Posco, UNESCO to support out-of-school children in Thailand

Posco, South Korea’s top steelmaker by sales, has been selected as the first company to work with UNESCO to provide an education program for out-of-school children in ASEAN countries, the company said Wednesday.

The Posco 1% Sharing Foundation -- to which the firm’s employees donate 1 percent of their wages -- will carry out the project for three years until 2020, starting in Thailand this year.

Thailand was picked as the first destination, as it has the highest proportion of children out of school among ASEAN countries, at 7.6 percent, amounting to 380,231 kids in 2014, the company said.

(Yonhap)

Posco will work with education ministries and learning centers in each country to help children of minority groups enroll in regular school curriculums through the flexible learning strategies program developed by UNESCO.

Based on the results in Thailand, Posco plans to introduce the program in Indonesia and Myanmar, where 7.1 percent and 5.5 percent of children are out of school, respectively. 

By Kim Bo-gyung (lisakim425@heraldcorp.com)