Covid-19 is continuing to cause a significant disruption in education. Students are struggling to continue their learning as the virus prompted school closures and nationwide lockdowns in much of the world. Although online education through various platforms is emerging as a prospective replacement for the traditional in-person learning, children and parents are voicing their concerns that the unprecedented distanced learning may widen the already existing learning gap.

To help these students, Samsung Electronics is devoting its educational resources and know-hows accumulated over decades of commitment in student education. Samsung is working in various regions to bring equitable educational opportunities to help the young generation keep dreaming and learning, resilient of any disruptions.

Before COVID-19, Samsung Innovation Campus has been offering top-notch curriculum to enhance technical competence of young generation. The entire session of the flagship CSR program was replicated online to support continued learning environment.

Solve for Tomorrow, a STEM-based creativity competition, is also responding to the situation flexibly, switching the program online in some regions to let students keep unleashing their innovative mind.

Italy was one of the countries hard hit by COVID-19. As schools closed down, Samsung has been reaching out to students and teachers in Italy since the very beginning of the epidemic to make virtual education easier and more accessible to both students and teachers. As part of the effort, Samsung developed and distributed Smart Learning program, with a Guide for Remote Education (Smart Learning Toolkit) to replicate the in-person learning experience. Employees also transformed as a mentor for students to help them stay motivated and engaged.

Especially in the province of Lombardy, where the impact of the virus was the most severe, Samsung conducted a career mentoring program for high school students in the region. The program, Thanks for My Future, offered a range of career exploration to help students keep their dreams and goals close to their heart amidst the learning crisis.

Program Your Ideas is a digital educational program that has been running for the last five years in Chile. It was also moved online to continue providing a range of digital workshop that covers coding, programming training and much more. With highly positive feedbacks from participating teachers and students, the program is set to expand its online sessions this year to cover more audience and areas.

Students, teachers and parents in Hungary were also struggling from overwhelming challenges of remote learning. Parents were swamped with homeschooling their kids all day while working from home, and teachers had to come up with new online materials every single day. To relieve their stress, Samsung worked with an educational start-up of Hungary to develop and distribute 400 audiobooks and academic materials.

Letting young kids know the importance of washing hands was also one of Samsung’s focus. Samsung collaborated with popular writers and illustrators in Hungary to create fun and easy contents on washing hands. The project was a huge success, attracting record number of users to the app that was provided in.

Samsung’s commitment to safeguard young dreams continued in Northern Europe. All educational CSR programs were switched online to help students continue learning. In partnership with My Dream Now, Samsung and the NGO together created an app that connects students and Samsung employees, and delivered supportive messages through a Podcast. In Norway, an online coding class is being conducted for students locked down in their homes.

For a promising future after COVID-19, we need to empower young students to keep on dreaming no matter what. To this end, Samsung will continue to provide educational supports and safeguard young dreams amidst a crisis of unknown duration.