During its presence in Vietnam, Microsoft has always had a mission of accompanying the Government, organizations and enterprises to help Vietnam thrive in the digital era. During that journey, as a tech giant, Microsoft Vietnam has used its strength—technology—in most of its CSR programs.
Offering digital skills, online training programs
In March last year, Microsoft and the International Organization for Migration Vietnam kicked off a project to enhance the provision of digital skills for young laborers in Vietnam, part of Microsoft’s Global Skill Initiative launched in 2020 with an aim to deal with greater challenges in the labor market caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the pilot period of the project, an online digital skill learning platform was developed to create opportunities for some 3,000 laborers in industrial and export processing zones as well as vocational students in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces and HCMC to develop basic digital skills for their jobs and access a digital society.
The online learning platform www.congdanso.edu.vn features six digital skill training courses under the form of massive open online courses, mainly targetting female migrant laborers.
After the 14-month pilot period, the platform has attracted more than 3,600 learners.
Also in March 2021, Microsoft cooperated with JA Asia Pacific, a nonprofit organization supporting adolescences, and CloudSwyft, an online learning platform provider, to launch a program to equip digital skills and open up job opportunities for more than 60,000 people in the Asia-Pacific region, including 3,500 Vietnamese people.
The program, part of Microsoft’s Global Skill Initiative, equipped those who were the most vulnerable to the pandemic with necessary digital skills.
The program included online seminars on career guidance and digital skills, training courses on data, and interactive activities in labs. These training courses were provided in local languages.
During the social distancing period, students could not attend in-person classes, so Microsoft Vietnam joined hands with the Departments of Education and Training and education organizations in localities nationwide to conduct the Microsoft Teams program.
Through the program, Microsoft allowed education organizations to use its A1 service package, including all Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams software, at no charge.
Over the past two years, more than seven million teachers and students across the country have applied Microsoft Teams in online teaching and learning.
Before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Microsoft and UNICEF had coordinated to deploy the Learning Passport platform aiming at countries with many refugees who found it hard to continuously access education. In Vietnam, Microsoft and UNICEF provided the platform under the form of a digital text book integrated with Microsoft Teams.
In April 2020, Microsoft joined forces with ride-hailing firm Grab to launch an online learning program at Grab Academy to provide technological and digital skill knowledge to Grab drivers in Vietnam, helping them earn incomes from other technology-related jobs.
Contributing to bettering the community
Most recently, Microsoft Vietnam joined forces with the nongovernmental organization Saigon Children Fund to present 30 bicycles to children under difficult circumstances in Quang Ninh Province early this month.
The fund for the bicycles was donated by employees of Microsoft Vietnam. The activity was part of the GIVE Campaign that Microsoft has conducted globally.
Under the GIVE Campaign, which was initiated in the United States in 1983, when Microsoft Vietnam’s employees make donations to buy 30 bicycles for poor children, the company will also spend a similar amount of money on charity benefiting other poor people.
In addition, since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in Vietnam, Microsoft Vietnam’s employees have contributed VND118 million to support the disadvantaged through the Bong Sen Vang (Golden Lotus) Foundation, the fund for children orphaned by Covid-19 of Thanh Nien newspaper, and the “affectionate app-connecting love” program.
As a tech giant, Microsoft has over the years initiated many other tech-based programs to benefit the community. These include the Azure cloud computing platform in 2020 to help build and operate the Ministry of Health’s website ncov.moh.gov.vn with the most updated information about the pandemic, the World Mosquito Program project through the AI for Earth fund, applying technology to prevent and reduce mosquito-borne diseases in Vietnam, a program in July 2018 to support the Vietnam Red Cross Society to develop an app called “Ung pho tham hoa” (response to disasters), and an agreement it signed with the Department of Cyber Security and Hi-tech Crime Prevention under the Ministry of Public Security in late 2019, providing the latter with information about malware infections in Vietnam, risks and loopholes.
In addition, Microsoft has also supported the Department of Child Affairs and ChildFund to develop an information management system through which users can report suspected child abuse cases to promptly protect children, and launched the Dreaming Boat project to connect young people in Vietnam’s coastal regions.
The tech firm has arrived in remote fishing villages to provide training courses in information technology and computer science.
