THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF A SMILE
Mazda Specialist Bank
[Japan] Mazda Motor Corporation
Experiences Connecting Us During COVID-19
Since 1994, Mazda has been dispatching current and retired employees for lectures on specialized knowledge, technology, various types of expertise (vocational lectures, environmental classes), special skills (English, music, sleight of hand, storytelling, sports, etc.) and other events, upon request from educational institutions and other organizations, to contribute to education in local communities by sharing its diverse human resources.
In FY2020, to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we tried to think of other ways to conduct our activities besides meeting face to face and decided to conduct our activities online.
After receiving a request from an elementary school in Tokyo to provide a lecturer for the school's 50th anniversary lecture, one of Mazda's development engineers addressed the school, which has a rotary engine as it school emblem motif. Through the story of Mazda's development of the world's only commercial rotary engine, the lecturer emphasized the importance of having a dream and taking on new challenges.
Mazda staff interacted in various ways with elementary school children during the year. For example, a Mazda3 designer from Ishikawa Prefecture interacted with elementary school students in Ishikawa Prefecture, who had crafted Mazda cars out of paper during art class, through videos and letters. A painting technology engineer shared the secrets of Mazda's coating technology in an environmental class for elementary school, and staff from a Mazda plant answered questions about car making from elementary school students. Despite the physical distance, the friendly exchanges and smiles shared on both sides of the screen created a feeling of closeness.
By the numbers
Duration of program: 27 years
Number of specialists dispatched in FY2020: 25 events, 42 specialists
Cumulative Total: 3,208 events