Digital Skills for Disadvantaged Children in China

After several challenging years, 2023 has brought a sharp rebound in our program activities across China. Thanks to our partners, donors, and volunteers, our digital literacy program has experienced a significant increase in enrollment, reaching disadvantaged students in Shanghai, Henan, Jiangxi, and Anhui.

In the first six months of 2023, we have provided lessons to 796 students, which is our highest number of students for one term since the inception of the program in 2016. Our volunteers and teachers delivered an impressive total of 685 online or offline lessons so far in 2023. New lessons in social-emotional learning, STEAM, logic, mathematics, coding, graphical programming, and embedded system design (Micro:bit) were added to our curriculum to enhance our students’ knowledge and learning experience.

Our partnership with PwC continues in 2023. Dozens of PwC volunteers helped us deliver online and offline lessons to disadvantaged students, teaching topics such as social-emotional learning, mathematics, logic, geometry, and programming. In May, a group of them even traveled to a rural school in Henan province to volunteer for a full week, helping more than 110 students.

As the summer has started, we are very excited to welcome new students to our program across China. More than 450 students are currently enrolled in our summer program.

It goes without saying that none of this would be possible without the efforts and dedication of all of our volunteers, donors, and other supporters. Thank you all for your support!

Links:

• Read more about our programs on our website.

Our community has been through so much in 2022. Throughout the year, we have continued to feel the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with regular lockdowns, school closures, and event cancellations. In spite of these challenges, our team has carried on with providing digital literacy and life skills lessons to disadvantaged students in China, even providing more lessons than anticipated.

Thanks to the support of an increased number of local and international partners, such as Transparent Fish Fund, UPS, PwC, and the Government of Ireland, our digital and life skills program experienced a significant increase in 2022. Our volunteers and trainers delivered an impressive total of 1,145 online and offline lessons to about 800 students, receiving on average more than 15 lessons each over the course of the year.

While our programs were greatly impacted by the pandemic during the spring 2022 semester – forcing us to transfer all our programs to online mode – we were able to run our activities relatively smoothly in the fall 2022 semester, even innovating along the way. New lessons in social-emotional learning, coding, graphical programming, and embedded system design (Micro:bit) were added to our curriculum to enhance our students’ knowledge and learning experience.

As the Spring 2023 semester has started and we are heading along the road back to 'normal' life, we are very excited to have resumed our digital literacy program at 10 teaching sites in Shanghai while increasing the reach of our online interventions in rural China. As of this semester, students from two rural schools – one in Henan and one in Anhui – are now benefitting from our digital literacy classes through the internet. In total, more than 525 students are now enrolled in one of our online or offline programs in the Spring 2023 semester.

Thank you all for your support!

Links:

• Read more about our programs on our website