During UNGA week, at a high-level meeting on the Learn AI Global Compact, Chery Automobile highlighted how technology and innovation are supporting impact through its global partnership with UNICEF.
Since 2023, Chery Automobile has committed US$12 million to support UNICEF’s global education programmes across China, Mexico, South Africa, Türkiye, Indonesia, and Viet Nam, helping children and young people gain the knowledge and skills they need to thrive. Guided by the partnership tagline, “Powering Every Child’s Learning Journey”, the collaboration is helping expand access to quality, equitable, and inclusive education.
“Flexible private funding can be a real gamechanger,” Charlie Zhang, Executive Vice President of Chery International, said during the Learn AI Global Compact panel discussion. “It helps turn innovation into long-term solutions, strengthens national education systems, and helps us scale what works.”
Technology as a catalyst for change
During the high-level meeting, Chery emphasized that technology should respond to real-life challenges and barriers affecting children and communities. Innovation is not limited to digital tools. It can also take the form of culturally relevant methodologies, bilingual materials, learning recovery models, and solutions that can be integrated into education systems. While Chery’s support responds to local needs across the participating countries, it shares one common goal: helping every child access quality education.
In South Africa, Chery’s support has helped pilot an AI-powered skills assessment tool with the Ministry of Education, while also supporting the rollout of the National Coding and Robotics Curriculum to embed future-ready skills into formal education.
In Viet Nam and Indonesia, the partnership supports initiatives that build digital, green, and transferable skills, helping children and adolescents prepare for a rapidly evolving economy.
In China, Chery supports STEM learning opportunities for children and adolescents in and out of school. The project supported the development of two gender-responsive, project-based STEM learning packages, reaching 10,000 students, with equal participation of girls, across 568 pilot rural schools.
In Türkiye, Chery’s support has helped children return to safe classrooms after the earthquakes while supporting the integration of recovery measures into the national education system to better withstand and respond to future emergencies.
In Mexico, with a strategic focus on Guerrero, the partnership contributes to efforts to halve, by 2030, the number of children who cannot read and understand a simple text.
From global commitment to local impact: a field visit to Guerrero
Ahead of UNGA week, Chery’s executives and colleagues from China and Mexico joined UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kitty van der Heijden and colleagues from UNICEF Mexico and UNICEF China on a visit to Guerrero, Mexico, to see firsthand how the global partnership translates into local action.
The field visit offered an on-the-ground look at bilingual literacy programmes, learning recovery efforts, teacher training initiatives and learning camps. In Guerrero, bilingual literacy models are being implemented for Indigenous students in first and second grades, using materials and methodologies designed to strengthen reading and writing in both their mother tongue and Spanish. Among 2,250 participating students, bilingual writing outcomes improved by approximately 30 percent and bilingual reading outcomes by approximately 7 percent.
Over the past four years, Learning Camps in Guerrero have benefited 49,337 children. In the most recent Learning Camps cycle, participants improved their results by an average of 10 percent in reading and 14 percent in mathematics. According to programme estimates, these gains were equivalent to approximately 1.5 years of progress in reading and up to two years in mathematics.
Beyond business: local commitment in action
As the partnership looks toward 2028, the focus will remain on supporting the scaling-up of effective approaches, from coding curricula to bilingual literacy programmes - so that every child, regardless of background, has the knowledge and skills to shape their own future. Because when we invest in children's education, we are not just changing lives today; we are building the foundation for a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable world tomorrow.
For Chery, the partnership with UNICEF is more than a CSR initiative - it reflects the company's belief that global presence must come with local purpose. "In Somewhere, For Somewhere, Be Somewhere" is Chery’s global operating philosophy, guiding how the company seeks to contribute to communities in the markets where it operates.
