A decade ago, Vietnamese tech giant FPT Corporation designated March 13 as its Community Day to encourage employees to take part in volunteer activities, to remind itself to always give back to the community alongside efforts to achieve business goals. This year, given that the coronavirus outbreak has upended all aspects of life, the tech firm took the initiative to accompany the Government, health care workers and local residents nationwide in the fight against the pandemic through a wide range of activities.
Supporting community to combat Covid-19
When the outbreak was hitting Vietnam, FPT decided to requisition FPT University’s campus in Hoa Lac Industrial Park, which is some 30 kilometers away from Hanoi, as a quarantine facility to accommodate thousands of foreigners entering the country and Vietnamese returnees.
At the campus, FPT offered free high-speed internet services and books selected by FPT Chairman Truong Gia Binh to quarantiners, coupled with positive messages sent to them from FPT employees.
This was just one of various activities launched by FPT from March to August this year to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The firm also made donations in cash and in kind such as ventilators, disinfecting booths, face masks, and protective clothing from its Covid-19 relief package worth VND20 billion to health workers, soldiers working at the frontline in major hospitals of HCMC, Hanoi, Haiphong, Quang Ninh.
Early last month, when Quang Nam and Danang were struggling to cope with the resurgence of Covid-19, FPT was among the first donors to offer medical supplies and essential items to these two central localities. The tech company also presented computers, printers to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Danang City, and set up free internet for the whole field hospital at Tien Son Sports Center in this central coastal city.
The firm also joined hands with localities nationwide to install high-speed internet at no cost for quarantine facilities in Hanoi, Binh Thuan, Ninh Thuan, Gia Lai, Thua Thien-Hue to meet the demand for internet services of quarantiners.
On February 14 this year, FPT in coordination with the Health Ministry’s Electronic Health Administration launched the Chatbot app, which is developed based on an artificial intelligence (AI) application platform, to automatically answer basic questions about Covid-19 at the ministry’s website https://ncov.ehealth.gov.vn/. To date, over one million pandemic-related questions have been answered with high accuracy.
Support for students
Apart from that, FPT has provided support to schools, students, parents nationwide by offering free access to its VioEdu online e-learning system (https://vio.edu.vn) until the country is free of the deadly respiratory disease. All 63 provinces and cities recorded their students joined the online learning platform, with more than 100 million questions reviewed on the system. FPT’s VioEdu was hailed by Minister of Education and Training, Phung Xuan Nha for its positive contribution to online teaching and learning activities during the health crisis.
FPT University in late March announced that it had tapped VND80 billion from its development and investment fund to offer a 20% reduction in tuition fees to all students from May to August. Students of its joint training programs will get a 10% reduction in fees. For students’ families refusing to receive the offer, the money will be donated to the National Fund for Covid-19 Infection Prevention and Control.
Its sense of community was also spread to other nations. In Japan, FPT in June this year donated three tons of rice to Yotsuya Church and Nisshin Kutsu Pagoda in Tokyo, aiming to help struggling residents living there to weather the storm caused by the virus.
Rallying employees for charity events
The year 2020 marks the 10-year journey of FPT’s Community Day. During this day, all FPT employees join voluntary activities for developing a better community.
In addition to addressing obstacles triggered by Covid-19 social distancing measures, FPT employees have joined blood drives, sharing the burden with disadvantaged people. In HCMC, FPT Software employees contributed 252 units of blood to the blood bank of the HCMC Blood Transfusion Hematology Hospital last May.
Moreover, a program of which each FPT employee will contribute at least one day’s salary to the FPT Community Fund continued to receive active participation of the employees, with some of them giving their ten-day salaries. Total funding under this year’s program has exceeded VND7.6 billion.
The funding will be given to children with cleft lip and palate, FPT employees suffering from severe diseases, people in disaster-hit regions or poverty-stricken families.
