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.

We are very pleased to announce that TDF signed a long-term partnership with Bread for the World, a globally active development and relief agency in Germany that empowers the poor and marginalised to improve their living conditions in more than 85 countries all across the globe.

Through the joint project, we intend to address the following main challenges of the public education system in rural and remote areas:

• Lack of sufficient, adequate and functioning computer equipment to provide Digital Literacy education.
• Computer courses largely focusing on theoretical skills. Students learn programming, but do not produce any simple product that can be practically applied. Accordingly, students are not motivated to participate in IT lessons.
• Lack of qualified IT teachers, lack of updated curriculums and practical training programs.
• Schools do not offer opportunities for students to develop innovative projects and grow their talents.
• There is a tendency to divide the tasks within project teams accordingly. There is still a certain gender bias that technical work, including programming, is not suitable for girls.
  

BftW’s support will enable TDF to expand the project and to ensure that a high-quality digital education is mainstreamed into Vietnamese schools and create access to basic computer and coding skills for 1.2 – 1.5 million children between 2023 – 2025.

Furthermore, the project will continue to support existing partner schools with the aim to ensure sustainability of ongoing Digital Literacy classes and Coding clubs. In addition, the project will expand to new schools.

Moonfare founder and CEO Steffen Pauls, said: “The Dariu Foundation is doing excellent work in spreading access to coding skills to young, disadvantaged people in deprived communities around the world. Supporting its mission feels like a natural fit for a world-leading technology company like Moonfare especially given our determination to do our part in making the world a better place.” He added: “A young person trained by Dariu today may become a staff member at Moonfare or another tech company tomorrow.”

As part of “The Impossible Project,” TDF has committed to educating some 5,000 talented children in 250 code clubs within the next few years.

Such ambitious targets require the support of an engaged and like-minded community, which Moonfare can help to provide, as there are strong synergies between Dariu’s Digital Education project and Moonfare’s fully digital business concept

We are very pleased to announce, that we have won over Chai Schnyder as our 5th member of the Board of Trustees. The Board of the Dariu Foundation is now complete again.

Chai has been working for many years with her own family foundation to provide education and other help for disadvantaged children, with keen interest in Southeast Asia. Between 2011 and 2014, she was the chairwoman of the board of Ulysse Nardin SA, a Swiss luxury watchmaking company. She is the Founder and Chairperson of Fondation Rolf Schnyder.

Born and raised in Malaysia, Chai is a mother of 3, with an Engineering background. Her activities take her all over the world, while she calls Kuala Lumpur and Switzerland her home.

Alberto Venzago is a world-renowned photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker. Venzago’s photo reportages range on topics from organized crime in Japan to the revolution in Iran and have received international recognition. They have been published in magazines such as Life, The Sunday Times, Stern and Geo.

As a gift for our 20th anniversary, Alberto traveled to Vietnam to capture our activities on the ground, bringing back this wonderful movie.

Since 2002, the Dariu Foundation has been helping socially disadvantaged children in mostly rural areas in Vietnam and Myanmar to improve their opportunities through school and digital education. Today, the foundations special anniversary is being celebrated – in “The Studio” at the Ringier Pressehaus with a delicious flying dinner from the Zurich based Vietnamese Restaurant Co Chin Chin.

Since its beginnings, Ringier has supported the foundation both financially and with professional expertise from within the company – for the past year also in the way of corporate volunteering. Ringier employees donate their knowledge and time to support the foundation in various projects and tasks for which the foundation lacks the personnel. 

Marc Walder, CEO of Ringier, says: “Around 65 percent of children will be working as adults in jobs that do not exist today. When it comes to training children in coding schools, the children from rural Vietnam are probably better equipped than many children in Europe – Dariu has played a significant role in this. My great respect and equally great thanks go to Thomas Trüb for his tireless efforts.“

Alberto Venzago, the renowned photographer and filmmaker has given us a very special gift: In May, he traveled to Vietnam with his crew and brought back this wonderful film:

We did it! We have successfully prevailed against the other 4 finalists and won the Bett Asia 21st Century Learning Award for our Digital Literacy Initiative. This is a big success for us and our Code Club kids, as the award goes to the organisation that is using #EdTech effectively to develop the necessary skills to help students become independent and confident global citizens.

The award is a recognition for all 1,000,345+ Code Club kids who have received their DLI certificate and for those 230,000+ students currently attending the DLI training program (50% being girls).

Bett Asia is the region’s leading education technology conference and expo, gathering senior education leaders, educators and innovators to share intelligence on how to improve learning in the 21st century.

Our local Bhutanese partner, VTOB foundation, organised the first ToT training for 16 teachers from 8 local schools earlier this month. The participants attended a 7-day training course, focusing on ScratchJr and Python. This is the first time these teachers attended a workshop for coding and programming skills.

After the ToT workshop, the IT teachers will deliver training sessions to over 1’000 students at those schools, whereas TDF provides 90 laptops and the ToT training costs.

This pilot marks the start of our cooperation with VTOB in Bhutan, to enable young children in digital literacy.