Introduction – Community Outreach

SolarEdge employees volunteering to build child-sized cars for handicapped kids SolarEdge Global VP HR volunteering with kids and teaching them about solar energy

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SolarEdge employees attending beach cleanup

Support for Ukraine

Running for climate change

Employee Donations Campaign

Volunteer beach cleaning

Other Activities During 2022

SolarEdge mobilized to help address the urgent needs of hundreds of refugees from Ukraine who were housed in apartments in the north of Israel, close to our Sella 1 factory. Both the Company and its employees donated essentials such as baby-care products, women’s hygiene products, various household items, and school equipment. Dozens of Sella 1 employees volunteered to help with the packaging of refugee support kits. The Company has also partnered with the Atidim organization (described above) to fund STEM-focused educational programs, tailored to the needs of refugee teenagers from Ukraine. In total, our contribution to support refugees from Ukraine amounted to over $20,000.

 

 

Employees from the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Israel took part in a relay from Glasgow to Sharm-I-Sheikh along a 7,767-kilometer route spanning 18 countries to raise awareness of climate change. The route passed through hundreds of schools with the goal of inspiring and championing local climate change action.

In Israel, where over 50% of the SolarEdge workforce is located, we set up a donations channel during 2022, encouraging our employees to contribute to causes close to their hearts. The donation themes are aligned with our overall CSR focus areas: environmental sustainability, technological education and innovation, and advancing diverse populations.

Employees collaborated with EcoOcean, a non-profit Israeli organization established by group of leading scientists and environmentalists whose mission is to empower people to care for the marine and coastal environment through research, education and civic engagement.

Birkat Reut

Atidim

Enhancing Diverse Populations

In cooperation with the Birkat Reut association which promotes equal opportunities for populations with special needs, SolarEdge hosted groups of blind, deaf and physically disabled children for fun activities. Employees built toy cars for disabled children and led bi-weekly activities including science workshops for children with emotional disabilities.

We support Atidim’s Step UP Program which identifies talented young women from Israel’s underserved periphery and provides support, enrichment and empowerment to create equal educational opportunities and social mobility. SolarEdge donated three full scholarships to allow three women to major in engineering in order to pursue careers in high-tech. These scholarships also include private lessons to ensure that these women have opportune chances to excel in their careers.

Within this framework, we also organized two Meet-Ups throughout the year on tech trends in the energy sector and students from the program were invited to take part. These Meet-Ups were led by SolarEdge women managers.

 

Shavot

Ofanim

The Guy Sella Memorial Project

Tech Education / Innovation

In 2022, women SolarEdge employees from various departments in SolarEdge took part in the Shavot personal mentoring program, a nationwide initiative that encourages girls to develop positive self-esteem. Through meaningful experiences like the ones fostered by our female employees, young girls are able to minimizegender gaps, discover new strengths, and aspire to reach higher goals.

Our women employees mentored six groups of girls from the central city of Rishon Lezion and were given the option of sharing their career path of delivering an EdgeUcate lesson. In addition, they organized a Hackathon in which the girls took part.

 

We are a member of Friends of Ofanim, an award-winning organization that drives STEM education for elementary school children in Israel’s underserved regions in the north and south. We have delivered our EdgeUcate workshops and conducted tours of Sella 1 for underprivileged youth in the periphery, creating educational opportunities for Israel’s most disadvantaged children.

This project was initiated in 2020 in memory of Guy Sella, SolarEdge’s Co-Founder, former Chairman and CEO who passed away in August 2019. As part of the project, the Company has pledged to invest $1,000,000 over ten years in a joint SolarEdge-Technion educational and technological initiative (with 2022 representing the third project year). The Technion, Israel’s leading technical research university, is committed to matching these funds. The Guy Sella Memorial Project combines teaching, research, and outreach activities for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, including teaching labs and research fellowships.

In early 2022, the Technion held an award ceremony for prizes, research grants, and scholarships as part of the project. The Guy Sella Research Prize was given to two members of the Grand Technion Energy Program which is active in creating a research infrastructure and promoting research in energy, as well as generating significant scientific discoveries and major national initiatives.

At the end of 2022, the Technion marked the opening of the Power Electronics and Renewable Energy Laboratory (PEARL), donated by SolarEdge. PEARL is a first-of-its-kind lab integrating renewable energy and power electronics as part of the studies of the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The goals of the lab are to acquaint graduate students with the practicalities of climate tech and to expose them to the increasing efficiencies of photovoltaics, e-mobility and other renewable technologies.

In addition, a 24-hour Technion Hackathon was held in May 2022 in memory of Guy Sella, searching for next-stage and large-scale renewable energy storage and conversion solutions.

