Samsung C&T strives to provide teenagers from different learning environments with many opportunities. Among them is the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility program, Junior C&T Academy, which focuses on helping future generations discover their talents and make their dreams. The program is in its third year, and 1,200 students from 30 middle schools in Korea, mostly in rural areas, have benefited from it so far.
This program’s main focus is to contribute to nurturing talented youth who can find a future in the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution. The program’s main course is titled Maker Education and helps schoolchildren better understand a wide range of Samsung C&T’s businesses to give them opportunities for job experience and career planning.
The Maker Education course uses a new approach to education that, unlike traditional one-sided, theory-focused teaching methods, relies on project-based activities where the learners set the topics and create results by designing and creating solutions. Learners can develop qualities required for the future by transforming their ideas into concrete objects using various materials and tools such as coding, robot kits, 3D printers and hardware like Arduino circuit boards.
The Junior C&T Academy program first sends professional lecturers to middle schools that have implemented Korea’s Free Semester program. The program gives middle school students basic education for 30 hours across 15 sessions per semester, for one or two semesters. The program is focused on participatory activities and various experience programs that allow them to explore their aptitude beyond existing knowledge-based, competition-oriented curricula. The course includes a field trip to the offices of the company’s four business groups where students can boost their interest and understanding of various industries and cultivate problem-solving skills by completing their assignments.
Inspired by Samsung C&T’s vast operations, the program focuses on its main business elements that encompass construction, trade, fashion and theme parks, with 50 company employees participating and sharing their expertise to help students experience a real business environment and discover a job that they might be interested in pursuing in the future. Junior C&T Academy has earned high praise from schools, students and parents who seek more concrete opportunities to explore the world of jobs.
“Samsung C&T aims to contribute to equipping students for the Fourth Industrial Revolution by offering them better opportunities,” said the company’s CSR Committee Chairman Lee Hyun-soo during a recent visit to a Junior C&T Academy class.
