Education
We consider our efforts related to education in technology and our own disciplines as a significant social contribution. After years of declining interest among school students for technical university courses, the tide now seems to have turned. We support study and student associations that are allied to our own professional disciplines, but we concentrate on secondary education.
Jet-Net and the future
Jet-Net (a technology network for young people in the Netherlands) is an alliance of businesses, government and educational organizations. The goal is to make secondary education in science and technical subjects more attractive and to give students a better appreciation of the future prospects in industry and technology. Who is in a better position to do this than practising professional engineers?
Jet-Net is supported by several different Royal Haskoning offices. Working closely with the schools, our employees build a bridge between theory and practice by giving lessons as guest teachers about their discipline, practical assignments and support to projects as preparation for the profile selection. This is how we want to contribute to increasing the popularity of science and technical subjects in secondary schools.
Career Day
Royal Haskoning participates in national Jet-Net events, such as the Teachers Day and the Career Day. During the Teachers Day, science teachers discuss possible links between teaching material and practical examples with our employees. Royal Haskoning contributes to the Career Day with an interactive assignment that introduces students to technology as used in practice and to young employees in our company. In this way pupils can see for themselves that technology is spectacular, meaningful and socially relevant.
Water Toolkit
For many years water has been one of our most important professional skill areas. We like to work on initiatives that draw attention to the importance of a healthy water cycle. The ways we do this include supporting the Water Toolkit, an initiative of JCI The Netherlands that is made possible in part by the Opleidings- en Ontwikkelingsfonds Waterbouw.
The Water Toolkit has been specially developed for primary schools. It’s a entire teaching package for a complete project week in which there are different activities – suited to the age and experience of the child - that increase awareness about water. The objective is that 3500 primary schools throughout the Netherlands will have worked with this teaching material by 2012.