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.

digitalswitzerland is a Switzerland-wide, cross-sector initiative that aims to strengthen and consolidate Switzerland as a leading international location for digital innovation. Under the umbrella organization digitalswitzerland, over 240 association members and non-political foundation partners work together to realize this goal.

In its 2022 edition, held at the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich, Thomas talked about The Dariu Foundation and its work, in front of international business leaders, academics and digital thought leaders, who met to exchange ideas on the digital future. Watch his full speech here.

The Dariu Foundation is launching its new project in Malaysia, in cooperation with The Rolf Schnyder Foundation, the Sarawak Ministry of Women and the Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak. The Memorandum of Understanding has been signed on Friday, August 28, 2022 and aims at providing digital literacy classes.

Sarawak Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg witnessed the MoU singing ceremony, where the Ministry of Women, Early Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development pointed out, that it is committed to ensure that all children in Sarawak are equipped with digital literacy so that they are not left behind in the digitalisation era, said its minister Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah. 

She said, this programme aims to provide computer literacy and coding training and classes for teachers and children to develop vital computational thinking and reasoning skills that are essential for a technology reliant future. She added that this theme is chosen to emphasise the importance of having the relevant skills among Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) teachers to be able to adapt and cope with the ever changing educational and socio-economic environments.

A group of five students from Cong Nghiep High School in Hoa Binh will be attending the 11th World Invention Creativity Olympics (WICO) in Seoul from August 4-6, 2022, where they are invited to exhibit their project at the event.

The group created a project – funded by The Dariu Foundation via Code Club – which they call “HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM FOR THE ELDERLY”.

It is more and more common that elderly people are left alone at home, without their children taking care of them as they live far away. One of the common problems that occur, is that they forget to take their medicine. Therefore, a small team of Code Club members developed a project to assist with the care of the elderly.

The system has two functions: measure such indicators as room temperature, humidity, light level etc. These indicators will be online, so that family members can see and control them remotely. The system also includes a medication box that triggers a signal at set times to remind people to take their medications. If they do not take them, the system sends notifications to family members so they can intervene.