In the past, children didn’t begin learning foreign languages until their fifth year of school. Today, some children start learning other languages as early as pre-school – because the earlier their talents are encouraged, the better. Bayer too has embraced this basic principle, and promotes science in schools. Some of our numerous projects around the world have since won awards and taken on model character.
At Bayer, the sponsorship of school education in Germany is based on three pillars. The Bayer Foundation's school support program specifically assists schools near the company’s German sites in their efforts to make instruction in science and technology more attractive through innovative projects. The BayLabs student laboratories enable school students to independently conduct exciting experiments in the areas of health, plants, materials and the environment under professional supervision and thus gain hands-on experience of practical science. As well as organizing its own technology competition for schools, Bayer has also been a partner for many years to the student research competitions "Jugend forscht," the International Biology Olympiad and the International Chemistry Olympiad in North-Rhine Westphalia.
An international initiative for the sponsorship of school education is the “Making Science Make Sense” program, which was introduced in the United States in 1995. 1,200 Bayer employees now visit schools regularly on a volunteer basis to demonstrate to the children just how exciting natural sciences can be. Because of its tremendous success in the United States, similar projects have been introduced in Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom.