/PRZWT/Chengdu, December 20, 2024 - On December 17, the 8th Annual Chengdu Education EPC Ceremony of the 2024 "Education Impact City" was held at the Sichuan Provincial Culture and Art Center. The event was directed by the Chengdu Municipal Education Bureau and hosted by Chengdu Business Daily, Red Star News, and Red Star Education.
With the "Lee Kum Kee Chef of Hope" project in Chengdu for 11 years, working together to educate students with financial difficulties to realize their dream of cooking in vocational colleges, and the Lee Kum Kee Sustainable "Li" Vision Project, guiding hope chefs to become urban volunteers and create sustainable food culture education, Lee Kum Kee and Chengdu Vocational High School of Finance and Trade jointly won the honor of "Annual Model of Educational Symbiosis".
The first 10 years of benefiting society
Chengdu, as the "world food capital" recognized by the United Nations, has given birth to Sichuan cuisine, hot pot and many other popular cuisines, and naturally has also spawned fertile soil suitable for young chefs to learn and grow. In September 2013, the Lee Kum Kee Hope Chef Project was launched at the Chengdu Finance and Trade Vocational High School in Sichuan Province with the support of the United Front Work Department of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee. 34 young people from Wenchuan, Ya'an and other places who loved learning to cook formed the first Lee Kum Kee Hope Chef Chengdu Class, receiving full funding from Lee Kum Kee to learn Chinese cooking knowledge.
In the next 11 years, Lee Kum Kee, adhering to the corporate core values of "Sili and people, for the benefit of society" and the corporate mission of "carrying forward the excellent Chinese food culture", not only provided financial support to all Hope chefs, paid tuition and fees, subsidized monthly living expenses, winter and summer vacation travel expenses, but also established a Hope Chef project team with the Financial and Trade Vocational High School for school-enterprise co-education. In addition to the daily courses of Hope Chefs, build more exchange opportunities in the catering industry, organize Hope Chefs to go to Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other places to compete and exchange, and encourage them to enter five-star hotels and high-end restaurants at home and abroad for internships and jobs.
So far, the Lee Kum Kee Hope Chef Project has funded 510 aspiring young people to learn Chinese cooking in Chengdu, among whom 334 hope to graduate as chefs, some become head chefs in five-star hotels, some work as technical backbones in high-end restaurants, some return to their hometowns to start businesses and drive the development of the catering industry in their hometowns, and some return to their alma mater to become cooking teachers after graduation, all promoting Chinese flavors on different tracks.
The second decade of shared achievements
Being illuminated by light, having the opportunity to learn technology, mastering technology - this is the first 10 years of the Lee Kum Kee Chef of Hope project; being the light, using technology to make more people understand the traditional culture of sustainable food - this will be the second 10 years of the Lee Kum Kee Chef of Hope project.
Among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals announced by the United Nations, "Sustainable Cities and Communities" is a very important goal. As Lee Kum Kee Hope chefs who study, live and work in Chengdu, they found that while cooking creates delicious food, it also generates some garbage: those used up sauce bottles, ingredients, leftovers... Some of these "garbage" can be recycled, and some are not. How to turn waste into treasure as much as possible has become what Lee Kum Kee Hope chefs are doing this year - Lee Kum Kee Sustainable "Li" Thinking Plan.
On March 22 this year, the sustainable "Li Xiang" project, which was launched in Chengdu by Li Kum Kee Hope Chef as a volunteer, passed on Li Kum Kee's contribution to ecology and the relationship between sauces and water to primary school students by walking into the experimental primary school affiliated to the University of Electronic Science and Technology to promote water conservation.
So far, Lee Kum Kee Sustainable "Li" wants to plan to carry out 14 sustainable activities in Chengdu, Mianyang Beichuan, Liangshan Prefecture, Henan Zhengzhou, Shanghai, Hubei Yichang, Yunnan Lijiang and other places, affecting more than 4 million people: from popular traditional food culture, to sustainable handmade, to community co-creation, Lee Kum Kee hopes that chefs will use "skills education" to influence everyone, spread the culinary knowledge they have learned to various places, and participate in the co-creation and co-construction of cities and communities.
"Education in the new era has many meanings. It is not only the curriculum education that children receive in school, but also the education of the Three Views and the master in society."
Lai Jieshan, director of corporate affairs of Lee Kum Kee China, introduced that as a century-old national enterprise with a sense of social responsibility, Lee Kum Kee has always paid attention to the development of education, especially vocational education: from 2011 to launch the "Lee Kum Kee Hope Chef" project innovatively, to subsidize aspiring young people in financial difficulties to learn Chinese cooking; to establish the Lee Kum Kee Enterprise Scholarship in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu in 2015 to encourage culinary students who are excellent in both character and study; and to launch the sustainable "Lee" plan in 2024 to encourage Lee Kum Kee Hope Chefs to use the skills they have learned to feed back to society.
In the future, Lee Kum Kee will join hands with Chengdu Finance and Trade Vocational High School to continue empowering education and form a win-win situation, so that every child can grow together with the city, carry forward the great Chinese flavor, and build a beautiful China together.
