Month: May 2023

Face-to-face learning and investment in education have never been more important. Education is the foundation of a better future, breaking down barriers, fostering equity and lifting the next generation through knowledge and opportunity.

The role technology plays in education cannot be overstated. It helps to offer solutions that create safer, more accessible, and collaborative experiences to empower teachers and inspire students.

BETT, running from 29th – 31st March 2023, is the world’s ‘Leading Education Technology Show’ and acts as a moment to reflect on the critical role technology plays in education. The event will bring together EdTech leaders from across the education landscape, showcasing cutting-edge and impactful products and services to aid educational institutions and initiatives.

As part of our mission to deliver Smarter Technology for All, we’re placing a spotlight on some of the educational initiatives we’re investing in across Europe, Middle East and Africa, to help meet tomorrow’s challenges. It is through these investments that we can both empower and enhance a diverse range of communities, anticipating the needs of students and teachers.

Technology’s lessons for life

The role of technology in education stretches far and wide. One way in which Lenovo has helped further education is through the teaching of tech skills, together with supporting programs and schemes aimed at encouraging the younger generation into the field.

Jane Govindsamy leads Lenovo’s Girl Code initiative, a project based in South Africa designed to train girls in soft skills. The mission of the program is to empower 10 million women and girls with tech skills by 2030, by creating a network of women who are highly skilled in software development and leadership. Through Lenovo’s partnership with Girl Code, 160 individuals have been directly impacted, with Lenovo employees volunteering their time to help.

A similar scheme was implemented in Italy. The Campus 2022 project delivered 42 hours of lessons about emerging technology using Lenovo’s smarter devices to over 2,500 students and 110 teachers across the country.

It is not just upskilling that’s important, as technology can support education more widely. In Hungary, for example, in partnership with WWF Hungary, Lenovo used its Lenovo Mirage VR S3 glasses to show students, using virtual reality, the beauty of Hungary’s forests and water plains. Through this partnership technology was able to highlight the importance of sustainability to the younger generation in an immersive, memorable way.

Investing in esports

The growing interest in esports amongst children is no secret, but leveraging this interest can be instrumental in education.

Esports provides a natural pathway for students interested in the world of technology and STEM disciplines, and can help develop soft skills such as teamwork, strategic planning, effective communication and leadership. Not only this, but esports can also offer a safe space for children who might otherwise feel excluded. When it comes to extracurricular activities, the focus in schools has traditionally been placed on sports on the pitch. Esports, meanwhile, can offer an inclusive and engaging activity for all students.

In the UK, for example, Lenovo partnered with King Edward’s School in Bath to develop a media suite that houses a flourishing esports programme for children across the local community. In Italy, meanwhile, Lenovo partnered with Maker Camp to host Lega Scolastica Esports (LSE), a national gaming championship across the country.

Women in STEM are the future

According to the Ministry of National Education and Youth in France, only four in every 30 female students choose to specialise in Digital and Computer Science.

Lenovo is committed to driving positive change here, supporting organisations such as BECOMTECH in France, a non-profit organisation which offers educational programs for young women in STEM. The partnership has been a pedestal for our mission to spread the benefits of technology, and since its inception, Lenovo has donated consistently to support its work.

Placing tech in the hands of the next generation

In south-east Europe, in the town of Peristeri in Greece, our Greek team acted as tech advisors and counsellors to aid schools in the area in choosing the best technology to enhance pupils’ education. Through implementation of interactive whiteboards, group collaboration platforms, electronic learning materials and tablets, Lenovo was able to play a key role in advancing the way children learn, communicate, and collaborate in the region.

A key pillar in Lenovo’s support for the development of education is through donating technology itself. In Andalusia in southern Spain, Lenovo donated technology to help teachers provide a better education for their pupils. Lenovo partnered with Google to present a competition for all public schools in the region to promote the use of technology and the digital transformation of the classroom. Teachers throughout Andalusia were tasked to present a project that emphasised ways in which technology could be used to improve the education of their students. The winning project won 30 Lenovo Chromebook 500e computers to use in their classrooms. Similarly, in Germany products were donated to Margarete Steiff School, a school for disabled students.

Education is the foundation for a better future

As a leader in the technology industry, publicly showing support for the development of education could not be more integral. An agreement between the Ministry of Science and Education of Poland and Lenovo Poland marked a political milestone for the country. In a bid to further the digital transformation of the country’s education system, Lenovo Poland committed to the exchange of knowledge and experience, highlighting how tech is at the heart of the country’s education system.

Across Europe more widely, through a partnership with EuropeanSchoolNet Lenovo provides insights and expertise to forums and workshops run by the network. Covering the whole of Europe and involving over 760 projects, 1,200 events and 1,011 Scientific Ambassadors, the aim of the partnership is to help promote and support European collaboration among STEM stakeholders.