 

 

SolarEdge employee volunteering with kids and teaching them about solar energy SolarEdge employee volunteering with kids and teaching them about solar energy

EDGEUcate

Our flagship long-term educational program, EDGEUcate, aims to raise awareness and educate children from a young age on sustainability practices and teaching about what is solar energy. This year, we developed age-appropriate learning kits in collaboration with educational consultants and content writers for use in the classroom by our employees. Educational kits were designed for students from kindergarten through 12th grade, based on materials from our “Edge Academy”.

Launched in 2022, we have set ourselves an ambitious goal of reaching 10,000 pupils in Israel by the end of 2023. By February 2023, over 4,000 Israeli school students have already participated in an EDGEUcate class. The program has also been conducted before audiences made up of different populations including women’s shelters and participants of various outreach initiatives, also in Israel’s periphery. This well-received and valuable program is expected to launch globally in 2023.

 

SolarEdge employee volunteering with youth and teaching about solar panels instillation SolarEdge employee volunteering with youth and teaching about solar panels instillation

100 Gardens Project

Engineers Without Borders

Community Installation Project

Green Energy / Environment

We are supporting Venatata’s 100 Gardens Project which has a five-year goal of building 100 therapeutic gardens in 100 rehabilitation centers serving a broad range of populations on the fringes of society in Israel. SolarEdge has committed to building three of these therapeutic gardens to be used by at-risk populations and the elderly in the cities of Nof Hagalil in Israel’s north, and Ramle and Herzliya in the center. Numerous employees volunteered their time and were directly involved in building these gardens during 2022 which is often interactive with people living in the facilities for which the gardens are built.

In addition, we also conducted a lecture on biological technologies that utilize energy from the sun.

 

We provide professional mentoring and skilled-based volunteering to teams of students from Ben Gurion University in Israel (BGU) who are working on a model for a playground in Tanzania powered by solar energy. We created an advisory board to consult, train and assist BGU students in creating this model which will also power refrigerators for Tanzanian school children, helping with their schooltime nutrition.

This year, SolarEdge donated an entire solar energy management system to the Manof Youth Village in Acre, Israel an educational establishment for the rehabilitation of young people “on the margins of society” who have dropped out of the regular educational/social system. Manof is a Public Association financed by governmental offices – the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Labor.

The SolarEdge PV system consists not only of our Power Optimizers, inverters and other hardware that we manufacture but also the solar panels, racking and other ancillary products needed to put together an entire system. In addition, an installation team employed by SolarEdge carried out and oversaw the entire installation with help from the youth living at the village. This system is expected to save up to 30.8 metric tons of carbon emissions per year.

As part of our efforts to educate the next generation on the importance of solar energy, we also conducted tours for the Manof students at our Sella 1 manufacturing hub in Zipporit, Israel.

 

Tech Education, Innovation 50%

Enhancing Diverse populations 20%

Green Energy, Sustainability 19%

Other Ad-hoc donations 11%

SolarEdge Community Outreach Donations, 2022

equivalent to 0.21% of net profits[1]

$354,000

This was in line with our ongoing commitment to donate at least 0.1% of net profits to charitable causes annually.

In 2022, SolarEdge donated

This plan is composed of the following three pillars:

Advancing renewable energy for environmental community value
Strengthening Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education and encouraging youth innovation
Enhancing diverse populations

 

Young kids visiting Sella 1 factory

We continue to grow our efforts and measure the impact on the communities in which we live and work. This year, as we expanded upon the previous year’s activities, by undertaking a broad range of initiatives in line with the above-mentioned three-pillar employee engagement plan. Two of these initiatives were large-scale projects initiated within the Company itself (our Community Installation project and our EDGEUcate project – both of which are detailed below). Other initiatives include partnering with NGOs specializing in their respective areas of expertise.

We encourage employee engagement in initiatives that reach a large number of beneficiaries and operate on a national scale. As a result, our employee volunteering rates increased significantly in 2022, reaching a total of over 840 volunteer hours in Israel alone.

 

The chart below illustrates the distribution of our total charitable donations between our three main community engagement pillars (and additional ad-hoc donations).

The plan also defines the criteria for CSR initiatives in the communities where our operations are located, emphasizing employee engagement and potential impact.

In addition, we appointed community engagement outreach leads from different departments and regions and we defined a new policy for company-organized volunteering initiatives, allowing employees to volunteer one day per year during paid working hours.

 

To this end, we have established our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Committee. This committee is comprised of employees from a range of functions within the company whose purpose is to progress community engagement programs while sharing different internal views. In addition, our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Global Lead is responsible for the oversight and effective promotion of our community engagement strategy and programs.

Our strategy and programs are based on an extensive community engagement multi-year plan.

 

As a global leader in smart energy, impact is at the core of everything we do. We are continuously looking for opportunities to positively impact the communities in which we live and work.

