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Deutsche Telekom – An Active Member of the Society

Deutsche Telekom foundation focuses on four core areas of Education: Drivers, Opportunities, Innovations and Dialog

March 29th, 2018
Berlin Global, News from Berlin
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Deutsche Telekom considers itself an active member of society and takes responsibility when it comes to social issues. The Deutsche Telekom Stiftung was established in 2003 with the aim of strengthening Germany's position as a leader in education, research and technology. With 150 million euros of capital, it ranks as one of the country's major corporate foundations. Deutsche Telekom is launching each year social and economic initiatives in order to ease access of people to information, the digital world and the economic environment.

The foundation is dedicated to improving education in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), as well as in digital teaching and learning. The foundation's activities are focused on four key areas: Education Drivers, Education Opportunities, Education Innovations and Education Dialog.

In 2017 Deutsche Telekom was an example in field of such initiatives: “Infra Project and Facebook to accelerate innovation in telco infrastructure”; “Taking part in the digital world” or “Socially Responsible Investment (SRI)”.

In the field of Education Drivers, the foundation supports people who get others interested in STEM subjects and in digital teaching and learning. With Education Opportunities the foundation runs projects to prepare children and youngsters for success in STEM subjects and to participate in the digital world. Education Innovations is where the foundation focuses on helping specialist staff and teachers enhance both their STEM and digital teaching skills. And with Education Dialog the foundation pools together the activities and projects it works on together with policymakers and civil society to make education better.

In March 2017, the “I can do everything” initiative came to life in the shape of an open tender for donations for children traditional and digital education. The initiative aims to purchase facilities for schools, but also to help young people and children get involved in youth work. Through such activities, youngsters and children are offered the possibility to discover their abilities and develop skills for their adult life. Moreover, as we live in a digital world, young people need digital skills to be highly eligible for future jobs. By promoting self-development, children learn to apply their skills and contribute to the society they live in. This is a way to help young people find their own way, self-determine their following carrier path.  Tools that were developed for young people were made available on the web-page of the site: www.initiative-ich-kann-was.de .

The “Telecom Infra Project” is another valuable project that started earlier in 2016. The Telecom Infra Project was jointly launched by SK Telecom, Intel, Nokia, Facebook and Deutsche Telekom at MWC Barcelona in 2016. Building on the community-based R&D model successfully proven within the Open Compute Project, TIP aims to reimagine the traditional approach to building and deploying telecom infrastructure. Deutsche Telekom is working within TIP to bring innovation to the telco industry required for mastering the exponential Internet traffic growth challenge. “Our goal is to deliver the best network services to our customers, and at the same time deliver a superior capital efficiency,” says Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, CTO Deutsche Telekom. “This requires more radical approaches. We value Facebook’s contributions to this space and enjoy the excellent partnership we have as part of TIP and beyond.”

With TIP Ecosystem Acceleration Centers, TIP addresses the global challenge that very few startups are innovating in the field of network infrastructure. Bruno Jacobfeuerborn stated, “Telco is generally a market with high entry barriers and is dominated by established vendors. Small startups have problems entering the telco market, even for proof of concepts. As a result, the venture capital community has been very hesitant to make infrastructure-related investments. The TEAC center in Berlin, jointly announced by TIP, Facebook and Deutsche Telekom will help to break this deadlock. Our work on 5G has shown DT’s leadership in driving telco innovation, and I am very confident that we will also be successful in helping push the broader telecom infrastructure ecosystem forward.”

In all its work Deutsche Telekom Stiftung aims for the greatest possible degree of transparency and is guided by the declaration of commitment of the German transparency organization Initiative Transparente Gesellschaft, the Guiding Principles of Good Practice for Foundations, and the recommendations for non-profit corporate foundations of the Association of German Foundations.

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