Community and education

We believe in supporting the communities where we operate by building local ecosystems to enrich and create value. Our activities include industry and academic partnerships, and community development initiatives. We are passionate about sharing science and engineering with young people. We encourage our employees to engage in our programs, which support our sustainability strategy and are adapted to the local context.

Since 2012, we have measured our community involvement through the Business for Societal Impact (formerly London Benchmarking Group) methodology, a global standard to measure and manage corporate community investment. I 3-3 I

2022 achievements

In 2022, we implemented more than 660 community initiatives worldwide, a 27% increase from last year and double our 2020 figure. These included:

• 37 sites in 23 different countries involved in community and education initiatives
• 148,000+ hours of Company time, representing 55% of the total contribution
• US$2.2 million in cash donations
• US$2.3 million in in-kind donations

The large increase in the number of community initiatives is largely due to the expansion of our ‘STEM your way’ program.

Other areas we supported include the ST Foundation, innovation, economic development, health, environment, and social welfare. In 2022, we organized a fundraising campaign for the Ukrainian Red Cross. Our employees raised over US$180,000, which was matched by ST.

To grow employee involvement with social and community activities, we acquired a digital platform in 2022 that will be rolled out in 2023. This tool will raise awareness of our events and facilitate donations and fundraising appeals.

STEM your way program

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is increasingly considered to be indispensable. It can provide the tools needed to develop solutions to complex global problems and boost curiosity in young people. Our ‘STEM your way’ program raises awareness among young people about the importance of STEM subjects and inspires them to explore STEM-related careers.

In 2022, over 450 STEM events and initiatives reached more than 100,000 students and teachers, a 53% increase from 2021. The creation of a worldwide network of STEM champions and ambassadors has helped us accelerate our efforts.

Number of STEM initiatives

Starting young

We recognize the benefits of encouraging curiosity and creativity in children. Throughout the year, we significantly increased the number of events, including webinars, tours of our sites, and visits to schools, with dedicated hands-on activities enabling us to reach more children.

An important part of our program for schools is a project started in 2021 with Vittascience, a French startup specializing in educational tools.

Aimed at pupils and teachers in junior and secondary education, the project aims to raise interest in electronics and coding among young people. It uses educational kits to teach children to code. The kits are built with STMicroelectronics’ electronic components and supported by the Vittascience digital platform.

We launched two new kits in 2022, a STM32 starter kit and an IoT sensor kit, adding to the existing Martian robot and connected plant kits. The digital platform for programming the kits is available in English, French, Italian, and Arabic.

These educational kits were jointly funded by ST and the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) for Microelectronics program.

Our site in Tunis (Tunisia) has done further work to design and develop hands-on materials for young pupils to complement the educational kits. The site has also held discussions with the Tunisian National Education Authority about the use of Vittascience kits in schools.

Higher education

At university level, we support students with our expertise and help to equip them with skills for their future careers. Our technical experts are involved in developing new curricula, building content, delivering courses and training teachers to prepare students for the world of work.

Our programs have grown significantly in France, Italy and China, and we are building on this with new activities in the USA and India.

In the USA, we partnered with ARM and the EdX education platform to offer online learning courses on ST products: ‘Build your first IoT application with ARM’ and ‘Machine learning at the edge’, with both courses using an STM32 IoT Discovery board (see Educational Platforms on www.st.com). More than 10,000 students attended these courses in 2022.

In India, we organized the second edition of the Annual Faculty Development Program workshop in partnership with the All India Council for Technical Education, ARM Education, Microsoft, and the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology. This event, which was attended by over 8,000 participants, aimed to equip faculty members, academics, educators, researchers, and industry practitioners with further knowledge of IoT and AI/machine learning technologies.

In addition to the programs run by our major sites, our small and medium-sized sites are also highly involved in their local ecosystems. Our site in Tunis (Tunisia), for example, has been collaborating with local universities since 2001 to develop the local education ecosystem. At present, almost 80% of Tunisian universities are involved in this collaboration.

STEM for girls

We believe our industry needs more diverse talent to create a better future. Our role in combating gender stereotypes in science and technology is a key focus of our initiatives in this area.

In 2022, we organized 40 events dedicated to enhancing diversity in STEM that reached nearly 7,000 students globally. Italy was particularly active, engaging with more than 1,700 teenagers. In addition to this, our Singapore site reached around 13,700 beneficiaries through a social media campaign on Instagram ‘A Day in the Life at Work’ showing short videos of women in STEM jobs.

In Singapore, we have been working with a partner, United Women Singapore, on a program called Girls2Pioneers. Key initiatives included STEM outreach activities in schools and shelters and an inaugural STEM mentorship program.

Georgette Tan

President United Women Singapore

United Women Singapore (UWS) is proud to work closely with ST to encourage and inspire girls and young women to pursue STEM careers. ST partnered with UWS for several milestone projects through our Girls2Pioneers STEM program and supported the launch of our ‘Close the skills gap: STEM To STEAM’ research. Thanks to this partnership and ST’s commitment towards closing the STEM gender gap, more girls and young women are being empowered to build their future in STEM.”

Our employees are involved in these activities as both mentors and facilitators. Members of our Women in Leadership community act as role models to participants, speak at webinars and participate in social media campaigns, inspiring women and girls to be confident about their future roles in STEM.

We continued to expand our programs in 2022 by organizing a series of webinars on the theme ‘Break the bias in STEM’ to encourage young female students to pursue STEM studies.

Focus

Break the bias in STEM

To celebrate International Women’s Day in March 2022, we organized a series of international webinars and meetings called ‘Break the bias in STEM’. The events addressed prejudice related to women’s roles and contribution to science and technology, with the aim of encouraging girls to pursue STEM studies.

In total, 77 of our STEM ambassadors discussed their studies and careers to help break down stereotypes. Key messages were shared to encourage girls to be independent and confident in their career choices and to foster a passion for the field. The closing session of the series was open to all ST employees, providing the opportunity to recruit new STEM ambassadors. The series was conducted in 10 different languages across 15 countries. It reached over 1,400 students, teachers, and academics.

The success of this initiative led us to formalize ‘Break the bias in STEM’ as an annual global event. This will help us foster diversity and inclusion and strengthen our impact in the long-term.

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ST Foundation

The mission of the ST Foundation (see www.stfoundation.org) is to develop, coordinate, and sponsor projects that use modern sciences to promote progress and sustainable development in less privileged communities worldwide.

The ST Foundation’s flagship Digital Unify (DU) program, launched in 2003, has trained over 970,000 people in 28 countries since its inception.

In 2022, after two years of lockdowns and DU lab closures, the program resumed in every country. Over 110,000 students took part in a diverse range of courses to improve their computer skills. An introduction to a computer basics course for visually impaired people was launched in Senegal with great success. It serves as a starting point for reaching a community that is strongly disadvantaged in our increasingly digital world.

To achieve its aims, the ST Foundation receives a wide range of support from ST. In 2022, this included:

• a cash donation of US$1 million
• the appointment of two full-time people to manage the Foundation’s activities in France and Italy
• electronic and IT equipment
• time devoted by employees to developing new courses or to support the DU program, especially Italian, Indian and Filipino volunteers
• support from the Corporate External Communication team to maintain the Foundation’s website and produce its activity report for external stakeholders

In 2022, ST volunteers in Italy helped to develop a new coding course to support elementary and secondary school students with creativity and problem-solving skills, using coding to combat digital education poverty.

Contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals

Our commitments and programs as described above contribute to:

SDG target 4.3 – Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university.

SDG target 10.2 – Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.