Community
Outreach

[1]

Donation per profit ratio was calculated using the 2022 total donations, divided by the 2021 total net profits. We consider this ratio to be representative, since our donation budget is planned at the beginning of each year as a percentage of last year’s profits. If the 2022 total donations would be divided by the 2022 net profits, the result reflects a 0.38% ratio.  

Join the SolarEdge Conversation

 

 

 

Contact a product expert or sales representative

 

 

How can we help you?

 

Birkat Reut

Atidim

Enhancing Diverse Populations

In cooperation with the Birkat Reut association which promotes equal opportunities for populations with special needs, SolarEdge hosted groups of blind, deaf and physically disabled children for fun activities. Employees built toy cars for disabled children and led bi-weekly activities including science workshops for children with emotional disabilities.

We support Atidim’s Step UP Program which identifies talented young women from Israel’s underserved periphery and provides support, enrichment and empowerment to create equal educational opportunities and social mobility. SolarEdge donated three full scholarships to allow three women to major in engineering in order to pursue careers in high-tech. These scholarships also include private lessons to ensure that these women have opportune chances to excel in their careers.

Within this framework, we also organized two Meet-Ups throughout the year on tech trends in the energy sector and students from the program were invited to take part. These Meet-Ups were led by SolarEdge women managers.

 

Support for Ukraine

Running for climate change

Employee Donations Campaign

Volunteer beach cleaning

Other Activities During 2022

SolarEdge mobilized to help address the urgent needs of hundreds of refugees from Ukraine who were housed in apartments in the north of Israel, close to our Sella 1 factory. Both the Company and its employees donated essentials such as baby-care products, women’s hygiene products, various household items, and school equipment. Dozens of Sella 1 employees volunteered to help with the packaging of refugee support kits. The Company has also partnered with the Atidim organization (described above) to fund STEM-focused educational programs, tailored to the needs of refugee teenagers from Ukraine. In total, our contribution to support refugees from Ukraine amounted to over $20,000.

 

 

Employees from the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Israel took part in a relay from Glasgow to Sharm-I-Sheikh along a 7,767-kilometer route spanning 18 countries to raise awareness of climate change. The route passed through hundreds of schools with the goal of inspiring and championing local climate change action.

In Israel, where over 50% of the SolarEdge workforce is located, we set up a donations channel during 2022, encouraging our employees to contribute to causes close to their hearts. The donation themes are aligned with our overall CSR focus areas: environmental sustainability, technological education and innovation, and advancing diverse populations.

Employees collaborated with EcoOcean, a non-profit Israeli organization established by group of leading scientists and environmentalists whose mission is to empower people to care for the marine and coastal environment through research, education and civic engagement.

Shavot

Ofanim

The Guy Sella Memorial Project

Tech Education / Innovation

In 2022, women SolarEdge employees from various departments in SolarEdge took part in the Shavot personal mentoring program, a nationwide initiative that encourages girls to develop positive self-esteem. Through meaningful experiences like the ones fostered by our female employees, young girls are able to minimizegender gaps, discover new strengths, and aspire to reach higher goals.

Our women employees mentored six groups of girls from the central city of Rishon Lezion and were given the option of sharing their career path of delivering an EdgeUcate lesson. In addition, they organized a Hackathon in which the girls took part.

 

We are a member of Friends of Ofanim, an award-winning organization that drives STEM education for elementary school children in Israel’s underserved regions in the north and south. We have delivered our EdgeUcate workshops and conducted tours of Sella 1 for underprivileged youth in the periphery, creating educational opportunities for Israel’s most disadvantaged children.

This project was initiated in 2020 in memory of Guy Sella, SolarEdge’s Co-Founder, former Chairman and CEO who passed away in August 2019. As part of the project, the Company has pledged to invest $1,000,000 over ten years in a joint SolarEdge-Technion educational and technological initiative (with 2022 representing the third project year). The Technion, Israel’s leading technical research university, is committed to matching these funds. The Guy Sella Memorial Project combines teaching, research, and outreach activities for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, including teaching labs and research fellowships.

In early 2022, the Technion held an award ceremony for prizes, research grants, and scholarships as part of the project. The Guy Sella Research Prize was given to two members of the Grand Technion Energy Program which is active in creating a research infrastructure and promoting research in energy, as well as generating significant scientific discoveries and major national initiatives.

At the end of 2022, the Technion marked the opening of the Power Electronics and Renewable Energy Laboratory (PEARL), donated by SolarEdge. PEARL is a first-of-its-kind lab integrating renewable energy and power electronics as part of the studies of the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The goals of the lab are to acquaint graduate students with the practicalities of climate tech and to expose them to the increasing efficiencies of photovoltaics, e-mobility and other renewable technologies.

In addition, a 24-hour Technion Hackathon was held in May 2022 in memory of Guy Sella, searching for next-stage and large-scale renewable energy storage and conversion solutions.

