Equitable Education in a Virtual Setting

How can we contribute to equitable education in a virtual setting? That is the question that the pandemic poses today. In a changing setting and as part of its commitment to sustainability and developing neighboring communities, SQM adapted its educational initiatives and reinvented its strategies to meet the learning demands of the current context in a timely manner and lend continuity to its programs in northern Chile.

This challenge supports the Company’s sustainability plan as well as its commitment to promote and disseminate the 10 Principles of the UN Global Compact and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which include quality education as an action area for generating value.

José Miguel Berguño, SQM’s Nitrates and Iodine Operations Vice President noted, “We like to create value in what we do. What better than doing it through education in the communities surrounding our operations? Real value creation is developing skills in children and young people so they can be part of building a better society that is more just, equitable and challenging.”

The executive added: “If someone had told us a few years ago what education would be like in a virtual setting, we would not have been able to respond. So the experience and knowledge of our partner organizations, like Choshuenco Educational Foundation, Vilti SeMANN and LAB4U have been critical. They have provided innovative solutions to complex problems.”

Action Area

SQM reaffirms its commitment to working collaboratively with innovative programs that contribute to improving the quality of education in the Company’s neighboring communities. These programs bring teaching strategies that are specially designed for each stage of development to far-removed rural areas in the Tarapacá and Antofagasta regions and harness the home as a learning environment.

ViLTI SeMANN, a program by Universidad Católica del Norte, is one of these outstanding initiatives. Since 2013, it has been working with early elementary students in Tocopilla, María Elena and Quillagua. The program expanded to the Pintados Sector in the Tarapacá Region this year. A total of 600 students from ten schools have benefited from the project, building skills like critical thinking, problem solving and teamwork through robotics and programming. The program uses a hands-on approach where students learn through play. In the current context, students participate through an online platform.

The Choshuenco Educational Foundation’s Contigo Aprendo (Learning with You) program is a clear example of reinvention during the pandemic. The program provides tools and educational resources for parents and teaching teams to give continuity to the at-home preschool teaching-learning process. This initiative aims to improve the quality of education through a hybrid system that involves parents and adapts to family realities while offering ongoing advising and monitoring by foundation experts.

The program, backed by Lab4U and Braintoys, aims to transform science education. This project gives students and physics, chemistry and biology teachers at 11 institutions in towns like Alto Hospicio, La Tirana, Pozo Almonte, Colonia Pintados, María Elena, Quillagua, Tocopilla and Antofagasta access to technology, methodology, advising, training and monitoring. Within a year, the initiative plans to train 50 teachers as science mentors, who will serve 3,295 students in preschool, elementary, high school and technical-professional programs.

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Training Agents of Change
Environmental education is also present through innovative initiatives like Verdical, which will launch their agents of change training program in Tocopilla. More than 400 students and families from the municipality will participate in co-creating vertical gardens to raise awareness regarding caring for and respecting the environmen