The Digital Literacy Initiative project was officially launched early April at the Crowne Plaza Vientiane, marking the beginning of its implementation in Laos. The event featured a panel discussion titled “Current Situation of Future Outlook of ICT in the Education Sector in Laos,” which emphasized the project’s goals and importance to the country’s digital landscape.
The project is funded by the Dariu Foundation and Bread for the World and implemented in partnership with Swisscontact and the Lao Ministry of Education and Sports.
Its primary goal is to equip young people with essential digital skills for the emerging digital economy. This will be achieved through basic coding and programming classes, coding clubs, and digital entrepreneurship courses in high schools and technical and vocational colleges.
We are delighted to announce that our planned expansion is now well underway. On 18 January, the Dariu Foundation, in partnership with Swisscontact and in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training, launched the Digital Literacy Initiative programme in Phnom Penh. The event was attended by H.E. Dr Oum Romny, Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Daniel Keller, Vice President of the Dariu Foundation, Markus Bürli, Director of Cooperation of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Cambodia, and Philippe Schneuwly, CEO of Swisscontact. The two-year programme (2024-2025) aims to improve the education of young people preparing to enter the labour market within 1-2 years. Students from high schools and technical and vocational schools in Siem Reap and Battambang provinces will benefit from this programme, which will empower underprivileged youth to participate in the digital economy.
In early December 2023, The Dariu Foundation organized the annual Impossible Bootcamp 2023 in collaboration with its local partners in Vinh Long province. The event attracted over 250 participants from 10 different provinces.
It was organized around three different activities, including a robotics competition and a drone competition for high school students and an Impossible2023 pitching competition for high school and university students.
Over 50 teams took part in the robotics and drone competitions, from which two outstanding teams were ultimately selected. Beyond the competition aspect, participants took part in a series of training sessions that equipped them with the skills to design, construct and program robots and drones for the joint competition.
13 outstanding projects took part in the Demoday & Pitching Contest. These teams underwent a rigorous two-month training and a subsequent two-month incubation and mentoring phase before earning their place in the final round. There are two selected projects: “Smart Device to Support Rice Farming”, developed by students from Vo Thi Sau Secondary School in Hau Giang, and “EduBin – Automatic Trash Scan (Recognition and Classification Solution)”, developed by students from the University of Technology and the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh City.
In the last quarter of 2023, The Dariu Foundation and EPAM kicked off the partnership to provide new laptops enabling children to access digital/coding training in the Mekong Delta in terms of the EPAM e-Kid program.
With a joint effort by TDF and local partners, 60,000 students in Hau Giang province will be trained in each school year, of which around 240 – 400 students will benefit directly from EPAM’s grant this school year.
The grant will provide free-of-charge rental of laptops and enable access to basic computing/coding skills for children. In addition, under the eKid program, EPAM also commits to supporting the knowledge transfer, including volunteering and the provision of teaching materials by EPAM.
Volunteering missions: EPAM supports and assists the partners in the deployment of employees. TDF will propose tasks for the volunteers to contribute to these programs, according to the conditions set by EPAM.
Share of teaching materials: EPAM is willing to provide other teaching aids to support TDF in digital literacy.
—–
About EPAM eKids program
The EPAM eKids program was launched successfully at EPAM offices in 2015. The program’s goal is to boost interest in programming and expand learning opportunities for young children.
Based on the MIT Scratch Program, EPAM eKids, encourages children to engage with coding through hands-on challenges and close mentorship opportunities.
We act for good in the communities where we live and work by empowering students through the power of knowledge. Our commitment to supporting initiatives that serve underrepresented communities ensures we can help to provide learning opportunities for all. We use holistic education programs to share our highly skilled technical knowledge for the future. Just as we relentlessly pursue the best solution for our customers, our employees strive to make a difference in the lives of our students – the future tech leaders – by providing education, skills training and career experiences across our global locations.
The Qualcomm Wireless Reach Program is partnering with the Dariu Foundation in Vietnam to bring Snapdragon powered laptops with LTE connectivity to students so that they can improve their digital skills. Learn how Qualcomm and The Dariu Foundation are helping close the Digital Divide in Vietnam:
“Can you fit an interesting life between two book covers? Yes, but sometimes a lot of exciting things have to be left out. Also because paper can’t reproduce sound or movies.” Swiss journalist Mark van Huisseling came to this conclusion and developed a digital biography of Thomas Trüb, founder and president of The Dariu Foundation, to be viewed on laptop, tablet, smartphone et cetera.