 

 

SolarEdge employee volunteering with youth and teaching about solar panels instillation SolarEdge employee volunteering with youth and teaching about solar panels instillation

100 Gardens Project

Engineers Without Borders

Community Installation Project

Green Energy / Environment

We are supporting Venatata’s 100 Gardens Project which has a five-year goal of building 100 therapeutic gardens in 100 rehabilitation centers serving a broad range of populations on the fringes of society in Israel. SolarEdge has committed to building three of these therapeutic gardens to be used by at-risk populations and the elderly in the cities of Nof Hagalil in Israel’s north, and Ramle and Herzliya in the center. Numerous employees volunteered their time and were directly involved in building these gardens during 2022 which is often interactive with people living in the facilities for which the gardens are built.

In addition, we also conducted a lecture on biological technologies that utilize energy from the sun.

 

We provide professional mentoring and skilled-based volunteering to teams of students from Ben Gurion University in Israel (BGU) who are working on a model for a playground in Tanzania powered by solar energy. We created an advisory board to consult, train and assist BGU students in creating this model which will also power refrigerators for Tanzanian school children, helping with their schooltime nutrition.

This year, SolarEdge donated an entire solar energy management system to the Manof Youth Village in Acre, Israel an educational establishment for the rehabilitation of young people “on the margins of society” who have dropped out of the regular educational/social system. Manof is a Public Association financed by governmental offices – the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Labor.

The SolarEdge PV system consists not only of our Power Optimizers, inverters and other hardware that we manufacture but also the solar panels, racking and other ancillary products needed to put together an entire system. In addition, an installation team employed by SolarEdge carried out and oversaw the entire installation with help from the youth living at the village. This system is expected to save up to 30.8 metric tons of carbon emissions per year.

As part of our efforts to educate the next generation on the importance of solar energy, we also conducted tours for the Manof students at our Sella 1 manufacturing hub in Zipporit, Israel.

 

SolarEdge employee volunteering with kids and teaching them about solar energy SolarEdge employee volunteering with kids and teaching them about solar energy

EDGEUcate

Our flagship long-term educational program, EDGEUcate, aims to raise awareness and educate children from a young age on sustainability practices and teaching about what is solar energy. This year, we developed age-appropriate learning kits in collaboration with educational consultants and content writers for use in the classroom by our employees. Educational kits were designed for students from kindergarten through 12th grade, based on materials from our “Edge Academy”.

Launched in 2022, we have set ourselves an ambitious goal of reaching 10,000 pupils in Israel by the end of 2023. By February 2023, over 4,000 Israeli school students have already participated in an EDGEUcate class. The program has also been conducted before audiences made up of different populations including women’s shelters and participants of various outreach initiatives, also in Israel’s periphery. This well-received and valuable program is expected to launch globally in 2023.

 

equivalent to 0.21% of net profits[1]

$354,000

This was in line with our ongoing commitment to donate at least 0.1% of net profits to charitable causes annually.

In 2022, SolarEdge donated

Young kids visiting Sella 1 factory

This plan is composed of the following three pillars:

Advancing renewable energy for environmental community value
Strengthening Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education and encouraging youth innovation
Enhancing diverse populations

 

SolarEdge employees volunteering to build child-sized cars for handicapped kids SolarEdge Global VP HR volunteering with kids and teaching them about solar energy

We continue to grow our efforts and measure the impact on the communities in which we live and work. This year, as we expanded upon the previous year’s activities, by undertaking a broad range of initiatives in line with the above-mentioned three-pillar employee engagement plan. Two of these initiatives were large-scale projects initiated within the Company itself (our Community Installation project and our EDGEUcate project – both of which are detailed below). Other initiatives include partnering with NGOs specializing in their respective areas of expertise.

We encourage employee engagement in initiatives that reach a large number of beneficiaries and operate on a national scale. As a result, our employee volunteering rates increased significantly in 2022, reaching a total of over 840 volunteer hours in Israel alone.

 

The chart below illustrates the distribution of our total charitable donations between our three main community engagement pillars (and additional ad-hoc donations).

The plan also defines the criteria for CSR initiatives in the communities where our operations are located, emphasizing employee engagement and potential impact.

In addition, we appointed community engagement outreach leads from different departments and regions and we defined a new policy for company-organized volunteering initiatives, allowing employees to volunteer one day per year during paid working hours.

 

To this end, we have established our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Committee. This committee is comprised of employees from a range of functions within the company whose purpose is to progress community engagement programs while sharing different internal views. In addition, our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Global Lead is responsible for the oversight and effective promotion of our community engagement strategy and programs.

Our strategy and programs are based on an extensive community engagement multi-year plan.

 

Introduction – Community Outreach

As a global leader in smart energy, impact is at the core of everything we do. We are continuously looking for opportunities to positively impact the communities in which we live and work.

SolarEdge employees attending beach cleanup

Community
Outreach

Sustainability Report 2022 /