Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) led the co-creation of an innovative digital corporate social responsibility program that helped a pioneering batch of 80,000 public school teachers upgrade their digital capability as the country’s education sector rallies private sector support for the blended learning approach. 

Together with its mass market arm and subsidiary City Savings Bank, UnionBank spearheaded a partnership with Thames International and Akadasia in designing a holistic digital training program that caters to the specific needs of about 500,000 elementary and high school teachers under the umbrella movement called HEROES 2021.

“We thank UnionBank for the HEROES 2021 teacher training project. We all know that the use of printed modules for learning delivery is not sustainable in the long run given the costs and impact on the environment.  Online learning is one of the solutions and now is the time to train our teachers,” said Malcom Garma, DepEd Regional Director for the National Capital Region. 

On top of the financial support to run the online training platform, UnionBank’s CSR initiative also harnessed the digital skills of its employee volunteers to design easy-to-use and engaging modules to build the soft skills of teachers so they can become effective facilitators of DepEd’s blended learning strategy. 

“The pilot batch of 80,000 is just the beginning and we have our work cut out to be able to upskill the target 500,000 teachers and we are doing our part by activating our digitally savvy employee volunteers to deliver on our promise of co-creating innovations for a better world by utilizing technology and its PeopleTech thrust through this CSR initiative,” said Angela Justo, UnionBank CSR and Sustainability Manager. 

PeopleTech Initiative focuses on the Bank’s social sustainability mission and is part of the overall strategy to ‘Tech Up Pilipinas’, the Heroes 2021 way, to amplify the reach of the support given by UnionBank and CitySavings employee-volunteers. With this, UnionBank is revolutionizing the way CSR projects are being conducted. The pandemic has not only affected the business model of the bank, it has also caused a shift on how to reach out to its communities. 

“We conducted Heroes 2021 mainly to equip teachers in educating Filipino students online. As we all know, online learning is almost new to everyone, this is our contribution to the communities,” added Derrick Nicdao, UnionBank Channel Activity Management Head and one of the employee volunteers. 

UnionBank is leveraging technology and innovation so as not to disrupt the usual channels of providing support through its CSR arm. The Bank has also conducted several programs from virtual fundraising and donation drives to driving financial literacy through a project with the team behind bonds.ph. To date, UnionBank’s CSR has empowered more than 1,000 communities and enabled 2.2 million individuals with the help of its employees who have dedicated at least 180,000 hours pursuing pockets of CSR activities in areas where the branches are located.

To know more about the Heroes2021 project, visit https://heroes2021.org.

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