The "eRead for the Future" project has come to its fifth year of implementation in 2021. With "digitization, reading, and knowledge" as the core of the project, the Company has finished establishing eReader mobile libraries for 16 elementary schools in Nantou County, 10 elementary schools in Changhua County, 41 elementary schools and 19 township libraries in Chiayi County, and 18 junior high schools in remote areas in New Taipei City, promoting digital reading with plenty of ebooks.
Establishment of eReader mobile libraries for 13 junior high schools in Taoyuan City
With the long-term operation of projects, the positive feedbacks from the public segment and education field have been received continuously. The Secretariat of Taoyuan City Government initiated the contact with E Ink eco-system partner Rakuten Kobo for cooperation when planning the 2021 projects.
However, looking back on the motivation of the project, we hoped that the digital reading resources could be provided for the interested parties with real needs. Therefore, the areas having better resources, such as the six special municipalities, had been excluded from our consideration. The project team assessed that the 2021 donation resources would be identical to 2020, and thus follow the collaborative pattern with the Education Department of New Taipei City Government, with the continuous discussion with the Department of Education, Taoyuan, seeking to bring the digital reading resources, without deviation to the original intention of projects, to the junior high school students in "the rural villages that are difficult to obtain teaching resources, and the schools that are not located in mountain nor downtown, but with many students and not the preferential targets of subsidies."
Other than assessing the active discussion with Taoyuan City Government, from E Ink's view, the Company has the geographical relationship with Taoyuan area, because one of the production bases is in Guishan, Taoyuan; meanwhile, the eco-system partners engaged in 2021, such as Rakuten Group to which Rakuten Kobo belongs, Global Lighting Technologies and Uniflex Technology also have presences in Taoyuan area. Therefore, the 2021 projects reflected the two pillars of E Ink ESG - social inclusion: "Read for the Future: to promote digital reading and eliminate the gap in educational resource" and "Local Care: Integration of corporate resources and joint engagement of employees for public welfare events as the feedback to the local communities." At the end, the project selected five junior high schools in rural villages, and seven junior high schools that are neither in mountains nor urban region, while cutting in from the diversity of project stakeholders, one outperformer of reading among the junior high schools in the Taoyuan urban area was selected, too. It is sought to have a beneficial exchange, not only the sponsorship of hardware equipment, software and digital contents, but also from the view of cultivating reading education in school, to enhance teachers' willingness of promoting digital reading, for activating the project resources.