Education is the foundation for a better future, and we will continue our commitment to drive forward educational initiatives such as the ones highlighted in this piece. Technology is a key enabler in delivering modern education to future generations, and Lenovo as an industry leader is here as a true partner to deliver Smarter technology for All.

From our eucalyptus plantation to our Amazon Rainforest conserved area to surrounding ranchlands, Dow has piloted tools to scientifically assess biodiversity in and around our Breu Branco site in Pará , Brazil. These tools are yielding important insights and contributes to help with decision-making across our global sites.

The Issue: A Need for Credible Tools

Increasingly, businesses are paying more attention to biodiversity, and for good reason. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), more than half of the global gross domestic product depends on nature. Yet biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history.

Consequently, businesses are increasingly looking for science-based, quantitative methodologies, tools and metrics to better assess their impacts on biodiversity and understand dependencies on biodiversity in a credible way. While methods for quantifying carbon is widespread and well-established, the equivalent for biodiversity is just beginning to be adopted, due to the complexity of measuring biodiversity.

“Incorporating biodiversity within business decisions is crucial to achieving a sustainable future,” said France Guertin, Dow’s global technical leader for nature-based solutions. “Just as climate change alters habitats and ecosystems, loss of biodiversity contributes to climate change and intensifies its effects.”

Creating a Next-Generation Tool

Dow recently partnered with the EcoMetrix Solutions Group (EMX) and The Nature Conservancy to pilot a new suite of assessment tools designed to provide input to the decision-making process at all stages of a project life cycle, from pre-planning to long-term monitoring.

“The insights from these tools are important,” Guertin noted. “We can use the tools across our sites globally to better characterize the environment condition of a landscape, understand the impact of our choices on biodiversity, and to test different scenarios as we plan for future projects.”

Dow has long been a corporate leader in recognizing the business benefits to valuing nature. Since 2011, we have worked with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to pioneer an approach to valuing the services of nature on our sites around the world. This collaboration led to the launch of our 2025 Sustainability Goal on Valuing Nature in 2015, in which we made the bold commitment to realize more than $1 billion in net present value by 2025 through business-driven projects that enhance nature.

That same year, we also launched the Ecosystem Services Identification & Inventory Tool (ESII) with EMX and TNC to help us understand the benefits that nature provides to Dow and incorporate the business value of nature into decision-making. Over the last couple of years, ESII has undergone a major overhaul to incorporate new functionality for assessing how well a landscape supports biodiversity and carbon sequestration. The new platform, called Ecosystem Intelligence (EI), will soon be launched commercially by EMX (www.ecosystemintelligence.com).

“The EI platform enables users to characterize the features of a landscape and then evaluate how suitable they are for supporting a broad spectrum of species groups, from invertebrates to large mammals, across each of their life-history stage requirements,” said Kenna Halsey, principal of EMX. “The EI platform also captures carbon uptake and storage in vegetation and soil, while simultaneously quantifying water quality, water quantity, air quality, soil health, noise and visual screening, among other benefits.”

Testing in the Field

At our Breu Branco site, a team from Dow and EMX performed a comprehensive and detailed mapping of biodiversity at two eucalyptus plantations and 38,000 hectares of conserved rainforest, in comparison to numerous farmland parcels located nearby.

“Before the project, the ecosystem service benefits associated with Dow’s land management, stewardship in comparison to the conservation areas and surroundings, were unquantified,” Guertin said. “We wanted to determine the value created by Dow’s current and future land management practices, as well as determine how large corporations like Dow can set, and measure, biodiversity targets credibly and efficiently.”

What emerged were tiers of biodiversity performance, with Dow’s eucalyptus plantation performing significantly better than surrounding farmlands and the preserved rainforest displaying highest levels of biodiversity.

“We sampled various properties near the site to get a representative understanding of their condition, and many of these rural landscapes had been pretty heavily deforested and degraded,” Halsey said. “The management of the Dow eucalyptus plantations was impressive in terms of the science and level of care that foresters took to protect the soil and encourage biodiversity. Dow’s approach to minimizing soil disturbance, carefully managing crop rotation, and protecting natural corridors throughout the site resulted in quantifiable benefits across a wide array of ecosystem services, including biodiversity, pest regulation, soil health, climate regulation, protection of water quality, etc. We saw significant improvement in all of these measures in comparison to the surrounding landscape.”

Guertin said the pilot project helped confirm that Dow is taking effective measures to conserve biodiversity at the site. In addition, the project also demonstrated how taking measures to preserve biodiversity projects could have socio-economic benefits to the surrounding community, as well as ecological benefits.

Mapping the biodiversity of the rainforest conserved area helped Dow identify plant species of commercial interest to the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries in a responsible and sustainable manner.

“Our mission with EI is to achieve a pervasive positive impact on the landscape,” Halsey said. “We’re grateful for projects like this that consider landscape management from a systems perspective. The original ESII Tool, and now the EI platform, help users make proactive decisions and better understand how the decisions that they’re making today might impact biodiversity in five to 10 ten years from now.”