Klöckner & Co reaffirms its successful commitment as main sponsor of the ReDI School of Digital Integration in Duisburg’s Marxloh neighborhood

• Kids and Youth Program at the coding school in Duisburg grows to 340 students
• Number of teachers and locations doubled in comparison to previous year
• Focus of training remains on job integration, teaching technical and soft skills, and building media skills

Duisburg, Germany, September 13, 2021 – Klöckner & Co has reaffirmed its social commitment to the ReDI School of Digital Integration (“ReDI School”), a non-profit coding school, and will continue to support the organization’s Kids and Youth Program in Duisburg’s Marxloh neighborhood as the main sponsor. As a pioneer of the digital transformation of the steel industry, Klöckner & Co has been supporting charitable projects for many years. These activities aim chiefly to effect lasting improvements in the educational opportunities available to socially disadvantaged children in the immediate surroundings of the Company’s headquarters in Duisburg. The focus is on selected local projects that promote education for children and teens and help meet their basic needs.

Klöckner & Co as sponsor of Kids and Youth Program in Duisburg

Klöckner & Co has been the main sponsor of the ReDI School since 2015. This commitment helped to fuel the digital school’s growth, which has been extremely positive despite the COVID-19-related restrictions. About a year and a half after the launch of the Kids and Youth Program in Marxloh, enrollment has swelled from an initial 70 students to 340 today.

Anne Kjær Bathel, CEO and co-founder of the ReDI School: “Promoting digital skills is an important matter for our society. With that objective in mind, we worked with Klöckner & Co to get the Kids and Youth Program in Duisburg’s Marxloh neighborhood up and running in February 2020. The growth in the numbers of students shows that our concept is successful and is being well received by the children and teens.”

Guido Kerkhoff, CEO of Klöckner & Co SE: “The ReDI School works to improve the digital education of children and teenagers in socially disadvantaged areas. We are delighted to have this opportunity to support its work as a reliable, long-term partner.”

Sören Link, Mayor of Duisburg: “Education is the key to Duisburg’s future, so it must be the focus of our joint efforts. The active networking of committed players in the region such as the ReDI School and Klöckner & Co have done here is one of the main prerequisites for fair educational opportunities irrespective of income, language or surroundings.”

ReDI School doubles number of locations and teachers in Duisburg

As a result of the greatly increased demand for training options, the ReDI School has expanded its locations and its staff. With the Regenbogenschule and Sandstrasse elementary schools as well as two high schools, Elly-Heuss-Knapp and Herbert-Grillo, and a total of four teachers, the number of schools and staff has doubled in comparison to the previous year. During the course of the current school year, Henriettenstrasse elementary school is slated to become the fifth school to join the program.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic had very little impact on the options available at the ReDI School in Duisburg. During the lockdown, training continued online. The ReDI School’s digital concept proved to be resilient and the relevance of the coding school’s future-oriented course content has only increased.

The significant growth notwithstanding, the Kids and Youth Program remains focused on promoting job integration, teaching technical and soft skills, and building media skills.

Successful partnership with the ReDI Schools in Berlin und Duisburg

Ever since the ReDI School’s inception in 2015, Klöckner & Co has been its main sponsor and, in addition to funding, also provides support such as access to space in kloeckner.i’s Digital Lab in Berlin. In August 2019, Klöckner & Co and the ReDI School worked together to launch the additional site in Marxloh. The Kids and Youth Program launched officially in February 2020. Since the founding of the ReDI School, five of its graduates have taken up permanent positions at kloeckner.i, most of them working in software development.