebasthian and Hugh were two of them who took the chance to participate in the project. Read more about their initiative here!
In 2018, we chose to dedicate our christmas gift to Engineers Without Borders and their project to provide an orphanage in Tanzania with electricity through solar power.
In this project, Engineers Without Borders cooperates with the local organization Mavuno. Mavuno operates in the poverty stricken Karagwe district, Tanzania, to support children who don’t have a home or who can’t live with their families for different reasons.
By building this orphanage, 210 girls in the age of 5-13 years old are expected to get a home. The Karagwe district in Tanzania lacks a central water and sewage system which means that each family must find their own way to gather water and work out systems for waste hygiene. For most this means long walks every day to watering holes, toilets which consists of a hole in the ground and garbage being burnt openly on the grounds. For the children and young adults who don’t have a family, or for various reasons don’t live with their family, this creates serious challenges to just live from day to day.
The children will be able to stay on the orphanage full time. It will also be open for the children in boarding schools who don’t have a home to return to during the school holidays. The orphanage will be operated and staffed by locally employed people, as these children need a safe environment with adults who remain by their side for a long time during their childhood.
The scope project expanded over time and did also include the construction of a rainwater tank and an infrastructure plan for the orphanage and ALTEN choose to donate our 2019 Christmas gift to the project as well. The orphanage began operations during the first quarter of 2020.
ALTEN PinkRun
To support the Swedish Cancer Society’s Pink Ribbon campaign, ALTEN invited colleagues and customers to run/walk against cancer during ALTEN PinkRun!
It was a big group of people who gathered in October 2019 to run or walk against cancer. 285 people kickstarted their day by participating in ALTEN PinkRun. ALTEN PinkRun started at the same time at nine of our offices, and at Beamon Peoples office in Stockholm. ALTEN and Beamon People donated 50 SEK/participant and the participants commitment resulted in 15 000 SEK (rounded) to the Swedish Cancer Society.
Information about the Swedish Cancer Society:
The Swedish Cancer Society’s Pink Ribbon campaign is carried out during October each year with the aim of raise and distribute money for cancer research and to spread knowledge about cancer. The Swedish Cancer Society is also active in areas such as public opinion. The supported projects represent the highest quality in the field of cancer, whatever the focus. This means that the selection takes place in national competition and does not take into account the field of research or the geographic location.
Mathivation
Mathivation is a concept developed at the West Sweden Chamber of Commerce, with the aim of inspiring and motivating high school students in the areas of mathematics and programming.
Mathivation supports the students education in programming partly by offering the opportunity to build an automated greenhouse. The first greenhouse was built in april 2018 by high school students in Gothenburg. We are proud of our contribution of competence within development, design and manual descriptions in this pro bono project.