Improving lives

In 2021 we launched a new two-year program in Morocco where we are joined by UNICEF, the Moroccan government (the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Education), Orange Morocco and other key partners to work to empower less advantaged young people (15-24 years), particularly girls, to become resilient young people who engage actively with their families and communities and are increasingly productive through employment or self-employment.  

Through awareness raising sessions, workshops/bootcamps and coaching the program equips young people with skills for life and employment and helps them to identify problems and design social and entrepreneurial solutions in their own communities. The program is also designed to raise the youth's awareness on climate change and environmental issues, so that they can become change agents in their communities. The program is based on the UPSHIFT social innovation and venture curriculum, which is featured as part of the World Bank’s Solutions for Youth Employment portfolio. 

Read more about our program to empower youth in Morocco

Between 2018-2020 we worked with UNICEF Finland and UNICEF Kenya to build a multi-partner collaboration to bring internet connectivity and inclusive digital learning to Kenyan schools in rural and disadvantaged urban areas across the country. The program particularly focuses on girls and children with disabilities.  

The first 10 schools across Kenya were successfully connected in late 2020 using Nokia Fixed Wireless Access solution in collaboration with local Mobile Operators. The solution connects more children in a fast and efficient way with high-speed and high-capacity broadband needed for remote digital education.  

Moving from a CSR pilot to commercial rollout, we have together with UNICEF and Safaricom connected 90 primary schools to the Internet across Kenya during 2021. Read more about the scaling up of Kenyan school connectivity here. 

Read more about student stories and earlier achievements of the program. 

The shared value partnership aimed to showcase possible connectivity solutions and the benefits for children and teachers to be able to access quality digital content. The program was scalable due to the Government’s commitment on the Digital Literacy Project which already distributed more than 1 million computer tablets in schools and the Government’s objective to connect all 40 000 schools of Kenya. 

Nokia and UNICEF were recognised in May 2021 with the Changing Lives Award at East Africa Com. This award recognizes innovation where ICT meets socio-economic development and digital inclusion. The award celebrates a product, initiative or social enterprise that is having a life-changing impact on individuals or communities in East Africa. 

The Nokia UNICEF shared value project was named in May 2021 as one of the WSIS Champions by the World Summit on Information Society forum. WSIS is a two-phase United Nations (UN) summit initiated (since 2003) to create an evolving multi-stakeholder platform aimed at addressing the issues raised by information and communication technologies (ICTs) through a structured and inclusive approach at the national, regional and international levels. The World Summit on the Information Society Forum 2021 represents the world's largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community. The WSIS Forum is co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD. 

Nokia and UN Women have together launched four pilot projects to bolster inclusion and diversity for equality. These pilots aim to address four different areas such as increasing the number of women employees, raising awareness of cervical cancer and uterine fibroids, promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education, and empowering gender-based violence victims. 

In 2021, we concluded a Nokia female program pilot supported by UN Women. This Converged Female Talent program was run in collaboration with the government of Saudi Arabia and our customer, Zain Saudi. The aim of the program was to create future technology solutions by women for women with social impact in a partnership set-up. 

Read more about the UN Women program promoting inclusion and diversity

We have long-term programs supporting communities in education, environment, inclusion and more as part of our India CSR programs.  

Smartpur digital village ecosystem 

Smartpur is a Nokia initiative aimed at integrating technology into the daily lives of people living in remote villages in India. The initiative connects people with essential pillars of development (education, health, livelihood, governance and financial inclusion).  

The Smartpur digital village ecosystem has been designed keeping in mind its sustainability, scalability, replicability and large-scale impact. Using digital connectivity technology, the project intends to empower local entrepreneurs and provide them with facilities to provide services at the village level through Smartpur centres.   

Nokia has partnered with Digital Empowerment Foundation and Save the Children India (Bal Raksha Bharat) to connect the unconnected in 260 villages across the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. 

Remedial education 

Nokia, in collaboration with Samridhdhi Trust has been working to help out-of-school children of migrant labourers through a bridge education program. The bridge program enrolls the out of school students from grade 1-5 to help them enter mainstream education. The curriculum is specially designed to cater to the needs of these students and is accompanied with assessments to judge whether students are prepared to enter mainstream schools. 

The program's structure heavily relies on long-term impact. Most of the children participating in the program are first-generation students from low-income families.

They need assistance in order to continue their education once enrolled. As a result, the program has two parts – remedial bridge education to facilitate enrollment of out-of-school children from migrant families and support classes for the enrolled children to ensure no drop-out. Through this approach, the program aims to help the children overcome the barriers to entry into schools and mainstream them into age-appropriate classes.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, Nokia supported affected households in Smartpur villages in partnership with Save the Children India (Bal Raksha Bharat) across 160 villages. Migrant populations were provided with essentials with the support of Samridhdhi Trust. Nokia also supported the State Disaster Management Authority of Tamil Nadu by contributing to their COVID relief corpus during their time of need.At this time, Nokia further supported hospitals with procuring medical equipment such as oxygen plants, Ventilators, ICU machines, PPE Kits, dialysis machines- all of which was essential to support the overburdened healthcare system of the country.

Also, Nokia in collaboration with Government of Karnataka established a modular COVID-19 field hospital with 90 beds at the SDS Tuberculosis Research Center and Rajiv Gandhi Institute Chest Disease Hospital in a record time of 26 days. This modular COVID-19 hospital can be moved and set up at any place in the event of any mass medical emergencies.  

Read more about our CSR activities in India in our latest India CSR report 

Internet Classroom Program 

More than 50 million rural students have no access to computers in China. Meanwhile, many obsolete computers are still in good condition and could be reused after appropriate refurbishment. Having cooperated with NGO Zhonggu since 2011, we have successfully set up 36 internet classrooms in 12 provinces and municipalities, including Yunnan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Gansu, Shanghai, Beijing and Tibet. This is a star volunteering program of Nokia in China running for more than 10 years. By making use of the scrapped PCs donated by the company, and partnering up with a local NGO to reassemble the PCs into good condition, the program is intended to help bridge the digital divide and advocate environmental protection concept among Nokia employees across the country, by helping build up internet classrooms for the village schools in the remote areas and facilitate volunteers needs of Nokia employees in China. In 2021, 10 employee volunteers helped set up 2 internet classrooms for Minzu Primary School and Chengguan Primary School in Ninglang, Yunnan Province, with 100 PCs and gave lessons on digital technology to the children in the schools, benefiting over 3000 village students. 

In addition to the internet classroom program, local employees engaged in a number of programs where they for example gave lessons to school children, organized inspirational sessions for Girls in ICT day, and supported a smart agriculture program.