SUMEC Textile and Light Industry Co., Ltd.,：helping small-scale school education in rural areas to set up responsible brand image

Company profile
Founded in 1996, SUMEC Textile and Light Industry Co., Ltd.（SUMEC）, is Vice Chairman Unit of China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textile and Apparel and Vice-director Unit of Apparel Branch and wins 3A credit rating, the highest level in credit rating,. SUMEC Textile specializes in the design, R&D, manufacturing and trading of garments, home textiles and light industry products. In 2015, its prime operating revenue achieved 5.699 billion yuan with its export volume ranking in the top ten in China. Its profit reached 348 million yuan, keeping good development trend.
Challenges
SUMEC always believes that school uniform is not only beautiful garments, but also the cultural label of a school, reflecting the spiritual outlook, etiquette and temperament of students. While establishing the school uniform brand of Eton Kidd, SUMEC made a deep research of China’s school uniform market and found that there are great differences between Chinese and foreign school uniforms in design, quality and marketing policies. These differences are actually reflections of a series of educational problems, like cultural discontinuity, missing of ethical code and repression of aesthetic consciousness. The deficiency of excellent educational resources in rural areas is the main reason for these problems. Helping rural small-scale schools to attain more excellent educational resources and letting students learn to think independently and have their own cultural propositions are the essential problems hindering the good growth and success of children in rural areas.
Solutions
SUMEC launched the rural children philosophy reading promotion program in alliance with social forces to help rural small-scale schools improve education quality and to render children in rural areas develop the ability of independent thinking and have their own cultural proposition through various ways, including selecting targets for financing at different levels through multiple ways, providing menu-like educational resources for learners’ independent choice, cultivating local seeded teachers and establishing a hieratical mechanism to encourage the development and growth of school teachers.
Selecting targets for financing at different levels through multiple ways
SUMEC takes remote rural small-scale schools, characterized by inconvenient transport and low educational quality, as key targets for financing. The company takes a series measures to establish relations with the financed targets, including sending out recruitment books to invite certain schools directly or selecting schools meeting the requirements through public recruitment, training volunteers in cooperation with welfare organizations and the stratified selection from point to line to plane with the help of county education bureaus. Through the efforts of the above three sides, it is guaranteed that a set of children’s philosophy picture books and a teaching handbook will be sent to those selected schools and the children’s philosophy reading activity will be organized at least once. County education bureaus include the children’s philosophy reading course into the course plan of all the schools participating in the program in the county and assign one teacher to accomplish certain teaching hours each semester. According to the implementation of the program in each school, experimental schools for children’s philosophy reaching courses are finally selected.
Menu-like learning resources for independent choice
The company adopts a menu-like learning resources package from which the users can choose freely. The learning resources package includes a set of children’s philosophy picture books, a handbook for teachers, audio and video demo classes, and CCTK public online philosophy classes for children. The being financed can choose the materials in the learning package freely according to the hardware conditions of the schools, the teaching qualities of teachers and the differences in teaching design. Owing to the access to understandable philosophy in one’s childhood, these children can develop the capacity of thinking gradually.
Cultivating local seeded teachers
This program trains teachers in ways combining online and offline resources, like experience day courses, CCTK online classes, YY online training and teacher workshops. Seeded teachers are selected in this process. Then, these seeded teachers are responsible to train and assist more local teachers, thus realizing a localized development of teachers, which not only greatly reduces the training cost, but also achieves the self-development of rural education.
Achievement
Social benefits
Provide excellent resources to boost the growth of children in rural small-scale schools. During 2014 to 2015, the rural children philosophy reading promotion program launched children’s philosophy courses in over 1,000 rural small-scale schools in remote areas, covering 46 counties in 16 provinces, including Gansu, Hunan, Hubei, and so on. This program encourages children in a school or a region to take part in the reading activity by donating many sets of children’s philosophy books. They implement teaching by asking heuristic questions and gradually abandon the traditional duck-stuffing way and habit of teaching to enlighten children. Through this, children have deep love for reading and gradually develop the habit of reading. Besides, these children also enjoy thinking and learn ways of thinking, thus changing their habits of thinking and behaving. This is a preliminary attempt of promoting rural children to reading philosophy books.
Economic benefit
Identify unique corporate positioning and establish responsible enterprise brand image. The rural children philosophy reading promotion program makes more schools realize that SUMEC is not only providing school uniforms but promoting school uniform to be the school's cultural card to show students’ mental outlook, temperament and culture, which is difference between SUMEC’s school uniform brand and other brands. The program helps more teachers, students and parents know and further recognize what SUMEC does, which has effectively improved the responsible and cultural brand image of its corporate social responsibility, and strengthened the brand awareness, recognition and trust of the school uniforms.
Prospect
SUMEC plans to support 2000 small-scale rural schools in 2016, and gradually explore a mode of rural children philosophy reading promotion and try it in the small rural schools, bring growth and changes for children; the company also will try to build a platform for rural teachers to mutual support and development and help more rural small schools to improve education quality. This program will facilitate a lot of rural children to access to classical reading and open a new wisdom widow for the children, China's future, and provide a more solid foundation for the sustainable development of enterprise itself in the process.