Start Campus’ Sustainability Guidelines: For the Community

Welcome to part two of four in our blog series highlighting our sustainable best practices. If you missed the first one “For the Planet,” you can read the overview of our sustainability blog series in our blog.

This blog focuses on the company’s initiatives for sustainable community development.

Sustainable Communities

Start Campus supports the community by creating sustainable industries and investing in local, pivotal projects that support the regional shift toward a circular economy. These efforts include promoting sustainable economic growth through local employment and community involvement. Some of the initiatives we are developing in Start Campus are:

Local Community

We believe that community is the heart of the region and all that it surrounds. At the start of our SINES Project, we went to the community to present our concept and get feedback to understand how we could positively influence the region.

From that exercise, the GAMMA Community Platform was born — an annual initiative that invests in community-driven projects. This proactive engagement funds and supports several community projects each year that target and benefit the municipalities surrounding Start Campus’ projects. The goal is to leave a positive impact in the region by promoting economic growth and prosperity through collaboration with local entrepreneurs, residents, and other stakeholders, helping to support their vision for the future.

The GAMMA Platform exists to empower community members to be leaders in regional development by supporting local initiatives that reflect four investment pillars:

• Educational development
• Environment
• Community
• Entrepreneurship

We’re committed to local communities and are constantly active in forums to continue to learn and grow with our community.

Education

Start Campus aims to increase regional economic development by creating positive spillovers from the promotion of sustainable entrepreneurship[1]  initiatives, and the re-skilling of local populations. By doing this, we improve employability, as well as the focus on training and developing skills in relevant areas of expertise.

We work with local technical schools to offer data center-related disciplines/courses, resulting in new talent joining the industry. This aids in building human capital to address the market’s skilled workforce shortage.

As a company, we’ve collaborated with an IPS — Setúbal Polytechnical Institution — to develop a new data science course[2]  specifically designed for data centers. Engineers will be trained to support renewable energy[3]  and cooling operations at green facilities.

Employment

Our SINES Project promotes new employment opportunities with up to 1,200 direct jobs and up to 8,000 jobs in total for the local region.

Start Campus aims to use these guidelines to address sustainability for the community, and to support them through their various initiatives. By instituting these programs, we — and the industry as a whole — can foster an environment where workers and the community at large can and will thrive.