IBM employees honored for volunteer work

IBM is recognizing a group of Vietnamese employees with its annual Volunteer Excellence Awards for being innovative in their community volunteerism in 2020. A cross-country team of ten IBM employees have successfully created and delivered robotics programming and Artificial Intelligence (AI) training directly benefiting secondary and high school teachers nationwide. The team has collaborated with the Innovation Club of School of Information and Communication Technology (SoICT) and two local NGOs — 1) STEAM for Vietnam and 2) Institute for International Education and Society Health — to provide virtual train-the-trainer workshop for the teachers to understand technology fundamentals of AI.

A total of 500 hours has been contributed by IBM volunteers for this initiative which includes designing training manual for the teachers, modifying the source code on Github, developing hands-on lab exercises and delivering a virtual training to 126 ICT teachers nationwide. The workshops have equipped the ICT teachers with the basic approach, workflow and application of AI. The training introduced the teachers to cognitive technologies and AI concepts to help them build and reassemble a robot (TJBot) that they can bring to life using IBM Watson and Node-RED programming. The initiative deployed by the volunteers enabled the project across Vietnam schools from 63 provinces and can now be used to support future educational initiatives by the teachers.

The IBM Vietnam volunteers team recognized is part of the 15 IBM winning teams or volunteers from 25 countries who are being honored. The Vietnam organization associated with the winning team, School of Information and Communication Technology (SoICT), will receive a grant from IBM amounting US$10,000 to expand the work started by the IBM volunteers.

The IBM Vietnam volunteers joined thousands of their colleagues who logged 1.25 million hours of community service worldwide last year. This year’s winners are from Vietnam, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Chinese Taipei, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States.

This is the second consecutive year that IBM Vietnam has been recognized for the award. Last year’s winner, Dr. Le Nhan Tam, CTO of IBM Vietnam, led a multi-national volunteer team in collaboration with the SoICT, to develop an intensive ecosystem to train students on the knowledge of AI; the first and only training program in Hanoi that combines both academic knowledge and industry expertise. The course framework provides foundation on IBM’s AI technology, and Tam’s role was to equip the school’s professors on the fundamental knowledge so that they can prepare a detailed AI lesson plans for the university students. Tam has conducted quarterly technical workshop with IBM researchers to showcase AI applications for the university students and helped in the development of learning materials for high school students. He has also negotiated with companies in Vietnam to offer between 3 to 6 months internship placement for SoICT’s final year students.

Other IBM pro bono work here in Vietnam includes projects to make our community more resilient, safe, prosperous, and educated such as the New-Collar program for university students and the Open P-TECH for secondary and high school students. Under the New-Collar program, more than 350 university students were trained on AI in 2020 and approximately 180 students have obtained the IBM AI badges. To date, over 1,700 students have enrolled in the Open P-Tech platform across Vietnam.