The trilingual website “Life of Thomas” – German, French and English – is now online. In addition to a detailed portrait of Thomas Trüb (headline: “The last yuppie”, published in the NZZ am Sonntag magazine), there are numerous original sounds from “TT” and his companions, plenty of pictures plus music (including a song composed especially for Thomas) and a conversation with ChatGPT about what the entrepreneur Trüb would probably do today.
Between September and October 2023, TDF organized 10 school-based hackathons to train 800 Code Club students in project brainstorming (problem/solution finding) and creative thinking. The top 30 Code Club leaders (53% are girls) received advanced training, including leadership, critical thinking, problem solving, and project management. Each of them was supported and coached by a mentor from the university and a mentor from a relevant/IT company to enhance their strengths, learning potential, and career paths, especially in the technology sector.
Following these training workshops, 70 proposals for technology-based innovative ideas/solutions were submitted to TDF by October 2023. Of the 70 teams, 40 eligible teams (including 25 teams of secondary and high school students and 15 teams of university students) were selected to participate in the incubation boot camp.
The bootcamp is a two-month event where the participants will be teamed up with mentors (from universities and industry) who will guide them through the steps of starting a business, including developing initial ideas, testing hypotheses, customer journey, business model, etc. All teams will receive a small grant to build a prototype of their project that can be tested by customers.
By mid-November, the top 12 teams will be selected to participate in the final round of the business model competition in early December 2023.
See more of the innovative projects the Code Club students develop here: https://dariu.org/digital-literacy-en/code-clubs-en/projekte-en/
The Dariu Foundation, in partnership with the Union of Friendship Organization and the Department of Education and Training of An Giang Province, is celebrating the provision of nearly 1,500 laptops to 45 rural schools in Vietnam to strengthen efforts to teach basic digital skills to children in rural areas of Vietnam.
The laptops will be delivered to schools and code clubs in the targeted regions for digital literacy training and digital crafts. The Digital Literacy Initiative project was launched by TDF in 2011 to provide laptops to schools that do not yet have computers/laptops, provide training opportunities to local IT teachers, and provide equal access to digital development facilities for talented rural students through code clubs.
Since 2011, TDF has been providing laptops to 150 rural schools, training 14,000 local IT teachers, and providing access to digital education to approximately 1.5 million students in 10 provinces in Vietnam.
Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach has donated over 3,000 laptops to TDF since 2020 and BftW will join our efforts as from 2023.
Swisscontact – a leading organization in the implementation of skills development projects in developing and emerging countries – and The Dariu Foundation together are launching an initiative to promote digital skills among youth in Laos and Cambodia.
Without education, young people in the Global South are often condemned to a life of poverty. Swisscontact believes that the development of skills – in particular digital skills – is crucial for social integration and economic development, thus helping to reduce poverty over the long term. Education enables young people to find jobs or start their own businesses and enhances overall employment. It reduces youth unemployment and brings stability to fragile contexts.
Swisscontact has entered into a partnership with The Dariu Foundation to offer young people in Laos and Cambodia the opportunity to learn digital skills. Across rural areas of the Global South, The Dariu Foundation trains over 400,000 young men and women in programme courses, mostly in Vietnam up to now, and more recently in Bhutan and Malaysia as well. In this manner, youth are given the opportunity to work and earn income. Laos and Cambodia are two of the new countries of focus in which the Dariu Foundation will be working with Swisscontact to offer these courses to young people.
“For Swisscontact, this partnership with the Dariu Foundation represents an enrichment and useful expansion of what we can offer in the field of education and entrepreneurship for young people in the global South.” Philippe Schneuwly, CEO Swisscontact
Swisscontact has been working around the world for decades to help young people start their professional lives through training and skills development. Our partnership with the Dariu Foundation constitutes a useful expansion of this effort and also allows us to achieve more of the Agenda 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs).
“The collaboration with Swisscontact is an ideal partnership for us. We can count on Swisscontact’s local know-how and concentrate on our core skills.”Thomas Trüb, Founder and Chairman of the Dariu Foundation
The Dariu Foundation, in collaboration with the Vinh Long Department of Education and Training (DOET), organized a one-day Artificial Intelligence (AI) training workshop for 250 local IT teachers to enhance their knowledge and skills in this cutting-edge technology.
The training sessions were presented by professionals in the field of Artificial Intelligence from renowned institutions (Saigon University and Vin University). The participants were introduced to the latest advancements in AI, potential challenges, opportunities, applications and hands-on experience, particularly AI tools and techniques to develop innovative projects at the code clubs. By familiarizing themselves with these cutting-edge tools, the teachers gained the ability to guide students in unleashing their creativity and problem-solving skills through AI-based projects.
Such training workshops will be organized for another 500 IT teachers in other provinces in the next few months.
